Nashville Music Club Thrives with Dante Audio Networking

	12th and Porter concert venue in Nashville

Dante, the media networking solution created by Audinate, has transformed Nashville, Tennessee's legendary 12th and Porter concert venue with a networked state-of-the-art sound system. The world-famous 12th and Porter has operated as Nashville's premier label showcase venue, and has hosted thousands of live performances over the years.

Morris Light & Sound was hired to help restore the club's reputation as a premier live performance venue. The new owners gave John Mills, vice president of Morris Light & Sound, the freedom to specify the end-to-end audio system, given the company's 25 years of experience in audio and lighting for live events and fixed installations.

The systems integration team at Morris Light & Sound, which handled the audio upgrades, also reduced labor costs in choosing Dante as its audio networking solution. Mills commented that Dante allowed his team to simplify connection terminations in the digital signal processing racks and eliminate an analog front-of-house snake. The presence of two separate networks gives house sound engineers and the band's sound engineers more options in networking audio between front-of-house and the stage, while increasing channel capacity and contributing to sound quality improvements.

"We saved well over $1,000 in labor costs by using Dante instead of the traditional analog snake." said Mills. "The minimal termination requirements saved us a lot of time. Using Dante, I am saving money at the end of the day because I can get the job done much quicker."

Mills knew he wanted a clean and modular networked solution to route multi-channel audio, while offering plenty of flexibility -- as well as room for growth.

"We established two separate networks so that a band could easily patch its own console straight into the system DSP," said Mills. "This ensures the owner doesn't have to call me to the club to remove the main console every time a band wants to use its own. And the modularity of the Dante network gives the club owners plenty of room for expansion."

The main network includes a Dante-enabled Yamaha CL3 console, with a Yamaha Rio stagebox, with the second network running between the System DSP and the NEXO amplifiers. The complete solution accommodates high-capacity audio I/O and extremely versatile routing, with Dante playing a role in overall sound quality.

"The quality of the gear we put in this club is amazing, and Dante is an important reason why everything sounds great," said Mills. "The CL3 console with the Dante allowed us to replace all the old analog cabling and is a very clean and cost effective way of moving audio. The response from the club owners, musicians, and attendees alike has been extremely positive."