Audinate Announces New Capabilities for Dante Ultimo Chipsets

	Audinate's Dante Ultimo

Audinate, a provider of digital media networking for the A/V, conferencing, public address, and broadcast industries, announces new enhancements to the Dante Ultimo low-channel chipsets, now shipping.

The new revision of Dante Ultimo incorporates support for Marvell 88E6320 gigabit switch, enabling robust daisy chaining of Dante devices with multicast filtering capability.

Audinate has also released new Ultimo 2.1 firmware, adding several new features for audio video (AV) equipment manufacturers building low channel-count products with Dante Ultimo. The new release 2.1 firmware adds device control capabilities enabled by the Dante Device Protocol (DDP). DDP allows Ultimo messages and commands to be sent via SPI/UART from the host processor, accessing parameters such as channel subscriptions, clock status, and more. DDP is ideal for integration of routing pre-sets and front panel displays in Ultimo products. Additionally, Ultimo now supports 16-, 24-, and 32-bit PCM audio, selected globally or per-channel as needed.

Ultimo is part of Audinate's portfolio of high performance Dante devices and is a family of complete, fully featured, ready-to-use, single-chip Dante solutions for low channel-count networked audio products. The Ultimo family incorporates all the differentiated Dante features such as automatic device discovery, plug-and-play networking, custom device names and channel labels, and network-based firmware updates. Ultimo is a perfect choice for networking powered speakers, microphones, AV wall plates, speakerphones, amplifiers, paging stations, personal monitoring systems, recording interfaces, intercoms, and analog/digital break-in/break out interfaces.

"These new capabilities will expand the spectrum of low cost endpoint products for manufacturers developing low channel count networked audio products," says David Myers, COO of Audinate. "They make daisy chaining easier and better exactly where it is needed -- at network edges -- and provide manufacturers with advanced capabilities for automation and display on their products, at an incredible price point."

The Ultimo chips and release 2.1 firmware are available immediately for AV equipment manufacturers. The new parts are fully backwards compatible with existing Ultimo products. Ultimo is available in 2x2 channel (ULT-01-002) and 4x4 channel (ULT-01-004) configurations.