Network

Bandwidth and speed

When it comes to bandwidth requirements for high-quality audio, there are a number of factors that can affect the input and output of the audio. The network speed required for especially audio transmission via Dante® should be as high as possible to ensure a smooth listening experience. As a rule, the minimum bandwidth for transmitting and receiving audio at the Spectera Base Station is approximately the following:
The majority of audio used in professional settings is PCM (uncompressed), sampled at 48 kHz and a bit depth (word length) of 24 bits. Dante® audio is unicast by default but can be set to use multicast for cases of one-to-many distribution.
  • Dante® packages audio into flows to save on network overhead.
  • Unicast Audio flows contain up to 4 channels. The samples-per-channel can vary between 4 and 64, depending on the latency setting of the device. Bandwidth usage is about 6 Mbps per typical unicast audio flow.
  • Bandwidth for multicast flows is dependent on the number of audio channels used. Bandwidth is about 1.5 Mbps per channel.
Source: Audinate Dante Information for Network Administrators (PDF)

Internet access

For both components Spectera Base Station and Sennheiser LinkDesk we recommend to provide permanent Internet access. Please refer to chapter Ports, protocols and services to get more details about used Internet services.

At least for the initial product activation of the Spectera Base Station and for the use of the optional Sennheiser Account Login in Sennheiser LinkDesk it is mandatory to have a direct Internet access and DNS support.
At the moment it is not possible to manually configure any network proxy and DNS server at Spectera Base Station. Please make sure to provide direct Internet access e.g. via white-listing the device and any used port, protocol and domain and using DHCP to provide DNS server settings.

Network infrastructure (switches/cables)

Generally any kind of unmanaged or managed network switch can be used for control and audio data transmission. For proper operation of Dante® some fundamental requirements need to be fulfilled:
  • When using managed switches, ensure that they allow EEE (Energy Efficient Ethernet or "Green Ethernet") to be disabled. Make sure that EEE is disabled on all ports used for real-time Dante traffic.
  • When using unmanaged switches, do not use switches that support the EEE function, because it cannot be disabled.
  • Make sure that the switch supports Quality of Service (QoS) and that it is enabled.
  • For larger networks, consider using VLANs to segment audio traffic from other types of network traffic.
For further information about that topic, please refer to the: Audinate FAQ - Networks and Switches. Additionally, there is a list of incompatible switches available at Audinate: Audinate List of incompatible EEE switches (PDF)

To ensure a reliable transmission speed of audio and control data with the Spectera Base Station, please use an RJ45 network cable with the CAT5e S/FTP standard or higher.