OKeventos becomes first company to use Dante in Cuba

OKeventos, a professional audio rental and production company based in Havana, Cuba, is using Audinate’s Dante Audio over IP networking for a variety of projects ranging from live multitrack recording to TV production.

Mauricio Blanco, owner and president of OKeventos, was the first sound engineer to use Dante in Cuba on the recently released Live in Cuba album by Wynton Marsalis on Blue Engine Records, which was originally recorded in October 2010.

Blanco found that Dante would further streamline the installation process, using single-wire connections to move 40 channels of audio between his Yamaha M7CL console (outfitted with Dante MYAUD16 modules) and an off-the-shelf switch. From there, the team used Dante Controller software to enable a signal flow to Cubase DAW software for live multitracking – both for the recording and the TV broadcast.

In the six years following the Live in Cuba project, OKeventos has amplified its Dante architecture by adding two Yamaha CL consoles, Yamaha RIO stageboxes, and an Allen and Heath iLive digital mixing system. On the live sound side, they deployed a Dante network to link several mixers used to produce the March 2016 Diplo and Major Lazer concert in Havana, which was attended by more than 450,000 fans. Blanco was also the first to use Dante for reality TV in production for Sonando en Cuba, which he calls a “tremendous success.”

“We mainly provide services for live concerts, but also support corporate, theatre, dance and sporting events across Cuba,” said Blanco. “As a live sound engineer, digitisation brings comfort with reduced set up times, simpler and more secure connections, lower noise levels, low latency and higher capacity. I underwent an exhaustive study of all digital audio networking solutions, and in my estimation no one beats Dante.

“We are regularly moving signals over long distances – typically more than 100 meters – without any interference from electric traffic, radio signals and dmx wires that are in close proximity,” he added. “The Dante audio is clean, and to date we have not had one failure using Dante. Its ability to support redundant signals adds further comfort for protecting our content and productions.”

Blanco expects to continue expanding his Dante AoIP networking architecture and is now evaluating Dante-enabled products for routing audio directly to PA systems.

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