MADI (AES10) vs Dante

Q: MADI (AES10) vs Dante: Is MADI still worth running next to a Dante network?

MADI (AES10): A long-established AES standard for point-to-point transport of up to 64 channels of digital audio over a single coax (BNC) or fiber link, still widely used for touring FOH/monitor console splits, digital snakes, and broadcast/live-sound interconnects. Dante: Audinate's proprietary audio-over-IP system carrying uncompressed multichannel audio, clocking and device control over ordinary gigabit ethernet. It is the default audio network on most touring and install jobs, and usually what a desk, a stagebox and an amp rack are talking to each other with.

showstack / compare / madi-vs-dante

Is MADI still worth running next to a Dante network? Below is every field we hold on both, side by side. Each one is sourced on the individual entry, and anything nobody could source is left blank rather than guessed.

Side by side

	MADI (AES10)	Dante
Category	audio-transport	audio-transport
Flow	Media — large, continuous, on time and in order	Media — large, continuous, on time and in order
Ports		UDP 4321, UDP 4440, UDP 4444, UDP 4455, UDP 8700
Transport	other, fibre	udp, tcp
Multicast		239.255.0.0/16 (Dante audio and video flows), 239.69.0.0/16 (AES67 flows from Dante devices), 224.0.0.230-233 (control and monitoring)
Spec availability	open-free-registration	proprietary-closed
Steward	Audio Engineering Society (AES)	Audinate Pty Ltd
Status	current	current
Our confidence	verified	verified

Both are media flows. Anything that starves the link — usually a management transfer nobody scheduled — and jitter that outruns the receive buffer. That applies equally to either, so it is not a discriminator here.

What each one carries

Capability defined by the specification, not by any one product. A blank means the specification does not fix it, which is itself the answer on a transport like SRT.

	MADI (AES10)	Dante
Sample rates	48 kHz, 96 kHz	44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz, 176.4 kHz, 192 kHz
Audio bit depth	24-bit	16-bit, 24-bit, 32-bit
Audio channels	up to 64	—
Audio encoding	Linear PCM	Linear PCM

MADI (AES10), audio: 64 channels at 48 kHz on one coax or fibre, halving to 32 at 96 kHz. The channel count is fixed by the frame structure, so a MADI link is always the same bandwidth whether the channels carry audio or silence.

Dante, audio: Channel count is a property of the device rather than of the protocol. Higher sample rates halve or quarter the channels a given device carries, which is the trade people meet when they switch a rig to 96 kHz.

Speaks both (15)

These are the safe choices if you have not committed to either, or need to bridge the two.

MADI (AES10) only (1)

L-Acoustics P1 L-Acoustics

Dante only (31)

Ardour Ardour Community
Dante Controller Audinate
Dante Domain Manager Audinate
Dante Virtual Soundcard Audinate
Q-SYS Designer QSC, LLC
Smaart Rational Acoustics
WATCHOUT Dataton
Allen & Heath Avantis Allen & Heath
Biamp TesiraFORTÉ Biamp
BSS Soundweb London BLU-806 BSS Audio
Cisco Catalyst 9200 Series Cisco
Cisco Catalyst 9300 Cisco
Clear-Com FreeSpeak II Clear-Com
d&b audiotechnik 40D installation amplifier d&b audiotechnik
d&b audiotechnik DS100 Signal Engine d&b audiotechnik
Focusrite RedNet A16R MkII Focusrite
Green-GO Digital Intercom Green-GO (ELC)
L-Acoustics LA4X L-Acoustics
Lab.gruppen PLM 20K44 Lab.gruppen
Lab.gruppen Lake LM44 Lab.gruppen
Luminex GigaCore 10 Luminex Network Intelligence
Luminex GigaCore 16Xt Luminex Network Intelligence
Luminex GigaCore 26i Luminex Network Intelligence
NETGEAR M4250 (AV Line) NETGEAR
Powersoft X8 Powersoft
Q-SYS Core 510i QSC (Q-SYS)
Riedel Bolero Riedel Communications
RME Digiface Dante RME
Symetrix Radius NX 12x8 Symetrix
Yamaha DM7 Yamaha
Yamaha Rio3224-D2 Yamaha

What goes wrong with MADI (AES10)

Original AES10-1991 caps out at 56 channels at 48kHz; 64-channel and higher-sample-rate operation needs the AES10-2003/2008 revisions and matching gear.

Point-to-point only, with no built-in routing/addressing - multi-device MADI systems need external routers or matrix switchers.

Coax (75-ohm BNC) and optical (SC) variants are not interchangeable without a converter, and each has different maximum cable runs.

What goes wrong with Dante

Dante's own clock is PTP version 1 (IEEE 1588-2002). AES67 and ST 2110 use PTPv2. Putting a Dante device into AES67 mode moves it to a different clock domain, and the two do not share a grandmaster without a bridging device.

Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az, sold as "green ethernet") must be disabled on every port carrying Dante. Audinate names it as a cause of clock instability and occasional dropouts, and it is on by default on cheap switches.

QoS has to be strict priority queueing, not weighted. Audinate's scheme is DSCP CS7 for PTP event messages, EF for audio and PTPv2, CS1 for reserved. A switch doing weighted fair queueing will still drop audio under load.

Discovery is mDNS on 224.0.0.251, which is link-local and does not cross a router. Devices on a different subnet will not appear in Dante Controller unless you are running Dante Domain Manager.

Multicast flows need one IGMP querier elected per VLAN. Two queriers, or none, and the flows either flood every port or vanish after the group membership times out.

There is no published wire specification. Anything that speaks Dante does so with a licensed Audinate module, chip or software stack, so "we will just write a driver" is not an option on this one.

Sources

AES10-2008, Serial Multichannel Audio Digital Interface (MADI) has been published - AES Standards primary
MADI - Wikipedia
Which network ports does Dante use? — Audinate primary
Dante Information for Network Administrators v7.1 — Audinate primary
Dante product and platform overview — Audinate primary

Disagree with any of this?

Every claim above comes from one of the two entries and carries a source. If one is wrong, correcting it is a single file and it fixes this page automatically. Edit MADI (AES10) or edit Dante.