Audinate
The Company: Audinate was NICTA's first spin-out company. It is dedicated to using its unique technology to bring the benefits of internet protocol networking to professional-grade, installed audio networks and equipment.
Idea
- From prestigious concert halls and entertainment centres to PA Systems in shopping malls and even office security and safety announcement systems, live audio and video is moved around as analogue signals using dedicated copper cables.
- If these signals could be sent digitally, sharing the standard computer network infrastructure, many signals could be sent over the same wire and the building wiring requirements could be significantly reduced and simplified.
Impact
- Audinate has formalised an existing relationship with Dolby Live Sound Group and delivered two Dante-enabled products to the company.
- The new company has also signed up several other companies as customers, so a growing number and range of Dante-enabled products will come to market in the near future..
More Information
- The NICTA Research Approach
- Validation and Commercial Potential Analysis
- Management and Marketing Support
- Seed Funding
- Spinning Out
- In 2003, a team of NICTA researchers with deep expertise in advanced networking began investigating how Internet Protocol (IP) networking technology could be used to meet this challenge.
- By solving the problem of achieving very low delay and tight synchronization, the team believed it would be possible to use standard networking equipment to build the infrastructures required to stage live music events.
- NICTA researchers also focused on making computer networking easy to set up and manage for the non-expert, building on the particular strengths of the team in ‘zero configuration’ networking techniques.
- The result was the creation of Dante technology. Dante overcomes the challenges of network latency to faithfully reproduce live sounds, allowing musical instruments to be plugged directly into an Ethernet network.
- By mid-2005, the researchers had produced advanced prototypes and applied for the first in a number of patents to protect its work.
Validation and Commercial Potential Analysis
- The NICTA research team worked closely with sound engineers and musicians to ensure the new technology can deliver sound quality comparable with existing analogue systems.
- A series of in-lab and field tests was conducted that directly compared the system with existing sound infrastructures.
- Positive feedback from experts validated the teams’ belief in a significant worldwide market for Dante
Management and Marketing Support
- A business development expert was assigned to the team who has since become Chief Executive of the spin out company Audinate.
- NICTA also agreed a phased approach for staff, to enable team members to transition to Audinate over a six-month period
- NICTA’s commercialisation experts helped the team to develop a business case and construct a financial model for the planned spin-out company.
- NICTA provided funding for market research to ensure the planned company was ready to claim a leadership position in the sector.
- A market assessment trip to the United States in early 2006 provided an opportunity to validate the business opportunity. Audinate was registered as a company in mid 2006.
- In late 2006 negotiations between Audinate and NICTA concluded, and Audinate became NICTA’s first spin-out company. It closed a round of venture funding at the same time.