WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN…

Audinate addresses supply issues.

With supply chain the hot topic of conversation at InfoComm 2022, Audinate took the bold step of inviting the assembled AV media to a press conference at 5 pm on the first day of the show. Leading up to this, we’d had two versions of the Dante conversation with manufacturers on the show floor, version one being “we can’t get Dante chips to make this product,” and version two being “we are very wise and bought two year’s worth of Dante chips. We are shipping now with no issues.” Dante chips seem to have become the toilet paper of the AV industry.

Audinate’s Chief Marketing Officer Joshua Rush and Senior Vice President of Product Development Chris Ware fronted the crowd with some interesting insights. Firstly, they actually shipped more Dante chips last financial year than ever before. Secondly, 500 manufacturers use their products, so Audinate have been leveraging that to lobby chip manufacturers to stop putting them last in the queue for supply. This second point is admirable – the AV industry is dwarfed by the consumer electronics and automotive industries, and certainly doesn’t hold sway over chip manufacturers like defence and government. Audinate’s unique position as a nexus for the whole industry makes them an advocate for us all.

With product development brought forward, products redesigned, and ongoing parts disruptions calming down, Audinate were also keen to encourage manufacturers to consider migrating to their software solutions; the Dante Embedded Platform and Dante IP Core.

While many manufacturers find it hard to come to grips with selling software instead of hardware, QSC is definitely not one of them. QSC’s VP of Product Strategy and Development, TJ Adams took a guest spot at the mic to explain the advantages of the software based approached, pointing out that their continuing upgrades to their Core products and implementation of not only Dante but Q-SYS itself on Dell servers has led the market.