I can not access my panel at the moment, but a friend, buying an SQ5, is asking me which Dante card to look for. I see only the 64x64 card on-line but I think there were a few other choices once upon a time. I may have one of those in my panel.
Any thoughts on whether my friend should look for a used card or go right for the 64x64? He will not be a heavy Dante user.
D.
A&H makes a 32x32 Dante card for the SQ series. https://www.allen-heath.com/hardware/audio-networking/
One common use for Dante tends to be multi-track recording. It’s very easy to use up a lot of I/O doing that and still want more I/O for other Dante uses (like plugin processing via channel inserts, etc). So depending on how many sources your friend expects to mix regularly, a 32x32 card may quickly become too limiting. Of course if the person doesn’t expect to mix more than around 24 or so channels, then a 32x32 card could likely do both multitrack recording and have enough left over I/O for other functions. But if the person expects to be mixing close to or more than 32 channels regularly, then the 64x64 card is probably the best choice. That’s just my 2 cents on the question however…
32x32 should do it, however, if you want all 48 channels then you will have to use the 64x64 card.