In the summer of 2025, the sprawling slopes of Naeba Ski Resort in Niigata, Japan, once again became home to FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL’25, the nation’s largest outdoor music festival. For three days, the mountains pulsed with sound, light, and the energy of tens of thousands of festival-goers. But in 2025, the reach of FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL’25 extended far beyond the mountain valley. The footage was meticulously edited and streamed live worldwide through Amazon Prime.
It was a logistical and engineering challenge on a massive scale: multiple stages, simultaneous performances, multi-day coverage, and the need to maintain absolute quality and sync for an audience that expects nothing less than a world-class viewing experience. For the hear of this operation, the ADTECHNO Dante AV Ultra-enabled DAV-01 Series was selected.
NOUVELLE VAGUE is not your average production company. They operate n00b.st, a state-of-the-art LED virtual production studio in Tokyo, and provide live streaming and technical services for terrestrial TV programs, music festivals, esports tournaments, corporate events, and more.
From their founding, they embraced IP-based workflows and quickly became early adopters of Dante networked audio. Yamaha Dante-enabled mixers, Dante Domain Manager (DDM), and a philosophy of full digital signal flow have been core to their operations for years.
“When we built our studio, we decided that we wouldn’t have a single analog signal path,” explains Ikeda, Vice President of NOUVELLE VAGUE.
“No embedding or de-embedding back to analog. From input to output, it had to stay digital. That was our standard.”
With that approach already applied to audio, the next logical step was to extend it to video. And that’s where Dante AV Ultra came into the picture.
“If you can unify the whole process on Dante, you simplify everything — and you improve quality at the same time.”
FUJI ROCK FESTIVAL’25 presented the ideal — and most demanding — proving ground for the DAV-01.
The Amazon Prime coverage required multi-day recording and live streaming from several stages. Each feed needed to be perfectly synced and delivered for both live audiences and post-event editing.
The team used the DAV-01 to take 3G-SDI output from replay machines, convert it into Dante AV Ultra, and feed it into the existing 1GbE network. From there, the audio was routed to Yamaha Dante-enabled mixers for editing and mixing before being sent to the broadcast output.
Midway through one performance, an unexpected burst of audio noise hit the broadcast chain. In most setups, this could have triggered a frantic search through multiple devices and cable runs, potentially risking minutes of dead air.
With the DAV-01, the resolution was almost immediate.
“We looked at the front-panel monitor and saw right away that the problem was in the SDI input feed,” says Ikeda.
“That meant the issue was upstream, not in our network or processing chain. We restarted the replay machine, and it was fixed in minutes.”
By integrating the DAV-01 into their workflow, NOUVELLE VAGUE was able to achieve full digital integration with simplified cabling and hardware. Ikeda credits the DAV-01 with unlocking high-quality 4K production over 1GbE, while allowing the team to immediately identify and isolate any faults in the chain.
“Honestly, we almost don’t want to tell anyone about it — it’s that good,” Ikeda laughs.
“For anyone already working with Dante, it’s the ultimate upgrade. The learning curve is almost zero, and the built-in monitoring tools are invaluable in the field.”
