A scenario that is unlikely to work well for most
Sounds like a nice idea, but high end people will do things in their own time frame, rather than having to fit around someone in another place. Once you get over a few milliseconds latency, real-time is lost, so why force everyone to hang around while one does their ‘thing’. Such things require good organisation and everybody to be on the ball.
And experience of video conferencing ought to be a warning to not expect too much from an actual sessions: jumpy video and emotional disconnection (unless you REALLY get on well with the others).
Boon for the large numbers of low end users to expand facilities VERY cheaply
I really see the ability to work real-time across a GbE LAN connection in the same building, but different rooms to be the REAL benefit. It enables all those bedroom/hobby musos to incrementally expand their facilities, without complicated and awkward cable runs. Audio isolation for those on a budget!
I think this scenario is the one that will benefit many more than using the promoted one. I was looking at going the Dante route when I needed to up the game from the Firewire RME FireFaces when they or Firewire outwore its welcome (disappeared off motherboards). But Dante ONLY handles audio, not ALL the other comms needed for a session.
This new facility means that when upgrading one’s main computer, the old one could be used (after some silencing treatment), with its audio interface, as a studio PC running VST Connect Performer. The control room does not need lots of connections, so even a USB2 device may well suffice.
Just the Dante ‘audio’ card is $1000, and then add expensive excessively-provisioned (thinking Focusrite RED series here at $2000+ each) remote audio interfaces. A $200 plugin plus some Intel/Gigabyte mini-ATX i5 Brix-type PCs with their own USB audio interfaces seems downright affordable! Or even use a touch all-in-one PC.
Can the audio LAN be isolated?
One issue is whether the master system can bind the audio to a particular Ethernet adaptor with its own subnet, so that audio traffic and hardware can be separate from general network traffic.