Dante error connecting to dvs manager

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Sure do. Love it. Running out of a Yamaha O1V96 to PC on a Cat6 cable. . Super low latency. Rock solid performance. Highly recommended

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Thank you. I’m about to give it a test run on 4 PC’s.

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As Sodium does not seem to use it in a PC->PC installation, please let us know about your findings.

-Michael

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Join Date: Aug 2018

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No you don’t. You need a managed switch so you can tweak QOS settings if you have a lot of other stuff going over the network but any switch will do. I use an Allied Telesis GS950/8POE switch for my Dante network, never configured anything on the switch and it’s working flawless for over two years now.

Join Date: Jun 2013

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I do know QOS («Quality of service») that allows to set a priority for certain streams. But I never heard of a dedicated «QOS for audio». I f this really does exist as a separate standard, supposedly very few switches will support it. But I think any QOS enabled switch should be able to be configured for the priority of Dante streams.

OTOH, if no QOS is in place there should be rather rare problems if the network branches used are not busy with other stuff. Hence i believe, Gigabit provided, dedicating a single switch to the Dante devices and hook that to the rest of the network to same with a single cable should yield decent results for semi-pro installations.

-Michael

Join Date: Dec 2012

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I have an entirely Dante-based studio consisting of Dante-enabled audio hardware and Dante Virtual Soundcard since 2014 and tested multiple configurations over time. Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS) is a device driver that turns the NIC port of your Mac or PC into a 64×64 in/out ASIO/WDM audio interface. Obviously, you need another Dante-enabled device at the other end of the ethernet cable. You cannot connect two or even more computers only by running DVS on them because DVS requires at least one Dante hardware device or another computer running Dante Via software present on the network to be properly clocked. However, you can connect multiple computers running Dante Via OR multiple computers running DVS and one Computer running Dante Via as Dante Via does have clocking master capabilities.

Regarding switches, you’ll need a standard manageable gigabit switch. It is important to turn off any «green ethernet» and energy saving functionality which could lead to unwanted data throttling and thus may risk audio drop-outs. For smaller networks (below 25 Dante peers) it is not required to configure QoS, however QoS will ensure that IP audio packets and especially PTP-based Dante clocking will be prioritized. In my config, I have a digital console (Ymaha DM1000), a computer fitted with a 128-in/out-channel Dante PCIe card, a Dante-enabled converter (Ferrofish A32 Dante) and a laptop running DVS connected via 2 Cisco SG200-08 manageable gigabit switches via cat6a cables. My internet router is also connected (DHCP server). No issues at all even when streaming several HD videos on youtube simultaneously while doing a large audio mix over the network. In my setup, there are over 150 audio channels constantly running between multiple devices and booths in the background at all times! I don’t even think about it. It just works.

Dante Via is similar to DVS, however, it is capable of providing Dante-PTP-clocking for an entire network. Further more, it is capable of aggregating all USB/Firewire interfaces connected to a computer and make all their ins and outs accessible on the entire Dante network in addition to the «regular» Dante channels it also provides. It can also establish audio connections between multiple audio applications on the same computer.

Note that Dante Via and DVS, both being purely software-based solutions running on top of the computers NIC port management, yield a higher latency than Dante-enabled hardware devices! The minimum latency of Via/DVS is around 5-10 ms (depending on the computer’s power) while Dante hardware (PCIe card also) deliver latencies down to 0.15 ms!

A Dante network is really easy to setup. You don’t need to be an IT nerd to get it running smoothly. For me, it’s the ideal environment and I’m more than happy to work in this environment since 2014. Routing flexibility is limitless and is done entirely via free Dante Controller software, so entirely without the need for expensive hardware routers/splitters. Auto-discovery of Dante devices that are powered up or are plugged into the network switch garantees that all devices can immediately exchange audio if desired.

For those folks who already own a bunch of non-Dante devices (analog or digital) , I’d recommend taking a look at the Ferrofosh Verto series or bridging devices from other manufacturers. Those devices can bridge legacy analog or digital devices (ADAT, MADI, analog, etc.) into the Dante network so you don’t have to sell your valuable current gear to enter the amazing Dante universe.

As a side note: Once you have your gear connected via ethernet, you can also use the same cabling for studio-wide MIDI networking using the free CopperLan app! Of course, you can also use a dedicated spare Dante audio channel to easily distribute SMPTE/LTC timecode.

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Join Date: Dec 2012

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Dante can work using existing networking infrastructure (Switches, cables). However, as I pointed out in my previous post, the optimal config is using manageable gigabit switches and cat5 or cat6 cabling. Some Dante devices (mostly those providing 64 or more audio channels) may refuse to connect to other peers if those are only reachable via megabit networking connections. Getting a recent manageable (second hand) gigabit switch is no big investment.

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Join Date: Aug 2018

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People still use 10baseT?

Anyway…that (and your other post) sounds encouraging. My desires are actually pretty straightforward compared to what people are doing with Dante. I just couldn’t find the right networking documentation in the hour or so I spent on it…it was all sales pitches instead of actual information.

I might have to look into that in the future…it seems like the prices are in the same ballpark for MADI or AES but with more channels.

Does it deal well with changing sample rates, assuming the ADCs/DACs involved do?

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Hence you can’t just buy two Virtual Sound Card licenses two connect two devices (as suggested in the other tread) , but need to spend much more money to start ?

Edit: with the «bundle» it seemingly is possible to connect two PCs for some $ 60.

-Michael

Join Date: Jul 2018

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So let me see if I have this correct. I have three computers I want to test this out on, two are dedicated sound generators and one is a Daw. I want to get audio out of the dedicated sound generators into the Daw obviously. Right now the machines are connected via ADAT thru ProFire Lightbridge firewire interfaces. I would like to ditch them altogether at some point. The information on the Dante site about configuring such a set up seems very vague. I had not yet figured out that I needed Dante Via at all.

To begin with, the Dante controller software that the sound card manual said must be installed first installed fine on one machine but would not install on the other two. I suspect this is a net framework issue. Unfortunately I was having all sorts of troubles trying to update net framework on those two machines as well. These computers are not on the Internet intentionally as I do not want to run any antivirus on them.

Assuming I can sort out the setup program issue I was thinking I could just install the Dante controller and VSC on the three machines and be in business. But what you’re telling me is that at least one of the machines needs to be running the Dante via software in order to get clock. Correct?

After installing the VSC and controller on one unit Cantabile could see the interface in/outs but all loaded plug-in ceased to make any sound even from within Cantabile. I assumed that this might be due to the fact that there was no other connected Dante enabled devices on the network yet. I did wonder about the clock issue as there didn’t seem to be any way to enable a master.

You also suggest that the Dante via software can be used to convert the ADAT to Dante. Why would I need to do that? Can’t I just install the Dante software and ditch the light bridge interfaces altogether?

So what do I install on the Daw and what do I need to install on the sound generators? Do I install Dante via and the Dante controller on the Daw and Dante controller and the VSC on the two sound generators?

As for aggregation are you saying that it can combine the signals of multiple lightpipe devices on a single machine?

Edit: Via is limited to 16 channels… so I guess I would need to put this on a separate machine just for clocking as I need to move more channels than that…

Join Date: Dec 2012

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As a matter of fact, there is still very little detail about Dante on the entire internet after all these years. When I stumbled over it in 2013, I first thought it was only yet another physical audio connection format like ADAT, FireWire, etc. It took me some time to realize that audio-over-IP is in fact revolutionary compared to any conventional audio connection. First rule, do not overcomplicate things! Dante is dead easy to setup and configure. Sadly, I’ve found plenty of posts and youtube videos that are full of half-knowledge and myths and suggest that Dante was complicated to setup, unstable and immature. The opposite is the case. I’d say it’s very close to real plug-and-play.

In the simplest case, you don’t even have a real network but only connect two devices. This could be either two true Dante hardware devices, a Dante hardware device and a computer running Dante Via OR DVS or two computers. In the latter case, one computer would need to run Via (to provide proper network clocking) and the other one could run DVS.

Dante Controller is no requirement for a Dante network to run! It’s only a configuration and visualization tool. You may launch it on one computer on the network only to establish new routing subscriptions or edit existing ones. Apart from that, Dante Controller doesn’t need to be running at all in the background. However, having it running on multiple computers simultaneously wouldn’t hurt at all either. All DC insances would simply reflect and display the exact same network routing status and you could use any of them on any of the computers to make changes to the network routing which would in turn immediately show up on all other instances.

Now regarding your paticular questions: You currently have the two sound generator computers spitting out audio via ADAT. Easiest way to have Dante in this scenario would be to add something like the Ferrofish Verto64 to your setup. You would plug all ADAT lightpipes coming from your Lightbridges into the Verto and the Verto64 would output up to 64 uncompressed audio channels via its Dante port. You could then pick those channels up with the DAW computer running DVS. The Verto, being a dante hardware device, would provide proper Dante network clocking, deriving the clock from one of its ADAT inputs or, if configured to be the wordclock master for the entire setup, from its own internal clock, if desired.

Normally, Dante requires at least two peers to establish an connection so you cannot hear any audio if there’s only a single device playing Dante audio. However, Dante Via allows to play back audio from an audio application like Reaper or a media player and route this audio to any other audio device present on that computer (its built-in soundcard/line out or a connected USB or Firewire interface). Dante Via is capable of managing up to 32 in/out channels of connected audio devices, up to 16 channels per software application and up to 48 channels in total! In order to aggregate all the different hardware and software devices it may discover on a particular computer, it needs to resample all audio sources from them to its own master clock AND 48kHz/24 Bit format. This is the reason why Dante Via’s latency is considerably higher than that of hardware Dante devices where no resampling is needed.

In your case:

Option A:

— 2 sound generator computers: no change, nothing to install here — they continue to output their audio via the Lightbridges as before. However, you need to add something like the Verto32 or Verto64 ADAT-to-Dante bridge (depending on how many channels you wanna transmit to the DAW computer) which converts all ADAT signals to Dante.

— main DAW computer: install DVS and Dante Controller. DVS can handle the up to 64 Dante audio inputs coming from the Verto. A single cat 6 cable would be needed to connect the Verto and the built-in NIC port of the main DAW computer. Dante Controller would have to be launched once to establish the desired Dante routings/channel assignments of the Dante audio that travels from the Verto to the DAW computer. After that, you wouldn’t need to launch it again, unless you’d wanna change this routing.

— Option A requires the Verto32/64 + one DVS license, nothing more. No switch required here. If you need to transfer more than 64 channels, you’d need one Verto32 + one Verto64 , giving you up to 96 channels. In this case, you’d need a small network switch to combine the network outputs of the two Vertos and run a single ethernet cable to the computer. As Dante Virtual Soundcard has a 64×64 in/out limit, you couldn’t use it to receive more than those. Only solution would be to omit DVS and add a hardware Dante PCIe card into the computer (provided it has an appropriate 16-lanes PCIe slot available). Obviously, this would require a considerable investment but it wowuld give you 128 in/outs @ 44.1k/48k and 64 in/outs at 88.2k/96k (and half of this again @ 176.4K/192k).

Option A also requires you to send out Reaper’s main outout back to a Verto and then have the respective ADAT OUTPUT signal fed into some sort of monitoring system via ADAT lighpipe!

Option B:

ditching the Lightbridges.
This would require to install Dante Virtual Soundcard on both sound generators (2 DVS licenses required). The two sound generators would be able to spit out up to 64 audio channels each via Dante — no Lighbridges and no Verto’s required. You’d definitely need a manageable gigabit network switch to combine the two Dante streams into one cable connected to the main DAW computer.

For the main DAW pc you have two choices: If you don’t need more than a total of 48 in/out channels in your DAW you could license Dante Via on it and would be able to pick up to 48 channels coming from the two other computers. If you need more than 48 channels, you’d need the PCIe card. Using DVS wouldn’t provide proper network clocking.

Hope this clarifies some things

.

Join Date: Jul 2018

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Forget option A. That seems like just more latency going thru lightpipe just to get to DVS, not too mention the cost of the hardware involved. As for the 48 in, VIA seems to be limited to 16 channels?

I’m thinking 3 copies of DVS on the three machines and a fourth running VIA for clock. I may also want a second backup of via running somewhere else (5th machine) just for redundant clock.

However, at the moment I am having all kinds of issues trying to get the software installed. This has nothing to with Dante but rather Windows update issues, a common source of major frustration. Their software requires more recent versions of .Net which in turn would not install without some other Win updates. These computers are by design not internet connected making the whole process a major pain in the ass.

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best solution largely depends on the total channel count which is not yet clear to me. How many channels do you wanna transmit from each of the two sound generator computers to the daw computer?

How do you monitor currently?

Verto only adds a few samples of latency by format converting ADAT to Dante — nothing to worry about.

.

Join Date: Jul 2018

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Optimally, I get 32 channels of audio from each of the two sound generators although they rarely all have content at the same time, if ever. The DAW needs to be able to receive 64 channels tho again I would never need to record them all simultaneously. Most of the time these channels are controlled via MIDI during the creative process. Once the creative process for the part is completed then I can print the track to audio for final mix. Again I can do this in small chunks so I don’t need to render 64 tracks at once.

Generally speaking only a handful of these tracks will ever be active at the same time but I need them separate for proper routing and mixing configuration.

As for monitoring, you present an interesting question that I had not yet thought of. Since I’m using the spdif out of the firewire device to feed the monitoring system I will have to rethink this because this device will no longer be available when DVS is running. I can’t believe I hadn’t thought of this. This snafu may ruin everything for me because I can’t see myself buying an expensive piece of Dante hardware just to get a spdif out.

So can VIA send received audio to the spdif out of an attached firewire device like lightbridge or other non-dante enabled hardware?

So possibly need 4 machines, 3 dvs and a VIA for clock and spdif out thru a foreign device. How much latency is that going to add to my monitoring setup tho? Argh!

And sheet, I forgot about the spdif in used for tracking guitar/vocals… also on the lightbridge. This may not be practical without dante hardware. Bummer.

So is there a dante hardware device with just spdif in/out?

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This might be an option: Dante AVIO AES3/EBU Adapter

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yes, Via is capable of aggregating any channel of an attached USB or Firewire hardware audio device and make it available in the Dante network (and vica-versa). As stated before, Via can handle a total of 48 channels!

I don’t think you need 4. As you stated, not all machines need to handle many channels simultaneously so Via (16 i/o per application) would be sufficient on one of the 3 machines (one of the sound gengerators). In return, the other sound generator pc could use DVS providing 64 outs. As you get a 30 days trial period, you could easily test the whole setup extensively without a risk.

as Gerrit stated, you can purchase compact analog i/o <-> Dante, USB <-> Dante and other adaptors for appr. 160 EUR. Those would not be required, though, if you have Via running on one computer as Via could route audio-over-IP signals back to analog or to any of the ins/outs of the Lightbridge. Note that all Dante AVIO adapters besides the USB one require a power-over-ethernet injector (or a switch providing PoE) to operate.

Using Dante, you’d get fixed latencies between the (let’s say) 3 computers. You’d be able to compensate any inherent latency between the two sound generator computers and the main daw computer once and for all once you have finished setting up the desired routing. So, if you start playback on the daw machine, you’d hear all audio combined perfectly in sync, regardless the computer it originates from. Only latency that could be perceived is when you record-/input-arm a MIDI track on the daw computer and would like to remotely play a VSTi on one of the sound generator pc’s using live monitoring. However, if this latency is actually perceivable, depends on the specs and buffer settings of the computers involved and also those of every DVS instance involved.

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Didn’t see anything with a spdif in/out there

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But only 16 per application. Reaper could not see all the DVS connections from the other machines. I need 32 out on each of the other machines. And then 64 in on the DAW.

Also, for this to work I would need VIA on the DAW machine so it could utilize the spdif in/out of the Lightbridge. Or some sort of DANTE spdif interface on the DAW that could run simultaneously with either DVS or VIA.

No, I can’t be switching configuations all the time. All channels need to be available all the time. What I meant earlier is that it is unlikely that all tracks would be playing at the same time (CPU and bandwidth considerations). But I need to be able to monitor 64 inputs.

And then there is Dante’s trial limits. Apparently I’ve used up my trials on the wrong machines trying to get this to work.

I couldn’t find anything for spdif. And the spdif in MUST be on the DAW. See below:

Unfortunately, latency on spdif in is critical as it is used for tracking/recording. Any additional latency is problematic. This becomes an issue especially if the signal path must travel through another machine across the network before entering the DAW. While DANTE itself may be efficient, running through another computer first would likely be prohibitive.

It’s possible that I could live with 48 in on the Daw with some reconfiguration so long as VIA could see the spdif in/out on an attached lightbridge. I’m assuming this would lower my track count by 4 leaving me with 42 available channels for external input. However, the DANTE website makes it sound like via will only support 16 channels per application.

I will experiment with this some more as admittedly I’m not very familiar with the software yet. However, I may be dreaming that there is an inexpensive software only solution to my desired configuration.

Thank you for your input, it is appreciated.

Join Date: Jul 2018

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From Dante VIA manual: «Dante Via supports 16 x 16 channels for ASIO and Core Audio software applications and 2 x 2 channels for WDM software applications.»

So sounds like VIA will not allow Reaper to see more than 16 in. DVS worked but no clock or way to get spdif in/out from the lightbridge. I don’t mind having an additional computer just for clock but the issue would then become how do I get the spdif in to the DAW without routing through another computer. And how do I get spdif out of the DAW to the playback without the same limitation. Adding two more pass-throughs to computers to get from tracking to playback would add too much additional delay… guitar/vocals -> VIA machine -> DAW -> Via machine -> playback. Or would it? If that machine were only running VIA which was managing only the spdif in/out of the internal PCIe card…

Latency is less of an issue of course for mix down because timing can be compensated at reaper. This is not true for tracking however. Trying to record precision guitar parts for example anything more than a few milliseconds latency is problematic. This is also true when a drummer is playing a MIDI drum set. Latency must be at a minimum. In an environment with a single input straight to the Daw I can generally get away with no more than 256 in my buffer. I don’t think that adding additional computers in the chain would cut it.

Join Date: Dec 2012

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There’s currently no official Audinate Dante AVIO variant that converts between SPDIF and Dante, only AES3. It might work, though. AES3 and SPDIF are fairly similar. I’ve connected the AES/EBU the output of my digital console to an SPDIF input of another device and it works, even via a balanced phones jack patchbay. There’s a swiss manufacturer (and some others) who sell small SPDIF <-> Dante converters (https://www.hifi12a.de/epages/617854…280002001-0001).

The best way to expand your current setup would require a 128-i/o Dante PCIe card in the DAW computer and 2 instances of DVS on the two sound generators. Only a single device to buy. Would that be financially impossible? You might be able to sell some current gear that you would not need any more to reduce the cost. I’m using a Yamaha AIC128-D Dante PCIe card. It’s Dante latency goes down to 0.15 ms and using it in Reaper yields around 3-6 ms. I’m able to play and monitor VSTi’s incl. long fx chains on top of the instrument without noticable latency.

EDIT: Purchasing the Dante PCIe card would also require a manageable gigabit network switch to aggregate the two cat 6 cables coming from the two sound generator pc’s into a single cable running into the PCIe card. If you intend to run Dante Conrtoller (free Dante network routing utility) on the daw computer, this would require another cat 6 cable from the computer’s regular NIC port to the switch. Obviously, you could run Dante Controller on any other computer also with no additional cable needed.

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Join Date: Jul 2018

Posts: 807

The Swiss thing is interesting but since I can’t read Swiss As for selling gear I intend to do just that but not until after I have a working set up. So down the road this might be an option but for now I’m afraid not…

Here’s what I’m thinking though. I might be able to live with the following configuration (until I sell gear) with one or two caveats:

CPU1 DAW -> DVS 64×64
CPU2 Kontakt -> DVS 32×32
CPU3 6 Synths + spdif in/out -> VIA

This would give me 46 inputs from sound generators. The question is what additional latency would be introduced having to pass tracking through CPU3 into CPU1(Daw) and back again for playback/monitor.

Now if I buy that Swiss device (or something like it) can I plug it into the DAW running DVS and allocate channels to it while still seeing the other inputs? In other words can I use the Dante controller to allocate and subscribe those channels from the local Dante spdif in addition to the other channels routed to DVS from the other machines? If so that would solve my potential tracking issues.

Edit: Actually since Via is 16 x 16 I could have 7 stereo synth feeds plus spdif. This would work. The question is would latency be acceptable for tracking. Guitar/mic -> Lucid A/D spdif out -> CPU3 spdif in -> VIA -> DAW -> CPU3 VIA-> spdif out -> monitor system.

Edit 2: The Swiss board looks semi-affordable ($185 US). Unfortunately I can’t find any US distributors.

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As far I know S/PDIF is just unbalanced AES (with a slightly different impedance) and its a matter of the right cable, example: pro snake AES/EBU SPDIF Cable 3

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There also is the optical variant that uses the same protocol, but needs ań active converter.

-Michael

Join Date: Dec 2012

Location: Germany

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Both Via and DVS are not targeted to accomplish real-time audio applications where very low latency is required. They were conceived to allow easy and flexible audio routing on a LAN, providing fairly high channel counts for uncompressed audio over a single ethernet connection using existing infrastructure — something virtually not possible with conventional means.

DVS is mostly used either to record up to 64 tracks of live performances or to play back audio in scenarios where this playback is not time critical so latency is a non-issue. If very low latency (like for real-time live monitoring in an audio production environment) is essential you will probably not get away without acquiring at least one hardware Dante device. Audinate provides products for both scenarios (high/low latency).

If the most important aspect is to be able to have real-time monitoring, you might find a solution where you can monitor the input signal instead of the daw’s output signal. You may not be hearing the processed signal in this case but maybe it is not essential.

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In this case, it might be interesting to look at ethernet AVB.

Audinate has probaly limited the number of channels via a software driver for practical reasons. In most cases, with most ethernet hardware, 16 X 16 is sufficient and it keeps them out of trouble with less performing ethernet chips.

AVB uses a different approach. Due to it needing specific QOS (Quality of service) settings, it doesn’t work with all hardware, but it allows configurability. And the maximum channel count over 1 gigabit connection is much higher.

In this document from Biamp, you can find the max. channel count for a certain load on a gigabit connection:

http://c353616.r16.cf1.rackcdn.com/B…ence_Guide.pdf

If you want to keep it safe, you want around 50% load and you can do 64 X 2 channels.

Why 50% load?

You’re running off a computer. The OS also needs time to breathe and serve the other apps on the OS.

With dedicated AVB hardware, like an audio interface, or a router, you can go up to around 85%. Hence one audio interface can serve 2 computers.

It’s a different world to Dante. Broadcast usually hasn’t got lots of channels per application, but lots of channels in total. They need routability mostly. But they also might need streams with lots of channels. Hence they offer the configurability too.

Dante aimed for the studio market. More channels in one stream, but less streams and not much routability.

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Yes, I’ve come to the conclusion that for my situation hardware solution is going to be necessary. Time to save my pennies.

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This is a bit confusing. Aren’t we talking about a solution for studio use? Could you please explain what you mean by saying «but not much routability» with regard to Dante? Mind-blowing routing flexibility is one of the major highlights of Dante
It is used regularly at the Eurovision Song Contest, the Super Bowl halftime show and other major events.

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Join Date: Jun 2011

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Of course we are talking about a studio solution. I just tried to describe a fundamental difference between Dante’s networking and AVB.

What you might find mind-blowing isn’t what the broadcast sector would call mind-blowing. Broadcast wants audio over mixed networks, fi. Not over dedicated networks. It’s not that they don’t want to build dedicated networks, it’s just that they know that in some cases, they’ll have to use existing networks. Like sending 2 channels from a news location over the internet, fi. And AVB allows that.

In a studio that might not matter. But we don’t know. If the studio is in a rented building that’s already equipped with a network, it would be an advantage not having to replace or double all cabling, just upgrading routers.

And in this particular case, AVB could carry the number of channels the OP needs. If he uses a desktop PC, he might just need to buy another network card that would be like 40 bucks. Maybe not even that, if he’s lucky. And if he’s on a Mac he doesn’t even need to buy another network card, as all Macs that still have a GB port are AVB compatible, except for pre 2010 models. I’ll admit readily that I don’t know about USB-C to GB adapters on the newest Macs, tho. These could pose a problem. I could find out, but I believe the OP is using Windows.

And, BTW, are you sure you don’t happen to have ties with Audinate in one form or another. You seem overly enthusiast to propose Dante and a bit annoyed every time AVB gets mentioned.

And, yes, I get sometimes annoyed by people promoting Dante without even considering something else. That’s because I can get to all docs for AVB, but I would need to pay like 9.000 � to get to in-depth documentation for Dante. And that’s just for one developer seat. I hope they change that policy soon, since it is kind of idiotic if your main competitor is open to anyone.

Due to the expense of developing for Dante, some of the coming bridges will not include Dante, fi. And I expect those that include Dante to be more expensive.

These are just two different methods of achieving the same goal. AVB chose to use the right hardware for GB ports with a generic driver on computers, Audinate chose a proprietary software driver and a limited number of channels. The first offers independence from suppliers, but leaves very old computers behind. The second limits you to one supplier and might work on those older computers.

What I also don’t see happening, is that Dante pretends to work with 100 Mbps ports. In their FAQ, they state that 100 Mbps connections need QOS enabled routers and switches. Good luck at finding those.

And, yes again, I get pretty annoyed if all the info I can seem to get to without paying a bundle, seems to be confusing and written by the marketing department. I stil have questions about Dante, like «Which QOS are we talking about?» I’ve sent these questions to Dante, to get a standard reply with «registering as a developer is required to get to the docs, please apply hare».

What I learned from people who paid their dues, is that too many questions still remain and interoperability between hardware from different vendors isn’t optimal. I have no idea what they mean by not being optimal. That’s why I largely prefer open systems. And I get the impression that the entire broadcast sector will go AVB. Of course, heavily sponsored events like the two you name, are the exception. They got their gear for free and maybe they were even paid to use it?

I have seen both systems in operation and neither of their users had problems. And I’ve been using TCP/IP networks to transport audio for over 20 years, so I’ve got a bit of a feeling for what sticks and what doesn’t stick. I just would like Audinate to tell the entire story.

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Thanks for this very enlightening and in-depth comment.

-Michael

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Posts: 2,782

Thanks for laying out your thoughts.

You might know that Dante works very well with existing networking infratructure most of the time, often without the need to replace anything at all? It’s one of its features that are strongly advertized. Depending on the scenario, Dante can use older cat 5 cables and it also works over non-manageable 100Mbit switches if you don’t need to transfer a lot of channels. AVB requires special AVB-compiant networking hardware and does not work with existing standard off-the-shelf switches.

Dante Virtual Soundcard turns every NIC port into a 64×64-channel audio interface at a cost of 30$. No need to purchase supplementary NIC cards or special network switches.

I’m pretty sure I’m not at all affiliated with Audinate though they already thanked me for some of my posts in various forums
I’m also not overly enthusiastic — I’m extremely enthusiastic because I’m enjoying using it all the time since 2015. It’s such a pleasure to use it. It solved all problems I had for 20 years with signal distribution.

Who told you that I’m not considering AVB or any other networking protocol? When I took the decision to ban traditional point-to-point audio connections from my studio back in 2014, I had a look at every protocol available at that time. Dante offered the most variety of products available, offered auto-dicovery of all networked devices, provided auto-clocking capability, worked on low-cost networking infrastructure, had a large enough channel count (>300 in my case) and low-enough latency to play and monitor VSTi live incl. FX on top while being easy to setup and configure. None of the other networking protocols offered this set of features and some still don’t offer it today.

I think it’s fair that Audinate gets its share to pay off their expenses for development. It’s a free market and everyone can decide wether he is willing to pay the price/license or not. Noone blames SSL for keeping the algos of their digital plugins secret. If you wanna have their sound, pay for it. Dante does not suffer at all from the fact that you need to license Audinate. Interoperability is guaranteed among devices of any manufacturer so the client does not have to rely on only one. Prices are still reasonable with regard to the usefulness and quality of the devices. This doesn’t mean that I don’t apprechiate free and open standards! However, Dante offers AES67 compatability so you can bridge (almost) any Dante device or entire Dante network to other AES67-compatible stuff. No dead end there using Dante.

Please read through this page to see that the restrictions you are talking about are not correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compar…work_protocols

As pointed out before, Dante was designed to be able to use existing IT infrastructure and it will often work very well with it. Not always but you can always try and find out. If it doesn’t you can’t blame it on Dante. It means that the IT infrastructure is simply way too old. You wouldn’t probably be able to use it for AVB, either. Dante does work on certain 100 Mbit connections depending on the channel count and if the infrastructure is considered good enough to handle glitch-free operation by the Dante system istself. On a fairly old WinXP machine fitted with a 128-i/o Dante PCIe card I got Reaper communicating flawlessly with a laptop running Dante Virtual Soundcard over the inbuilt 100 Mbit NIC.

I have to confirm that it’s very hard to find background info about Dante internals and that Audinate is very conservative in providing information. I don’t like that, too. I don’t really care at the moment because my studio environment is running smoother than ever (in fact absolutely glitch-free) since I made the transision to Dante. I’m happy with the current routing capabilities and stability that allow me to route appr. 400 channels throughout my studio while the network also handles data transfer and high-speed internet. Audinate technicians have assured me that I wouldn’t even need to configure QoS in my setup which I still did configure to be more relaxed. Configuration is done by making 10 clicks and hit save in the switches browser page. You don’t have to be an IT nerd to accomplish this.

All I can report here are my personal findings and experiences with Dante, using it for 3 years now — in the studio and on location: For me, it’s as close to plug-and-play as you can get. I followed a small help file, available on the Yamaha and Audinate website, explaining QoS configuration and how to disable Green Ethernet on a Cisco switch. I now have 4 of these (8-port) switches running without glitches. I’m constantly combining Focusrite RedNet, Yamaha, Audinate and Ferrofish Dante gear plus my internet router and config as well as operation is a no-brainer. Maybe other people are unnecessarily overcomplicating things like in this video:

(WARNING! I consider this video very distracting and disadvantageous for poeple searching for Dante-related information! Instead of simply showing the plug-and-play capabilities those folks constantly point out numerous pitfalls that may occur when using Dante but in a way where the spectator must come to the conclusion that he’s better off not to consider Dante at all! Obviously, issues can occur in Dante networks but those are generally very easily tracked down and solved.)

Overcomplicating Dante:

Wether you folks are willing to take my contributions as a help, providing real-life hands-on-experience with Dante or as Audinate marketing is up to you. I’m happy to share my findings here, I do hope that it’s clear that what I’m saying is based on provable facts and not some sort of fairy tale or hype. I’m using this protocol because it CURRENTLY provides everything I need within very reasonable cost and effort limits — nothing more, nothing less.

peace!

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Join Date: Jun 2011

Location: Belgium

Posts: 5,240

Hey man, you too. I hope this didn’t feel like an attack!

I know it works. So do the other protocols. But most of these are a thing of the past. And except that it doesn’t do what the OP wants. I just looked up the limits of AVB as a comparison. And it seems AVB can do what the OP wants.

Except that in this case, it doesn’t apparently?

[/QUOTE]I’m pretty sure I’m not at all affiliated with Audinate though they already thanked me for some of my posts in various forums
I’m also not overly enthusiastic — I’m extremely enthusiastic because I’m enjoying using it all the time since 2015. It’s such a pleasure to use it. It solved all problems I had for 20 years with signal distribution.[/QUOTE]

I can grok that. I just get annoyed by the endless marketing speak everywhere. Like a consultant’s blog that states that Audinate signed over 2.000 licensees and that there are over 2.000 products on the market. If you’re into numbers, you will have noticed that the companies who do have products on the market, have several. The unavoidable result is that there must be a lot of licensees without products.

I don’t doubt that there are more Dante enabled products than AVB enabled products, but it’s very hard to enumerate. The AVB consortium doesn’t do publicity. There’s no list that’s even moderately complete. And some products on both sides do not really exist and might never see daylight.

The auto discovery in Dante is nice. Basically, it’s Bonjour. Apple’s network base. It’s meant to be only on the local network (non-routable in network speak), even when Apple is using it on the internet these days. And that’s the source of all kinds of problems. And it is «chatty». Not a problem on a small network, big problem on a large network. That’s why Dante doesn’t scale very well on a large, mixed network.

Of course it’s fair since it is Dante’s decision to make. OTOH, Merging Tech’s Ravenna driver was free. It’s no longer available for download.

I just don’t like it because you can’t plan a system without documentation. And from what I’ve been doing, asking around, I don’t get the impression that the licensees know either.

It also shouldn’t be a problem since it isn’t based on secrets at all. It’s just Bonjour with an optimized UDP stack. Documenting shouldn’t reveal anything, but it should provide the means to judge if a particular network or a piece of gear is suitable.

There’s no guarantee at all if you need to integrate into an existing network. All is fine if you’re building a brand new network. But that’s not what is of interest to us. With AVB, most of the parameters are well specified. Updates to the firmware of certain routers are available. Not many, but there are some. And it’s relatively easy to judge if existing equipment can be used.

[/QUOTE]Prices are still reasonable with regard to the usefulness and quality of the devices. This doesn’t mean that I don’t apprechiate free and open standards! However, Dante offers AES67 compatability so you can bridge (almost) any Dante device or entire Dante network to other AES67-compatible stuff. No dead end there using Dante.[/QUOTE]

IIUC, AES67 interoperability is experimental atm; on both sides.

I’ve read that page. That’s where some of my info comes from. Isn’t it a bit sad Audinate doesn’t offer such a comparison?
The info on that page is partially outdated. It states «7 hops» for AVB network reach. That’s only correct if you don’t take routers into the equation. In practice, it’s meaningless.

And that’s exactly what I don’t like. To try it out, would involve buying a lot of gear and committing to the Dante ecosystem. If you find out it doesn’t work, you’re stuck. That’s why I need «open» docs.

And that’s not gonna do any good, is it? Dante will point to the licensee who sold the gear. And the licensee won’t know what to say.

It’s not OLD networks I fear. It’s NEW networks. Those that already carry control signals, like DMX, or one of the proprietary protocols that drive some PA systems. Being proprietary, they aren’t very well known and there’s no way to judge them in combination with Dante.

[QUOTE]Dante does work on certain 100 Mbit connections depending on the channel count and if the infrastructure is considered good enough to handle glitch-free operation by the Dante system istself. On a fairly old WinXP machine fitted with a 128-i/o Dante PCIe card I got Reaper communicating flawlessly with a laptop running Dante Virtual Soundcard over the inbuilt 100 Mbit NIC.

I’m pretty certain Dante won’t work reliably on a mixed 100 Mbps network. Dante knows that. When they do mention it, they leave out the ‘dedicated’ word every time. And even you are guilty of clouding the numbers. You didn’t test 128 channels running, as we know that’s simply impossible with 100 Mbps. But you do mention a 128 channel PCI card. The other side is 16 channels max. And that’s what can run reliably over dedicated 100 Mbps, even without any special audio protocol.

Conservative is one word for it. Misleading is another.

I know, Bonjour is easy. As long as you’re talking local network. Once beyond the local network, it’s not so easy, to put it mildly.

Join Date: Jun 2011

Location: Belgium

Posts: 5,240

Well, it’s Youtube. We don’t know how lucky we are to have good video’s about Reaper. This one is… mildly annoying. I get the feeling these guys don’t know much about networks. But they’re trying to explain networks to people who know even less. And most of it is correct. Even when there are obvious errors in the Dante slides they are using.

But…

It is very far from a complicated setup. It’s just a very simple local network. Like most here would build in their studio’s.

What I mean with a complicated setup:

We have 5 theaters, fortunately in one building. Each of these has already two existing wired networks: one for light, one for sound. And Wifi for the rest of the controls and another Wifi network for visitors. Performers might add another wifi network in some cases.

When we decide to go full digital, the network will include video. And it would also include connection to other rooms and other theaters. We might not need 64 channels going from one theater to another theater, but we probably will need that if we set up a remote recording booth in a room.

It will be mostly sound in one theater. But you don’t invest in a digital network audio system and leave out the possibility of sending a lot of channels, combined with video and control signals.

We also need to specify all gear we need to buy beforehand and getting the budget will take months. Specifying something that is no longer available when the budget is approved, is a big pita.

So we need to plan. And since Audinate doesn’t provide the necessary data, we need to talk to the licensees. But they just know their small corner of Dante. Will it work with…? is usually answered with «probably».

Now consider a laptop that needs to connect to the audio network, but also to the internet. The laptop has only one ethernet port.

See the problems?

Like: how many channels of audio (and video) can we run over 1 Gbps wire?

That problem is a lot less important with AVB, even when there’s less gear to choose from.

I welcome your contribution. Thanks for it!

I was also a little surprised AVB could run the channel count the OP wants. But it’s a nice demonstration of two different philosophies. One with selected hardware and higher minimal throughput (AVB) and one that expands to every network port and even 100 Mbps. I just would like Audinate to be clearer about their philosophy. And the limits.

Oh, BTW, USB-C to Gbps adapters aren’t a problem, at least if you get the right one. I forgot we have a test machine, even if we haven’t used it in production.

Join Date: Dec 2012

Location: Germany

Posts: 2,782

Audio networking is in no way different from anything else this world came up with in the past: It’s not simply black & white. I find a constructive and educated discussion very instructional for everyone involved. I really apprechiate the info you’re providing about AVB because having my Dante audio network up and running without issues there’s no urgency for me to constantly look at what AVB might have to offer.

Back to what the OP asked for: He is interested in finding an audio networking solution for his environment with 3 Win computers. He asked if Dante was a solution. I tried to figure out a way to implement Dante and obviously there do exist Dante-enabled solutions for him, ranging from fairly low-priced and maybe a bit «improvised» (grabbing Dante Virtual Soundcard/Via) to fairly high-priced professional solutions (purchasing Dante hardware). I could be wrong but it seems to be mostly a financial matter. We discussed several Dante options already. Now, it would be nice of you, cyrano, to povide us a concrete AVB solution for his particular scenario. We/he could then consider all reasonable options. I’m very interested (really!) in what you will come up with!

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Join Date: Jul 2018

Posts: 807

This didn’t seem to make any sense to me either as what little I could see Dante was very long and the route ability department, no complaints there. My issue ended up being with latency which is totally understandable with a software only solution added on top of third-party hardware. I look forward to the day when I can afford to update all of my equipment to a Dante ready network.

Join Date: Jul 2018

Posts: 807

BTW, many thanks to all those who contributed to this thread. I had no idea it would garner so much back and forth. I found much of the information in this thread to be helpful.

For me, trying to wade thru information about AVB left me frustrated and confused. I can’t make a comparison between the two with any authority at this point. I can say that for me, Dante look to be quite promising and I will likely move in that direction when my finances allow it.

My statements about latency were not intended as a slam on Dante in any way. The stated values of latency for the Dante software are actually on the low side and pretty impressive considering. For any type of application where input latency is not an issue, which is admittedly probably a very large percentage of the market, Dante software looks very economical and flexible. I did have some issues trying to install on older machines but that’s not really a fault of Dante either.

In any case, in recording situations where you’re trying to monitor live audio while recording a performance, latency has always been an ongoing issue regardless of the software applications being used. As someone who is financially limited I was hoping for an inexpensive migration to a Dante enabled transfer of audio around my studio network. But I live in the real world, and in the real world hardware is always going to be a great deal faster than a strictly software alternative. There’s just no way around that.

If it weren’t for the monitoring situation I could make DVS work for me right now. I’m still looking at what all of the options might be but it seems to me that at some point I’m going to have to have a piece of Dante enabled hardware on the Daw in order to get tracking/monitoring within acceptable latency limits.

Join Date: Dec 2012

Location: Germany

Posts: 2,782

I’ve worked with a Yamaha Nuage AD/DA converter linked to DVS as the audio device in Reaper for more than a year. Latency wasn’t an issue because I could split all incoming signals from the live rooms to my Dante-enabled digital mixing console for zero-latency monitoring (instead of monitoring through Reaper). It worked very well that way. Only drawback was the inability to play and monitor VST instruments in real-time through the daw without a perceivable amount of latency (50 ms in my case). At one point I bit the bullet and purchased the AIC128-D Dante PCIe card only to overcome this one drawback. Now I can play and monitor VSTi live through the daw with no perceivable latency.

I’m running my own professional recording studio so it was no problem justifying the necessary purchases. However, I’ve spent countless days planning the transition to Dante and, given the lack of clear background information, it has been quite a hard time to get the plan ready. I can say now that I have nothing to complain about and I’m extremely happy to have made the transition. I’m enjoying the most flexible, expandable, stable and cable-reduced studio I ever had.

This is the setup I’m working with since 2016:

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