Audio over IP.

octatonic

I haven't been that active on the forum in the last few days as I have been messing about with some new studio toys.
I'm now running a studio that is basically an Audio over IP based network using the Dante protocol.
It is utterly amazing what can be done with this technology.

Here is a basic breakdown of what I am doing.

iMac 27" 5K is connected over Thunderbolt to a Focusrite Red 8 Pre.
The iMac is plugged into a £25 unmanaged ethernet switch using cat 5.
The Red is Pre is also plugged into the switch.
So is a 2010 Mac Pro.
So is a 2015 MacBook Pro.

The Mac Pro and MacBook Pro are running a Dante Virtual Soundcard which basically routes all the audio from those devices into the Red 8Pre.
I have set up a bunch of auxes in Logic on the iMac and can route more channels than I can conceivably need into the main Mac.

It is really, really great- and ultra low latency- 2ms roundtrip.
In theory I could have 512 channels of IO over ethernet with this amount of latency.
So I can mic a drum kit in the live room, plug into a couple of rack mount mic pre's in that room and run a single ethernet cable back to the DAW and control it all from the control room.

spark240

Yep...I think Presonus are doing this with their latest mixers to live stage, all over ethernet cable...no more multicores!

octatonic

spark240 said:

Yep...I think Presonus are doing this with their latest mixers to live stage, all over ethernet cable...no mote multicores!

Yup, it is absolutely incredible.
I've been rewiring my rack this week to integrate the Red 8.
The non-Dante gear is a bit of a rat's nest.
Loads of DB25 -DB25 cables and DB25 to XLR looms, at least 100m of cabling for 30u of racking.

If I got rid of it all and went with just Dante devices I could use 4x2u racks for 32 channels of mic preamps and just connect it all with 5 ethernet cables.
I'm seriously tempted to do this.

Danny1969

We've been using Dante in live mixers for the last 8 years or so in slot on card format. Ideal for live recording as it's a massive track count through one cable. 
All modern mixers are a mix rack on stage with internal processing and one cat 5 cable to the surface FOH mixer, which is basically just controlling the mix like a Hui controller, the processing is in the mix rack. The surface mixer then has slots you can populate with a DANTE card to send on all the audio channels to a mobile recording rig or broadcast truck

Sporky

I use loads of Dante at work -  initially to integrate mixing desks (for attended use) with DSPs (for non-attended use) in large lecture theatres and the like, and now just to shuttle things around. There are mics, processors, amps... all sorts with Dante on board now. And Dante Domain Manager on the way so you can properly administer huge installations.

PolarityMan

oof thats an expensive interface tho!

Sounds totally awesome tho

guitarfishbay

That's a pretty amazing setup.

octatonic

I just ran a Logic Pro Benchmark CPU test from Gearslutz:

On my previous system I was getting about 7- tracks before overload.
Now I am getting 149 before overload.
Amazeballs.

PolarityMan

sweet, ive always wanted to spot mic every tension rod on the kit.

mellowsun

Sounds amazing! There's a big article in this month's SoundonSound about audio over Ethernet btw 

sweepy

Like any cutting edge technology, it will get more affordable, it's a brilliant concept and I'm watching it closely 

Sporky

sweepy said:

Like any cutting edge technology, it will get more affordable, it's a brilliant concept and I'm watching it closely 

Dante's already affordable - especially compared to the predecessors such as Cobranet. It's not likely to drop much further as it's a product rather than a standard - Audinate make the chips and sell them to everyone who does Dante.

octatonic

Sporky said:

sweepy said:

Like any cutting edge technology, it will get more affordable, it's a brilliant concept and I'm watching it closely 

Dante's already affordable - especially compared to the predecessors such as Cobranet. It's not likely to drop much further as it's a product rather than a standard - Audinate make the chips and sell them to everyone who does Dante.

I think what we will see is some cheaper products with lower channel counts that can be easily expanded upon.

The bigger Dante systems are based on the Brooklyn II chip and give either 32IO or 64IO over ethernet.

Audinate also make a chip called Ultimo that is 2IO or 4IO.
All the Focusrite Dante products are curently 8 or 16 channels or more.

A project studio aimed 4 mic pre module in a 1u or 1/2 rack under a grand will sell very well, basically a Red Net version of the ISA 428.
Or a 2 channel pre like the ISA Two at around £500-600 or so.
I'd be all over that like a rash.

Sporky

Here you go then - I can do you these for £825 a pop. 4 in, 4 out.

http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=axi44at&s=5

Or just under £800 for the Shure if you prefer XLRs - just four inputs though. Depends how much of a mic pre you want in it.

https://www.shure.co.uk/products/accessories/microphone-accessories/ani4in

octatonic

Sporky said:

Here you go then - I can do you these for £825 a pop. 4 in, 4 out.

http://www.extron.com/product/product.aspx?id=axi44at&s=5

Or just under £800 for the Shure if you prefer XLRs - just four inputs though. Depends how much of a mic pre you want in it.

https://www.shure.co.uk/products/accessories/microphone-accessories/ani4in

Very cool but perhaps not quite right for what I have in mind.
There is a definite split between a lot of broadcast and live application gear and then for the studio market.
I've heard some of the live oriented pre's and they are fine for live but probably not suitable to important mix channels (kick, snare, overheads, vocals).

Sporky

Just run it through whatever mangler VST you want. Best to capture as pure an input as possible, no?

octatonic

Sporky said:

Just run it through whatever mangler VST you want. Best to capture as pure an input as possible, no?

That isn't how many people approach it, including myself.

There are a few different types of preamps.
Clean preamps are made by Grace, Fearn and Millenia, amongst others.
They work well on sources that you wish to preserve- I quite like this on certain types of vocal, some basses and acoustic guitar.
For rock guitars and drums especially I like a coloured preamp- anything from an API 512c to a Neve1073 or my beloved Groove Tubes ViPre.
There are a lot of variations on this theme.
For rock music a lot of people like working with coloured preamps and outboard gear.
Clean has it's place but for the last 50+ years people use outboard specifically to impart the sonic signature that certain gear is known to make.

Running a clean captured signal through a mangling/distortion type of plugin doesn't yield the same results as capturing it with a coloured preamp/outboard at source. 
It can be a very subtle thing and the gap has narrowed in the last few years- I still prefer working with outboard on sources if I can.

It is the same reason some producers like to hit 2" tape before it goes into Pro Tools.
When I was in Switzerland we had a lovely Studer 2" 24 track machine and I did some experiments hitting the tape before digitising and then other tests taking audio out of Pro Tools, hitting the tape and bringing it back into PT.
The former sounded quite a bit better than the latter- it wasn't just added conversion- we were using excellent converters.
I suspect it comes down to impedance.

Preamps can yield a similar difference.
I use my ViPre on snare mostly, which then hits a Distressor EL8X before going to Pro Tools or Logic.
When set up right you get a warm, fat snare that isn't reproducible any other way.
I could record it with a clean preamp and then mangle it with plugins- I will sound different though.

Stuckfast

The MOTU AVB stuff is quite a bit cheaper than the Focusrite Red / Rednet equivalents, and apparently AVB is natively supported in Mac OS 10.11 and up, so might be an affordable alternative for audio over IP.

Having used both of them I think the main barrier to entry at the moment isn't cost. It's (a) that there are lots of competing formats and no-one wants to back a loser, and (b) that none of it is plug-and-play, you always have to engage with some fairly scary configuration windows and routing matrices.

octatonic

Stuckfast said:

The MOTU AVB stuff is quite a bit cheaper than the Focusrite Red / Rednet equivalents, and apparently AVB is natively supported in Mac OS 10.11 and up, so might be an affordable alternative for audio over IP.

Having used both of them I think the main barrier to entry at the moment isn't cost. It's (a) that there are lots of competing formats and no-one wants to back a loser, and (b) that none of it is plug-and-play, you always have to engage with some fairly scary configuration windows and routing matrices.

The protocol wars have been won by Dante- by miles.

Have a look at this:

http://controlgeek.net/blog/2016/6/25/avb-and-audinates-dante-an-update-after-infocomm-2016

In late 2016 there were 14 AVB products and over 700 Dante products.
There are some technical reasons why Dante was always going to win, chiefly how the sync/election process works.
I did a lot of research into Dante before I invested in it- it is clearly the best protocol and will dominate the pro audio market until something better replaces it, it won't be anything else that currently exists.

I've spent the last couple of weeks using it and it has been flawless.
I'm also doing Dante certification- have level 1 now and working on level 2.

wave100

I have some questions for you @Octatonic. How are you connecting the ethernet to the Macbook pro?  And  is the 3 computer setup just so that you can use whichever one is most convenient or are you using them as VI hosts or as send/returns for effects etc? Or just because you can? Lastly, do you use one machine as a centralised data store or do you have a NAS  setup?

Thanks

octatonic

wave100 said:

I have some questions for you @Octatonic. 1. How are you connecting the ethernet to the Macbook pro? 2. And  is the 3 computer setup just so that you can use whichever one is most convenient or are you using them as VI hosts or as send/returns for effects etc? Or just because you can? 3. Lastly, do you use one machine as a centralised data store or do you have a NAS  setup?

Thanks

1. Thunderbolt to ethernet adapter.

2. It is just for testing at this stage. I don't have any other Dante products to test multichannel input on the Red8Pre and with virtual sound card I can aux in 32 channels.
I could potentially set up a VI aux type thing but I can't come close to exhausting the power of this box so it probably makes sense to keep everything within one computer until I require external computers to aux in from.

3. The iMac has a larger hard drive attached to it. The MBP just has its internal SSD. Both these computers share a network Time Machine drive that backs up over ethernet.
The 2010 Mac Pro multiple HDD in it and one of those is a backup drive just for the Mac Pro.
At some stage I might invest in a proper NAS solution but I've never lost a backup yet (touch wood) doing what I am doing.