Ghost in the Machine: Me Vs. a Dante Network

A few months ago, I think it was early March, I went to help a church get some problems with their Dante audio network sorted out.  (Yes, I need to write more often- don't worry,  Mom says the same thing.) They currently have a Yamaha M7CL with two Dante-MY16-AUD cards connected to a Cisco switch, which is connected to another switch in their production room. The two Dante cards handle 16 channels of audio each, so that they can get all 32 channels to their recording room. Their production machine is a Mac Pro running Apple's Logic software.

In full disclosure, let me make the following statements:

1. I should have payed more attention in NET 125 Networking Basics. But the material was super dry and let's face it.  That's not the sexy side of playing with all of this awesome audio gear. Am I right?
2. I know people that have fairly complex Dante networks that are working beautifully. For example there is a local college that is cramming audio through their regular infrastructure. Meaning there are multi-channel strings of audio swimming in the same stream with college students streaming Downton Abbey, The Walking Dead, Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Walker Texas Ranger. It works.
3. Dante works beautifully, and is almost completely "plug and play" on consoles that run Dante natively (that don't need an expansion card) like Yamaha's new CL series consoles and Rio stageboxes.
4. I typically dislike thing that take a lot of effort to set up. Let me get to what I came to do as quickly as possible. Which is usually mixing.

The Problem

In this particular case, the problem was that the same audio data would show up on channel 1 & 17, 2 & 18, 3 & 19 and so on inside Logic.

So I went through a few quick trouble shooting steps:

1. I looked at the direct output routing on the M7CL. Everything was patched one to one just as it should be.  Direct Out 1 was patched to Card Slot 2, Output 1-  Direct Out 2 was patched to Card Slot 2 Output 2. (the Dante Cards were in slots 2 & 3) That was all good.
2. I looked at the matrix in Dante Controller on the Mac. Again everything was patched beautifully.
3. I looked at the patching in Logic. 1 to 1, 2 to 2.

In theory, everything should work beautifully. It was time to dig deeper. We fired up Dante Controller on the Mac and took a look at the device info and network status.  This is where things got crazy.

Both of the Dante-MY16-AUD showed up in the device list, but only one had an IP address.  So we unplugged the cards one at a time from the network and each one showed up just fine. Then we plugged the second card in. The network assigned the second card the same IP address. That *might* explain the duplicated audio.

We took a quick look at Yamaha's and Audinate's (Dante's parent company) websites to see what the current firmware versions for the Dante Cards, and software.  We were a few versions behind. So we went through the process of updating Dante Virtual Soundcard the production machine, and my laptop, Dante Controller, and the cards in the M7.

We connected everything back up- aaaannnnd....(insert drum roll here) problem not solved. We were still getting duplicate data. If we manually assigned IP address one card wouldn't show up.  It was 3:30 in the afternoon. I had been at the church since 9:30. I had exhausted all of my options except one. Update the firmware on the M7CL. Unfortunately the church had a big production coming up and didn't want to do that and risk losing all of their scene data. I had to concede defeat and return home.

~Andy

Recording From Your Digital Console: Yamaha and Dante- Pt. 1 Configuring the Console

Link to Gabriel's photo stream

The Rig

Now it's time to figure out how to do all of this with a Yamaha digital console, and a Dante network.

The computer of choice will be a 2010 model 13" MacBook Pro running OS X 10.7.5 "Lion." All of the Audio will be pumped into Pro Tools 10.

Our console today will be a Yamaha LS9-32 with two Dante MY 16-AUD Dante Network Cards. These are 16 channel network audio cards. They'll allow us to send 32 audio channels to our computer via CAT5 cable.  We're also going to need a Gigabit Ethernet switch. This will allow us to connect the two Dante cards to the audio network, then use Dante Virtual Soundcard on our computer. We wouldn't have to do quite as much work if we were using one of the newer CL series consoles with a Rio stagebox.

There's a few things to note here-

1. I'm not going to go into every single detail- for eample installing the cards into the console is pretty easy. The guides on the Yamaha website cover that. I just want to touch a few things that might get missed along the way.
2. This process might work on the first try for you. Or it might not.  I've had clients that haven't had any issues with a Dante set up. Then I've seen Dante networks collapse after the gigabit switch is power cycled- meaning they work one day, and they don't the other.
3. You can probably tell by my last two notes that I'm not a huge fan of this setup.

Helpful Links

Here's a few helpful links for more information before you get started.  The first is from Yamaha and contains a few user and setup guides. You'll need to click on the tab titled "self-training." Read through these a few times. They're pretty helpful.

Yamaha / Dante MY 16-AUD Dante Network Cards

You're also going to want to make sure you have the latest software  and firmware updates:

Firmware, Software & Drivers

And you'll need a gigabit switch. As far as I know the Dante networks are a little particular about what hardware you use. There are some guides in the links below to choosing a switch.

Gigabit Switches For CL Series Consoles 

Selecting Network Switches

Getting Started

Installing the Dante cards is covered on page 12 of the current guide, available from the first link above. You'll need to do that, but in short they pretty much just plug into the back of the console.

So, once the cards are installed you'll need to decide what your clock source is. There is a lot of detail about that on pages 28-33 of the Dante-MY16-AUD User Guide.

Then you'll need to configure your direct outs. To do that you'll go to the patch editor on the console. Select the Direct Out patch tab. Then set Input Chanel 1 to Slot 1 Output 1. Set Input Channel 2 to Slot 1 Output 2, and so on.  When you get to Input 17, just set it to Slot 2 Output 1. In short Channels 1-16 Direct Outs get routed through Slot 1 Outs 1-16. 17 -32 get routed to Slot 2 Outs 1-16.

Last Step- this is really important.  SAVE YOUR SCENE. You may also want to consider "safe-ing" your patching. This prevents the output patching from being altered with scene recalls. For all the technical stuff you can stop reading here.

An Apology for the Delay

Now I need to apologize for taking so long to write this part of the series! I think it was October 2013 since my last post. I have to be honest- after I started I got rather bored with it. Having to work out all the computer details and things like that isn't that fun. I'd rather be mixing. Setting up a Dante network can be a bit involved, and sometimes the Dante cards on-board the consoles just don't want to act quite right.  That being said- Yamaha/Audinate have released several updates since I started writing this series that address quite a few problems. It's also noteworthy that the newer Yamaha hardware that are running Dante natively such as the new CL series consoles (CL1,3,5 etc) seem to work extremely well, as far as I know.

Recording From Your Digital Console: Choosing Recording Software

Picking Up the Lingo I'm going to start off and just throw a few terms that I might use in the series out there. That way we're all on the same page, and I don't have to type the words "recording software" every other sentence. This may also help as you explore the interwebs and research what options might be best for you. So, without further ado-

The Terms:

DAW- This stands for Digital Audio Workstation. This is what we generally call the software, whether it's Pro Tools, Cubase, Studio One, Reaper etc.

ITB- This is simply an abbreviation of In The Box. The box in this case is your computer. Some recording engineers prefer to mix out of the box, meaning they're using an audio console to mix their recording projects. Some prefer to mix in the box using the faders in the software.

Plug-Ins- Plug-Ins are virtual equalizers, compressors, reverb and other effect units.  In analog world we would typically patch or plug these into our mixer using cables. Many times ITB we just use a drop down menu.

DAW's- The Contenders:

I'm going to start by answering this question with a question. Which DAW do you like? There are free options like Audacity (which doesn't play nicely or at all with Audinate's Dante Virtual Soundcard. It could have been a problem on my end.) Reaper is a nearly free option ($60 for students or non-profits $255 for everybody else.) Both of these are distributed directly from their websites

Then there's the paid options.  Most people have heard of Pro Tools. It's an industry standard in the professional recording world. Then there's others like PreSonus' Studio One, Steinberg's Nuendo & Cubase  family of products, Sonar by Cakewalk, and Apple's Logic. Each one of these has it's own set of advantages and disadvantages.

So Which One Do I Choose?

It really depends on your end result, and your workflow. Personally I don't have a lot of hands-on time with the Steinberg family products, or Sonar. My two personal favorites are Pro Tools and Studio One. I typically use Pro Tools the most.  I'm just used to the workflow, the keyboard short cuts, and I like the routing matrix.  I would encourage anyone with a little time on their hands to download demo versions of any of  these software packages and try them out. See which one you like.

~Andy

Recording From Your Digital Console: Choosing A Computer

Cutting to the Chase Buy a Mac.

But Seriously

Buy a Mac. (Are we beginning to see a bias?) This article is a bit tongue-in-cheek.

My Case Against Windows

Have you ever been computer shopping? On the Windows side of things you have Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer and others. Then there's the specialized machines from companies like ADK, Alienware, or Music XPC.  That's seven different manufacturers that I've listed off the top of my head.  Some of those companies have as many 15 different product lines. Each one of these uses different chipsets, different USB and Firewire buses. If you want to see what's available feel free to go to a website like Tiger Direct (www.tigerdirect.com) or New Egg (www.newegg.com.)

My point is, the operating system, Windows, has to be compatible with all of these different machines. It also has to work with all of these different parts. That's a lot of programming code.  There's a great opportunity for something to just not work quite right. When things do go wrong, who do you call? Microsoft? Dell? The mother board manufacturer?

Finally, what version of Windows do you buy? Home, Professional, Ultimate? 7 or 8? Lots of choices. These choices can affect how your computer and audio hardware interface with each other. I will say this. If you are considering Windows 8 for a recording/production machine- wait. The various audio software/hardware manufacturers still need time to update software/hardware drivers. (I would actually say the same thing if Apple just released a new operating system.)

The Argument for Mac

There was a period in my life that I worked in the Keyboard & Recording department at a chain music store. Typically if a customer purchased any recording, or music creation software from me, I'd offer to help them get it installed if they had issues. Granted at this particular time there was a version of Windows called Media Center Edition. That particular version would absolutely not work with external sound cards. Period. Ever. Other than that, it would often take multiple install attempts to get a particular software working. I rarely had Mac users come in with trouble. Things boil down to this. How much time to you want to spend trouble shooting your gear, vs how much time you want to be using it.

If you happen to visit the Apple website, you'll notice there are only five series of computers.  That's considerably less than the plethora of  Windows options. Your choices are two laptop lines, and three desktop lines. Then you have to take into consideration that Apple builds it's own computers, and their operating system (OS X.) That has to guarantee a certain level of cooperation between the software and hardware.

My final argument is that OS X, Apple's operating systems supports Aggregate Audio Devices.

What Do Aggregate Devices Do for Me?

In simple terms they allow you to use multiple sound cards within OS X or within applications that support it. Why is this useful? Well, let's look at our scenario from the previous post in this series. In this case there was a digital audio console at front of house, pumping 32 channels of audio to a computer back stage via a Dante network.  The computer was using Dante's Virtual Soundcard. Unfortunately, because it was a Windows based machine the only audio device it could use was the virtual sound card.

This was extremely problematic for using local audio monitors. One work around would be to close the session, and then re-open it.  Then an Avid M-Box, PreSonus Audio box, or similar device could then be used to connect studio monitors. This would not offer real-time monitoring of input. A second option would be to add another Dante device to the network, in the broadcast room to connect a pair of studio monitors to.

By setting up an aggregate device inside Pro Tools, you can then use the Dante Virtual Soundcard (in this particular case) for input, and select an M-Box or other small interface to use as output for local monitoring.

~Andy

Coming Up...

I just wanted to take a moment and throw out a quick teaser of what's coming up.

Before I continue with "Programming Inexpensive Controllers", I'm going to revisit the  "Illuminating DMX" series. I want to take some time to go over DMX protocol charts, which are found in the manuals of most lighting instruments. In short these charts explain what parameters of the instrument are controlled by what DMX channel. I feel like it's important to understand this, so that you can develop a strategy for addressing your instruments, as well as programming scenes.

I would also like to take a trip through audio world for a little while.  Some of this will probably sound like a foreign language to some of you, but that's ok.  I'll try to unpack this stuff in depth sometime.  I recently had a customer purchase two Dante-MY-16-AUD digital network cards. These cards allow the user to take 16 channels of audio, bi-directionally into and out of a console via Gigabit Ethernet. They were installed into a Yamaha LS9 digital audio console. The goal was to take 32 direct outs from the console at front of house, and feed a computer in a broadcast room in another part of the church, then record that using Pro Tools 10. I'll take some time to explain how we had to patch the direct outs in the console, set up the Dante Virtual Soundcard on the computer, and build an aggregate audio device in Pro Tools so we could have local monitoring in the broadcast room.

~Andy