Hugh - is "Cat Six" a brand name, or are you referring to the CAT6 cabling specification?

Cat6 cables, they make a big difference.
Hugh

Ok, I'll bite: What difference?

As compared to what? Category 6 cabling offers some advantages over Category 5e but those advantages are generally only realized in data centers or industrial cable plants. If you are using premade patch cables you are unlikely to obtain better results with cat6 vs cat5e.

I'd venture a guess Hugh is comparing his Cat 6 network runs to the complexity and losses of the same length runs of analog signals over analog cabling.

I have no knowledge about or experience with cat5e cables. I have in use various lengths of cat5 cables and the comparison was between cat5 vxs cat6. There also is a significant difference in USB3 speed and performance for the touch screens and USB2.
Hugh

Cat 5e was a specification that came up some time through the Cat 5 lifecycle, and now has replaced the original Cat 5 spec. These days, all Cat 5 sold are Cat 5e really.

Tech specs:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catego...egory_5_vs._5e

My experience is that in a small Dante network, even over the prescribed "maximum" distance of 100m, I found no difference between the performance with Cat5e or Cat6.

I think differences might show up in large, large networks running many different sorts of traffic.

That isn't the case for me since my Audio over IP network is self contained and pretty small; maybe 6-8 devices and two switches.

D.

Is there any user experiences here for these packages: XI-MACHINES - RECORDER.1 [en]

For runs of 50ft. or more Cat6 is better.
Hugh

Hugh, I still don't understand what you mean by "better".
Are you talking about using it for network cabling (Ethernet)?
Or are you talking about using it as an alternative to other multicore cables for analog audio?

Source? Not according to the tech guys at Audinate.

D.

Interesting recorder but the JoeCo Dante has, seemingly, similar specs and is quite a bit cheaper. My experience with JoeCo has been good. The JoeCo Dante 64 is on my short list. I use a remote controlled JoeCo BBR AES on my current Dante network with a bit of a (pretty easy) work around. It lives on-stage with the preamps and can be controlled by an iPad in the control room, 300' away (or more.) All at 96K!

D.

It is true Waves allows for both Cat5e or Cat6 connectivity and they also have and include USB2 touch screens as serviceable. I descovered a percievable improvement in the new Dell USB3 touch screens and up graded to Cat 6 cables while making the change over. I am not certain exactly the role the Cat 6 cables played if any but the overall improvement in responsive speed was impressive. (This will be my last post on my Cat6 preference)
Bottom line: I like what I have in this new system and would do it over in a heart beat with USB3 & Cat6 if it was necessary.
Hugh

I am including an excerpt from footnote #8 in the Wikipedia "Cat 5 Cable" info referenced in post #67 ;
(White Paper denoting Cat5, Cat5e and Cat6 by Panduit Corp, 2/27/04)

"The requirements for Cat6 cabeling are much more stringent than they were for Cat5 or 5e. It is important that installers maintain 1/2 inch or less of untwist at the termination, proper bend radius, and avoid short links of less than 15 meters."
"When properly installed Cat6 cabeling will provide better performance than Cat5e. The frequency range is more than for 5e (at 250MHZ, where 5e is at 100 MHZ). Cat6 performance requirements are also significantly better than 5e when compared @ the same Frenquencies."
"Cat6 cabeling systems utilize RJ-45 connectors and are backward compatible to Cat5e. This means that if Cat6 and Cat5e components are mixed in a channel, the channel will perform to Cat 5e limits. Cat 6 will run gigabit ethernet more efficiently than 5e and is a better performing system."
"Cat6 rated components from different manufactures can be mixed in the channel and the channel should still perform to Cat6 limits. This includes patch cords."

Your USB3 touch screens (assuming you had them connected using USB3 cables to a USB3 port on a computer) would offer better performance for a couple of reasons. While the amount of data for touch performance that goes over the wire is very little, USB3 is a better architecture for letting multiple serial devices communicate in a switched fashion to a computer. And the processing on the new Dell USB3 screens (the computer in the screen that looks at your touches and generates the serial data stream to your PC to tell it where you touched the monitor) will be faster as well.

So, bottom line, I suspect your new touchscreens do in fact perform better and that it has nothing to do with the cat6 cabling, as I don't think the cat6 cabling isn't used to connect your touchscreens to your computer, and your Audio over IP would likely not be exceeding a couple hundred megabits per second even if you were running 64+ channels at 24/96. That's not saying you shouldn't have Cat6 for your network, or that there's anything wrong, just trying to impart some information about what components do what jobs in your computer system (that's what it is, it just happens to do audio).


For more about the difference between different types of Ethernet cabling, read on.

Like a few others on here, my "day job" is in IT, I do network engineering. The basics are that Cat6 supports higher bandwidth (10 gigabits per second) than Cat5e (1 gigabit per second) due to tighter specifications - these cables are essentially carrying radio frequency signals, and the wire gauge, twists per inch, material used, shielding, and how they are terminated really does make a difference. And Cat6 is superior to Cat5e for carrying high frequency signals. If I were building a new facility now I'd be using Cat6 for my copper cabling, just because it's ubiquitous and not a significant cost increase, and I have growth potential to 10 Gbps.

But I have absolutely no qualms about running Gigabit Ethernet over Cat5e at distances up to and including the rated maximum of 100 meters. With properly made patch cables and a properly installed cable plant, the error rate on Cat5e is effectively zero. In fact I just checked a switch at work. It's been running for 797 days with an FTP server connected to one port at 1 Gbps over 95 meters of Cat5e cabling (installed and patch cables). The total count of errors on that switch port in that 28 months is.... zero.

For Audio, gigabit Ethernet is PLENTY of bandwidth, even for very large production networks with thousands of channels. However, video is a whole different ballgame. The amount of data HD video requires is huge, move up to 4K and beyond and you're in 'ginormous' territory. Building a network for a facility that does serious video as well as audio and you NEED Cat6 wiring from the wiring closets out to the desktop/workspace because those devices will be running 10 Gbps Ethernet, and then between the wiring closets you'll have fiber because you'll have 100 Gbps Ethernet tying the backbone together.

Anyway, more than you probably wanted to know... but the bottom line is unless you're building a production facility for audio and video (and if you are, you'll already understand this or have someone on staff who does), Cat5e is perfectly fine for all the Audio Networking any of us would likely need on location.

Just an update. I took my Dante rig out "in anger" yesterday for the first time. A comedy special taping for Netflix at a theater downtown. Two vocal mics (SM58s) and 3 audience stereo pairs. Lots of miles of wire runs. Grace m108s as Dante preamps, split AES into my SD 788T and running a Pro Tools session recording as a backup on my MacBook Pro. Super nervous about the Dante rig working all night, two shows, lots of moving parts. It worked perfectly. . . .Thanks God! My super reliable, never failed in 10 years, SD 788T took a big dump in the middle of the first show. Stopped running and emitted a horrible digital clatter. Unplugged the DC power supply and un mounted the battery, put it all back together and it went right back to working (didn't even lose time code) and worked fine for the remainder of the first show and all of the second. But there is a, maybe, two minute gap in the recording. Bummer! I'll call SD tomorrow. But the good news is that the PT session was, essentially, the clone of what was being recorded on the 788T. The lesson here? Always CYA. No lives were lost in the making of the TV special. .

D.

Hi all,

Sorry to jump on this thread. I just need some advice....

So I have a studio in the loft space of my house. Digital system: Mac, logic, mackie d8b, motu optical connection for 16 digital to mackie and FireWire to Mac. But I also have a wooden pan eked cabin in the garden about 50-60m away (with amazing sound for drums).

I dream of linking a stagebox between the two.

This seems to mean DANTE. Can anyone help me by recommending DANTE Stageboxes (which don’t need the same manufacturer’s desk to work) that I could put in the cabin and Ethernet cat5 yo my studio room (straight into laptop or Mac pro with Dante soft)?

I have tested Yamaha Rio. And I’m impressed and know it would work. But I am looking for any other options (as not flushed with cash!)

Please let me know if you have ideas/experience of alternatives???

Chris x

I see a Yamaha TIO1608 on eBay at the bottom of this page. $830 for 16 in and 8 out. If you are looking for something in the Dante world with that number of I/O for less than that, I can't think anything cheaper. Maybe the Glennsound 4x4 at around $600 but that only has 4 line ins and 4 line outs so you'll need preamps (which you may already have) and that I/O drops to 2 each way at 96k.

A Dante license to the manufacturer is about $400 for a 16 channel system IIRC.

D.

How many channels do you need?

Dante is a very elegant and flexible solution for your project. I installed Dante in my studio in 2015 and never wanna miss the routing flexibility and expandability I got. Depending on the amount of channels needed I'd take a (second hand) Focusrite RedNet 4 (8-ch. remote-controlable mic/line pre) and a Focusrite AM2 or an X2P to provide the headphone mix. I'm using a RedNet 4 in the studio and on location. It's a great device. The Dante remote software for the Rednet 4 is very easy to use. You have full control over mic/line mode, phantom power, low cut filters and levels and a good visual representation of all current parameters.

If you intend to use Dante Virtual Soundcard, be aware that it introduces quite a bit of latency, maybe too much for real-time monitoring. In my case, I can provide a separate headphone mix of all input signals via a dedicated Dante-enabled DM1000 (splitting every source signal in Dante Controller). That way, I don't need to monitor through the DAW and do not care about latency. However, I still purchased the YAMAHA PCIe Dante accelerator card after a while to achieve lower latency. Depending on the gear you already have, you may wanna add some kind of Dante bridge to your setup. You could then bridge valuable existing ADAT gear, MADI gear or analog gear to Dante without the need to replace what you already have.

With regard to the YAMAHA stage boxes: The RIO series is much more sophisticated than the lower priced TIO series. If you care about the best sound quality, use either RIO or Focusrite (or others) but not the lower priced models. I've used the NUAGE converter for some time (which are not cheap) and I didn't like its sound. I'm now using a Ferrofish A32 Dante which bridges 32 analog i/o, 32 ADAT i/o and 64 MADI i/o to its 64 Dante i/o. It's absolutely my favourite piece of studio gear ever!

What's further interesting: If you need to have MIDI functionality in your recording booth you could locate a laptop there running the free CopperLan app. CopperLan can aggregate MIDI devices of a computer (hardware and software) and share latency-free MIDI over the same ethernet cable that you are already using for Dante.

I've interconnected the Dante accelerator card fitted into my main pc (128 i/o), the Ferrofish, the DM1000 console, a laptop (running DVS) and my internet router via 2 small Cisco Gigabit switches and cat 6 cables and there are no glitches even while watching HD youtube videos during large audio mixes. I followed Audinate's config help file to configure the Cisco switches (enable QoS, disable anything green ethernet). That's all. Everything runs rock solid and being able to route anything anywhere is such a pleasure. Other people can shime in and fully integrate their own computers (running their DAW's incl. their VSTi's I don't have) into my studio environment simply by connecting to a switch and launching DVS on their machine. Thanks to Dante, we can sample-accurately transport-sync all present computers by sending an SMPTE timecode signal from my main studio pc to all guest machines via a spare Dante audio channel while CopperLan manages the entire MIDI network.

Please can you help me!?
I’ve just got a ferrofish a32 dante, to go with my d.v.s. I stupidly assumed the a32 was not only a converter and click, but also a soundcard that i could ‘see’ in my daw and send sounds to. (i have an ssl sigma connected with dsub to a32). I also have an ssl Nucleus 2 (which has a 2bus dante soundcard on it).
I ended up buying a preconfigured switch from ssl to plug the nucleus and sigma into so as the corrects ports are forwarded.

Is the a32 then, just the bridge? in which case i’ll need to get another dante device that is a souncard that can use 32 channels? so confused i thought dvd did that.

I’m really struggling to understand how i can send a sound (say kick drum to say ch 1) from my computer to the a32. Is this possible without any further gear? Or would i need to get another dante device that has 32 channels?
It’s so frustrating to not understand how to set up this stuff lol.
In dvs controller app, i can see the a32 and i’ve green ticked all the ins and outs on the diagonal ;1-1, 2-2,3-3,4-4,5-5,etc, for all 32 channels of ins to outs)

I shouldn’t have assumed that the a32 was a soundcard? (in my daw if i select dvs as the driver, i only see the nucleus 2 which is only a stereo 2bus channel - and can’t see the a32 channels...?

I’m guessing i shouldn’t have sold my orion 32?!

Thanks people?!

don't worry, you have all gear required for mixing over the Sigma. I'll try and explain how to set it all up correctly.

- DVS is the soundcard (audio device) your computer and your DAW "see"
- the Ferrofish is your ad/da converter. It translates between the analog and the digital world and then - inside the digital world - it can further convert and route digital signals between ADAT, MADI and Dante. In your case, you'll be using Dante. However, you can easily integrate ADAT gear you might own into the Dante network and make it accessible to your DAW!


So, DVS being the soundcard, you have to select it as the audio device in your DAW (activating at least 32 in/outs). Make sure DVS itself is set to at least 32 i/o also. Once DVS is configured and the driver is actually started it should be auto-discovered by the Dante system and appear in Dante Controller. If you power up the Nucleus, it will also appear in Dante Controller with two Dante inputs and 2 output channels. Lastly, the Ferrofish will also appear in Dante Controller after powering-on. Make sure that the Nucleus and the Ferrofish are using the same sample rate as your DAW! You can configure this by double-clicking a device name (in bold letters) in Dante Controller (or by choosing "Device -> Device View" in the menu). Choose the desired device in the drop-down menu in the top middle of the Device View window and go to its "Device Config" tab. There, you can set it to the matching sample rate and you can also select the device's Dante latency. Set that to something like 0.25 ms (some devices may require a re-boot after changing these properties). Set both the Nucleus and the Ferrofish to the sample rate your DAW is using and set both to 0.25 ms Dante latency also. This will ensure that they will be able to route Dante audio between them and DVS.

Now, make the appropriate routings in Dante Controller (like 32 outputs from DVS going into 32 Dante inputs of the Ferrofish and probably also 32 Dante outputs from the Ferrofish into the 32 inputs of DVS). To actually route the 32 channels coming from your DAW to the Sigma, their journey will be: DAW - hardware outputs 1-32 (=DVS) -> A32 Dante (ad-converter) -> analog outs -> Sigma ins. Configure each track or bus in your DAW you wanna send to the Sigma to use a dedicated "hardware output" (=a dedicated channel of DVS). As an example, you might send the kick track to audio hardware output 1 (=DVS output 1). Do the same with other tracks/busses, using the other DVS channels. You have now sent these channels into the Dante network and they can be picked up by the ad/da converter (Ferrofish).

The Ferrofish will receive them via its 64-channel-capable Dante port. The A32 has a built-in digital patchbay where you can (and must!) define which of its numerous inputs (analog, ADAT, MADI, Dante) will go to what output (also analog, ADAT, MADI or Dante). For your purposes, you have to make sure that the incoming Dante channels (coming from the DAW -> DVS and then via the Dante network) will be the ones it uses to pipe them out of its 32 analog outputs. I'm not sure if this is its default config. To get into the A32's internal patchbay, press the MENU button on the front and turn the SELECT button to choose SETUP. Press the MENU button to actually enter the SETUP menu. Then, choose ROUTING and press the MENU button to enter it. Now, in the routing matrix, you have to make sure that in the very first line you have "Dante in 1" (top right column) connected to "analog out 1" (top line). "Dante in 1" means: the first 8 channels of Dante audio the A32 picks up from the Dante network over its Dante port. If it is not already set up that way, connect "Dante in 2" to "analog out 2" and the same for 3 and 4. You have now routed 32 incoming Dante audio channels to the A32's analog outputs. The signals will be visible on the Sigma provided that you have connected the A32's d-sub outs to the appropriate Sigma's d-sub channel inputs. This is exactly my setup.

Now, concerning the analog Mix A output of the Sigma, you have two options to get this mix back into your DAW: 1) via two of the Ferrofish's analog inputs (which have then to be routed to DVS and will then arrive in the DAW), or 2) via the two analog inputs of the Nucleus (and then further on via its Dante outputs to two DVS inputs). In the first case you'd be using the Ferrofish's converter and in the second case the converter, the preamps and probably some other desirable processing options of the Nucleus. So the latter may be the prefered option to choose.

The actual setup of all this is much easier than what it sounds like when explained in so many words

did this help in any way? please report back if you got any further, Chris.

btw, are you an mac or win?

Wow! Thanks for the perfect reply!

I had only selected 2 channels in dvs! that’s obviously why i could only ‘see’ 2 channels of output in the daw.I changed the track count to 32 and restarted the dvs and it’s all good - i can use the outputs! Still can’t belive audio is going through ethernet cable lol.

Thanks also for your previous posts that have helped me! I have just purchased a pcie yamaha AIC 128 D Dante (after reading your post about faster latency times) to go in a new pc which i’ll be getting as a dedicated audio machine (my entertainment films etc and emails will be on mac) and ill keep the audio pc off the internet! I also ordered a madi cable to see if that will work for the ferrofish and ssl sigma (as i’ve had use of 2 sigma’s and both i had difficulty screwing the dsubs in they wouldn’t stay secure! i didn’t find this problem with other gear using dsubs)

I was thinking about ssl sigma output xlrs ‘mix a’ from the rear via 2 xlr, i was going to either just monitor from the sigma and then record mix to my tascam da3000... (maybe via some kind of brick wall limiter hardware... but then again the nucleus has a nice sound also so not sure... i’ll probably use the nuclueus audio driver for offline exports and... ill have to do a few tests to which i think sounds better ... hmmn
Not sure if the sound once leaving the ‘bridge’ of the a32 and being fed to sigma would then benefit from going back into the ferrofish i’m guessing not because how would i use the 2bus stereo output it’s either the ‘mix a’ from sigma (or mix b or mains outs) to my tascam digital recorder da-3000 , or its nucleus speaker xlr outs to tascam da3000. A bit annoying though as sometimes that tascam starts making digital noise? grr! I find that whenever i do an offline export i just doesn’t capture e a toy how i’m hearing it! so i like to record external! The superanalog section on the nucleus sounds very smooth, and i’ve only one audio track through the ferrofish but i can tell that it’s got a pleasant grit to it! (i ran a drumbus offline export audio track through it which i know well and i like what the ferrofish does!) While i’m blabbering, i will say that in cubase i use the ‘render’ option a lot when my cpu is maxed out (if i ‘have’ to use it i do) and the audio stays identical to how i was hearing it (not sure if i trust it to e port a true image of audio if sidechain it is concern though! not sure) but i would like STEINBERG to add the option to ‘RENDER in place’ on group channels as well as just audio channels. Cubase 10 i’m liking the sidechain changes (you can select multiple sources for the key/trigger of the sidechain in vst3 plugs)


i must admit, if anyone is an idiot at networks and gets a sigma do yourself a favour and buy the ssl preconfigured switch.


I also was thinking it might be good to do 2 passes of mixing -1st being monitoring in nucleus and mixing a song (multitracks of some rock/soul/edm fusion /etc song and once done the busses nicely and happy with my mix (with no master channel plugs) use the Nuclueus audio driver to do offline exports of group channels (i.e. busses).
And then the 2nd pass would be to monitor at sigma and import those newly created busses into fresh cpu free session and send them to sigma.
Not sure...
Once i’ve got a powerful fast pc (i9) i hope not to run out of cpu anyway.

Hmmn maybe best to mix into sigma though to begin with! hmmnn