hi there!

been trying to get lot latency audio from one room in my house to another, as a heavy hammer action keyboard is only in the living room, not the studio, so I got two ESI planet22c interfaces with dante connectivity, tested it out in the studio, no problems, then tested it in the living room connecting to studio, well, lots of problems.

the biggest issue I have with this is that there is no clear documentation anywhere, and support (from esi) actually told me to ask audinate about this Oo - I mean don't sell interfaces with this technology then..

so my home network consists of daisy chained switches, as one central switch is no possible (it can not reach every room centrally, or in a star shape pattern for lack of better words)

any dante or networking pros here? I got the newest tplink routers, they even support igmp snooping which I likely don't need anyways as the planet22c's job is to merely send two channels from point a to point b.

unfortunately the signal has to do 6 hops (6 switches from source to destination) which is perfectly fine for data it seems, but not for audio it seems, as I only rarely get connectivity between the two, I mean they get detected fine, but synchronization does not elect one leader, instead both interfaces decide to be leaders both most of the time, when there are two master (leader in orwellian newspeak) clocks, no signal can be passed.

the weird thing is this: sometimes it works, rebooting, unpplugging bridging two switches with a cable to make it work, then switching back, can get it to work for something like 10 minutes to several hours. the next day all I see is two masters (leaders) and nothing works again.

another nuisance is that everyone recommends to get a managed switch, which is nice, but does this advice assume there is only one switch in the house? I have one in each room, and they get their data from others in other rooms, is it enough if I only get one managed switch in the network? is there some code switches pass along to tell other unmanaged ones what to do and what traffic to prioritise? if I get managed switches for all rooms I am looking at 4 figures in network infrastructure investment. is this what it needs to get a simple dante network going in a private venue?

bit disappointed by dante and the lack of documentation to be honest.. - also, why do I need to be an IT specialist to get this working?

TLDR: does anyone have a recommendation for types of affordable switches (5 ports and 8 ports used here) to "switch-out" mine so I can get dante to work, as I said source and target are 6 hops away in my case. any other ideas how to get two dante interfaces to clock-sync?

when it works it's a treat. 0.5ms latency, sending midi to studio, getting back analog synth tones to the cozy living room with the big master keyboard. - would hate sending both esi interfaces back.. there must be a way to get this to work, but I've been struggling for weeks now, changing cabling, switches, setups, boot up routines and all other kinds of tricks I learned from my old windows days..

That's a lot of questions. And no, Dante is certainly not plug and play.

Dante is great because it really does deal well with syncing and latency. My first question is why does your AoIP need to go through six (!) switches to get where you need it to go? That seems like a lot even in large music hall systems. Can you eliminate some?

And at the end, you say "when it works". Did I miss it and did you say when it didn't work?

Lastly for now, Audinate is actually pretty exceptional about helping end users, at least in my experience. There are Dante certification classes (three of them) that go a long way to teaching an audio engineer how hard-core networking works and why. There are white papers and case studies (read the one on tracking music long distance. I think from Europe to the US, without latency issues). If you have a specific problem, you can reach out the Brett Begani at Audinate in Oregon via email at [email protected]. He has the know-how and is super responsive.

I will re-read your post after the coffee has kicked in but I think it might just be your coming more topped up on network technology (and part of the problem is I learned a lot when I was setting up my network but have forgotten it all as my Dante rig chugs along without any problems). And yes, you need to become somewhat of an IT specialist to be comfortable setting up an AoIP network. The learning curve prefaces the awesomeness of such a great way to move audio around from place to place. It's worth the struggle. Take full advantage of Audinate. They are really quite helpful.

D.

Whoa, six intervening switches of unspecified make and you thought it was ESI's job to solve your problems? Not their monkeys, not their circus. They just bought a licensed chipset from Audinate and put it on their circuit board. Once those audio packets make the first hop, it's out of their hands. If Audinate will help you, then good on them. If I were answering the phone there, the first question out of my mouth would be, "Have you taken our training classes? They're available online and they're completely free!"

For six switch hops Dante latency would need to be set at 1ms or more otherwise it will not work. Audinate’s online documentation specifies this quite clearly.

It sounds like you need to install more cat 5 cable and reduce the number of switches you have expecting this to work over random switches with more than the recommended hops and without them having the recommended quality of service settings that you can apply on a managed switch is expecting too much.

The minimum level of switch I would specify for Dante is the Cisco Catalyst 1000 series the small non-POE models are not very expensive.

Your house is too big to run 328 feet of shielded Cat 5E cable between two switches?

I'm sure that Dante could work with six switches, but you're going to have to do some pretty robust setup and have all of your switch settings right.

Running a couple of XLR cables from the piano to the audio interface would be even easier, with no latency. And you can run a couple thousand feet without losing any signal.

I use NetGear GS108PE switches in my mobile recording rig.

Please search for SFP ports on switches and fibre. There is zero chance your home network is big enough to exceed any of that and switches with those ports are fairly cheap today.
My home setup uses SFP for convenience and only 2 switches. My work studio is over one city block and 4 buildings and we still don't need to hop through 6(!) switches from anywhere.

well many seem to agree 6 switches is excessive, but the studio alone has two, one in each corner, why? well I don't want to run long distances in parallel wiring when I can just merge devices into one switch to pass on data to the next. many switches is elegant, well it was before I discovered dante - anyways reducing the number of switches is not an option here, also because it's a house from the 1980's and the electrical tubing is rather narrow, there is no space for parallel ethernet wires running through the tubes. but JCBigler mentioned shielded cables, I remember that I did actually not use shielded cables when wiring the building up, it was not recommended at the time, they are cat6 or more though, never ran into problems, until, well, Dante...

anyways it would be nice if there was a way to test and troubleshoot my network, I ran across a video of a guy using wireshark to inspect network messages the other day. anyone got experience with this? before I start to violently throw money at things it would be nice to know if anything I plan to spend sticks. it looks like dante is protected by lots of patents and this could make it difficult to inspect what is happening in my network, and why exactly I get no sync, or why I only get sync occasionally, not reproducible. I mean it works for hours at one time, then the neighbour gets up and seems to turn on his smartphone, and bam connection gone. but I can not test and thus confirm this, and so it remains a vague suspicion, or a conspiracy theory I can not even get it to work reliably in the first place. so my next question would be: do I need to get into wireshark app?

also, if I can do 1gbit transfers to any room in my network, albeit there being 6 or maybe more hops - why can't I do audio reliably? as I said, when it works it's nice, settles around 470microseconds and stays there. I suspect there is merely an issue with the clock election process involving this many switches, not actual operation, as it has tested to work nice for several hours, once even 7-8 hours(!). so this might be a proprietary problem of dante in my setup, I guess I will contact audinate after all. - soo bad dante controller seems to have no or very limited logging capabilities, it sure would help a ton.

edit: found something out: the certification course states that 100mbit devices have inherently worse clocking, since 1gbit actually clocks higher (did not know this) and thus improves clocking precision, now the esi planet22c run at 100mbit, so they got 100mbit interfaces, maybe this is simply not enough for my complex setup, might look into the 1gbit audinate 2ch solutions then..

Really. I again suggest you spend some time learning about Dante networking and networking in general. It'll make your life easier.

"Dante is not plug and play."

D.

so I wasted about 4 hours with the dante certificate courses, which are clearly aimed at toddlers or US-citizens, then I bought a dante avio AES interface in the hopes it would improve clocking (1gbit vs 100mbit), just to find out it likely has their low cost chipset and a 100mbit link speed. none of which is specified in the specs on the product page, this company is ridiculous, of course no response from support either, they must hate customers or money. sending back all the stuff I bought to get this to work in the next couple days.. if anyone knows good software only solutions for audio over ethernet with sub 5ms latencies I would highly appreciate a mention. I mean they could just write all this stuff in a manual, but one's got to sell courses these days, so trendy.. 🤮

That AVIO stuff is low-end kit for non-critical uses like background music or sending a FOH mix to an adjoining bar. You're going to need to move up-market. Look at the products from Sonifex and Focusrite.

That shit will get you ignored.

But before I go, it's clear that you came to the wrong place looking for help.

And it's also obvious you have no idea what the f you are doing. So good luck and good night. Maybe a non-US citizen will help you cobble together enough analog cable the get your sorry ass through your next project.

Tata.

D.

I’d also note that if OP took the same tone with Audinate support I could quite understand them not responding. I’ve always found them happy to help.

Greetings tommylee,

The AES stereo converter from Audinate certainly can carry the bandwidth that anyone can demand of two by two channels, don’t be put off by the bitrate. That chipset is totally functional.

And it’s likely not where I’d be placing suspicion on clocking, having the six switches in your path and waving it off as being of no consequence may be bringing disappointment to the table. Another area of disappointment I’ve come across has actually been the chipsets and drivers in AMD based machines. Have gone down many rabbit holes there only to discover that the network port or other factors have been the culprits.

Maybe do a test in your control room with only one switch involved, see if you can get things going reliably. And I’m assuming that none of your switches have power saving going on? That’s another tripwire.

Good luck.

This is super-basic stuff, as anyone who gets around on Dante just fine knows.

D.

I'm a Dante newb, trying to configure a very simple system, and what I can tell the OP is that you really do need to read and understand Audinate's docs, then get the gear and start trying things out until how it works becomes clear to you. I've been in pro audio for several decades, but had to set aside my general assumptions about signal flow and sync in order to get even a small understanding of Dante. When I get confused I go back and step thru the Cert course again. Nowadays even the AI-Google can answer Dante questions. Re: the Audinate AVIO 1 or 2 channel "adaptors", I can assure you that they are not for "toddlers". They sound fine, perhaps not as hifi as really expensive Dante ADACs, but good enough for extra channels, LTC, monitor feeds etc.. I have found that they have excellent clocking and in our tests audio input to a DAW via them ran in dead sync with much more expensive self-clocked recorders for hours.

Why don't you take and pas the Dante Level 3 course, and then come back here?

I'm still not sure what problem you are trying to solve.

No one ever said Dante was plug and play or self configuring. It's an audio and video computer network using voice over IP technology to transmits data in real time with lossless data transport. That's not exactly child's play, even for experience network technicians, as packet loss on a regular computer network isn't a big issue. But packet loss on an audio network can be a huge issue.

The hardware, network topology, and network settings all have to be configured correctly. Most normal IT nerds don't understand what we do with networks in the entertainment industry. And most audio nerds don't understand the technical aspects of QoS, traffic prioritization, and VLAN or network segmentation, must less the hardware infrastructure.

I still don't understand what you are trying to accomplish and why you want to use Dante to do it. Why not just use some long XLR cables to get into your other rooms?

Can you post a system diagram of your network? Along with the actual make and model of your network switches?

sure it works in the same room, but I can run XLR cables in the same room, so no need for dante at all in the same room. electrical wiring tubes in the house are too small to comfort one cable to each room, so network switches need to be daisy chained, and as it happens, the only route from source to destination in my case is via 6 switches, two tplink sg108e and four tplink sg105, all with newest firmwares, and QOS active, no energy saving.

it's not about the bandwidth that makes 100mbit interfaces worse, it's the clocking resolution, which is exactly 10 times more coarse than 1gbit interfaces, as stated in audinates own training material, and then they have the audacity to not write the interface type (100mbit or 1gbit) in the specs of the product on the product page itself. this is what got me mad.

yesterday it was working for a couple hours when I placed the on one of the middle switches (via an extra POE capable switch I bought for this reason) in the hopes a clock signal might have better chances to doing its thing if the path between clock source and destination is halved. - all switches have to be daisy chained in my situation unfortunately.

no the courses they offer are too basic and for total newbs. they even explain digital audio, I come from the days when one needed to understand dithering, BNC word clock distribution and termination and all this kind of tech stuff, one needed an oscilloscope to bugfix things...and I am tempted to fire up my oscilloscope to check my ethernet wires for RFI, but I suspect there is another issue at hand here which might be clouded by company policy and trade secrets (patented technologies and such). I mean if a company does not even spec out their products reliably, and makes you run through educational hoops really gives off a taste of cult dynamics to me. the fact that my dante setup sometimes works (it did yesterday for a couple of hours with the clock being in the middle of the 6-switch-daisy chain setup I have here) makes me think there is a lot of proprietary stuff going on with the clock election process, which is the main problem here, which I can just not troubleshoot. but maybe I should just go "upmarket" more, shell out more money without getting complete specs and start praying, like in a real cult you know joking aside, I will try to get this working reliable for about another two weeks then I will send all gear back. after all I only need this solution during winter for reasons none of the folks in here need to know.

I'm merely trying to get two channels of audio, either 16 bit or 24bit, does not matter, 44.1 or 48khz from a source to a destination, there are 6 switches in between the dante interfaces, two of them tplink sg108e and four of them tplink sg105, they are all set up to use DSCP QOS by default, but there is no documentation whether they do strict or weighted QOS, which might be an issue.

sure, but once it works, it works for hours, and I merely need this stuff to play midi remotely and get audio back to the room where I am playing. there is nothing really wrong with my network, or at least it does not seem so, what I am upset about is the hunch which tells me some proprietary stuff in the algorithm is not able reliably elect a clock leader in my setup, so I am looking at a screen of three devices, all leader clocks and no functionality, which is really discouraging. nothing changed in my setup from yesterday to today, yesterday evening it was working longer than I needed it to work, a couple of hours. I always cut power to my systems, and the next days it finds no master clock anymore. sad. maybe audinate does not expect its users to cut power to their devices ever? idk. another thing is that sometimes after ours of no clock leader I come back to check about the status of my dante netork, and it magically settled for a leader and operates fine. none of this looks deterministic to me and I see no way of troubleshooting this without getting insight into company secrets it appears. so I am upset about getting fed online courses instead of having a manual stating everything I need to know, instead they feed me countless videos eating away at my time. I just want to use this thing, not become a network technician to do dante installations full time for venues..

running xlr cables throughout the house is not an option here, otherwise I would have done this already. I'll follow up with the diagram in about an hour.

If you're powering up everything at once, odds are some switches are still getting their wits about them while the clock election protocol is happening. Get your switches stable first, then turn on your preferred clock controller, then start adding your other audio nodes.

I think your 100 kbps concerns are misplaced: that's not going to affect latency anywhere near as much as 6 switches, each with their own packet buffers. Moreover, 100 kbps vs 1 Mbps does not determine the clock resolution, it determines update rate of the NCO in each node's local PLL. That will affect jitter slightly, but the Dante's time compensation algorithm is still going to servo itself to match up the sample timing across the whole network. In practice, that means that everything is going to line up with the farthest node, because it can't dial in negative delays.

If I understand things correctly you are using an installed network on your home and are hopping between network jacks in different rooms.

I think your latency and clocking issues are coming from the high number of switches on your Network, plus all of the extra wall jack terminations. Each of those hops loses signal integrity. The ethernet spec assumes up to 100 meter of network cable with a patch panel and patch cable on each end. 6 switches each of which has a patch cable and two wall jacks is going to lose a lot of signal integrity. Especially if there's a problem with any of the cable or wall jacks.

Are you using a redundant Dante set up? Or daisy changing everything?

Also, are you using your home network for anything else? Home Internet? Printers, VoIP phones, games or media servers, etc..? If so then you need to be setting up a VLAN and segmenting the ports on your switches.

And yeah, shielded twisted pair cable is a must in this situation. I don't spec any audio network systems with unshielded cable and connectors.

Hi there tommylee,

Ok, a couple of thoughts…. In your original post you said you had the correct ‘routers’, and then said these were ‘switches’, so I looked up what you have, and yes, they are switches. However, the two models you have deploy power saving, so that’s a problem right there, that ‘feature’ doesn’t play nicely with Dante *.

But as others have said, it’s possible that your network is too busy with other devices coming and going. I’ve noticed in Dante controller that sometimes when I plug in a new device, while sometimes it plays nicely, at other times Dante controller needs to spend time sorting out the new scheme, and yes, it may suddenly make a number of devices the ‘Leader’.

I’m assuming you’ve nominated one device as Leader? Even still, if your network is carrying internet traffic, phones coming on and off the wireless router, your PVR kicking in to record something, or other log-ins from iPads or tablets etc, there will be strange behaviour. Until Dante controller sets up new priorities that is.

Which is why some systems have fixed/nominated addresses for mission critical tasks. Not sure if you’re Win or Mac, but the DHCP server is not the strongest link in the chain in Win for example.

Maybe take the wireless router and other things out of the equation when you’re recording? But apologies if you’ve already done this.

Tchuss.

* The 108 is a smart switch and it may be possible to turn this off, however the 105 has it baked in, not possible to fix

Greetings Doug,

I just wanted to post your reply once again. Every time I read it I laugh, in fact I’d like to nominate it as being in the top ten posts from Gearspace ever. It really tickles me.

It’s interesting that once again we’re not necessarily up against insurmountable technical challenges, but rather up against one of the strongest forces on earth, the male ego.

Take care, best wishes, H

I'll look into this next, yeah there are power production monitoring (victron) usb sharing services (virtualhere) and a media server (NAS) running on the same network. the whole think is home use and needs to get by with those rather adverse conditions, including the 6 switches, without which I would have a mess of cables in my place. I trust QOS does actually deal with the inferior traffic on the network so I was not worried about this.

well I checked whether they do 802.3az, which is the thing to avoid. they don't list it in their specs, so they likely use a proprietary variant of it, or a completely different one. maybe all green tech is to be avoided not just 802.3az? unfortunately it is difficult to find out what and when exactly tplinks green tech does do.

sure I'll look into this.

oh the ego...? a real man does not easily get provoked like this.. a little provocation here and there spurs discussion, nothing to lose temper over, as most in this thread have shown. maybe some ought to ask their doctors for supplemental testosterone. we don't have a male ego crisis, we have a weak men crisis, as in:

strong men create good times
good times create weak men
weak men create hard times
hard times create strong men

mind you, we are in the "weak men create hard times" phase of things, if you ask me.

his writings now on deep deep discount

That is a lot of crap to run through unmanaged switches alongside time critical data. OP might want to read this blog entry to understand more sophisticated options, including VLAN. Given that some nodes are 100 mbps, cleaning up multi-cast traffic is probably a good idea.

Which features does a Dante switch need?

Dante didn’t exist when Bowie wrote this, but it pays not to take it too much to heart…at least not yet.

BTW…Audinate, the Dante parent company, is based in Sydney, Australia…even if, as something great, America would like to claim it as their own ! Perhaps it might come up for sale, to the highest bidding muskrat in town ?

https://youtu.be/LT3cERVRoQo?si=DlXUG1sPqMeeCaeA

Did you try increasing the latency setting as this post recommended? It's the only concrete bit of advice I see in this thread that doesn't require changing your setup.