# Audio over ethernet from mac to mac



## rpaillot (Aug 11, 2014)

Hi

I'm looking for a way to transfer audio channels from a mac to a mac.
This needs to be usable in Cubase ( with a VST plugin or maybe vienna ensemble if it's a AU plug) and supports as much channels as possible.

I read about Audio Impressions "Audioport" but it seems it can only transfer from a PC to a Mac or a Pc to a PC , but not from a mac to mac.. 

I also read about "AU-net" ( that little AU plug you can open in logic or vienna ensemble ) , I tested it , seems to work nicely but I need to be conforted regarding stability, latency , synchronization.. it looks like it hasnt been updated in age either ) 

Thanks for your ideas 

RP


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## wst3 (Aug 11, 2014)

Depending on just how adventurous you want to get, the Mac OS has supported AVB for quite some time now.

AVB is an Ethernet protocol (collection of protocols really), so there are no IP addresses - which can be wonderful, or a bit daunting.

But it does work!

Sadly I do not have access to a couple of Macintoshes, so I can't give you the recipe, but I know when I was developing AVB hardware the information was on the Apple web site, and it was a lot easier to get working than I expected.

I'm not familiar with AU-Net or Audioport. It seems unlikely that they reinvented the wheel, so they are probably using the same underlying IEEE standards that AVB uses.

Another alternative, though not inexpensive, is Dante. This is an IP based audio transport, and that makes it a bit easier to set up. The current version of the Dante Virtual Sound Card requires at least one bit of Dante hardware on the LAN, but they should be releasing VIA any time now, and that is pure computer to computer audio over IP.


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Aug 11, 2014)

I've tried the Au-net and the latency is too much to do anything in real time.

Reaper has a plugin that allows you to send audio over the network but its PC only and I wasn't able to get it working. 

Not too long ago I posted a thread on here about a similar situation. 

VEP seems like the best solution but unfortunately I haven't yet found a way to get audio out of the server into other applications running on the server.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 11, 2014)

Gerhard, can you explain what you're trying to do? 

You can't route audio from the VEP server to more than one instance of the plug-in, but from there you should be able to route audio from one app to another using Soundflower in an aggregate device.

So you'd set the output of the track with the VSL Audio Input plug-in to a Soundflower channel, which you set as the input to the other app. Or you could send from the Audio Input track to a bus with its output set to Soundflower, if you need the VEP audio to stay inside the first app's mixer as well.

If this isn't clear, well, at least I know what I'm trying to say.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Aug 11, 2014)

^ That's one possible solution. There are others.


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## markstyles (Oct 26, 2014)

I too tried it a few years ago.. Latency made it unusable.


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## 0liver (Oct 31, 2014)

What about utilizing Audinate's Dante Virtual Soundcard?

https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-virtual-soundcard

At $30 a pop, seems like a cost effective solution.


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## rpaillot (Oct 31, 2014)

It needs a dante hardware.

I'm waiting for dante VIA though which's going to work without any dante hardware.


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