# Dante PCIE + VEP + Cubase?



## benatural (Mar 29, 2019)

I've searched older threads and haven't quite found what I'm looking for.

Does anyone have experience using a VEP with Dante? I run VEP on a master and two slaves, and if I knew with confidence that investing in Dante hardware would a. work well with VEP and Cubase, and b. help me keep latency low, I would strongly consider it.

Questions that come to mind are:

We're there any gotchas you didn't expect?
Do you still use the VEP VST from within Cubase to route audio into it? Or is it done via Cubase inputs?
How do you transmit MIDI?
Does anyone have any experience with this? If so I'd love to hear more about it!


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## LinusW (Mar 30, 2019)

I used Dante+rtpMIDI _before_ VEP, it's no longer in use here. 

If you are going for VEP, then I don't actually see what you would use Dante for. The audio is sent from VEP to VEP. You would only need an audio interface in the master machine. Or will your master machine run a Dante card and send to a console with Dante interface?

1. I had VEP crashing on my slave because I had a long USB extension cable from the slave to the eLicenser/ViennaKey. No more freezes since I moved it to the computer USB port.
2. Yes, VEP VST in the projects connects to VEP on my slaves. That's the way to put it in Cubase.
3. I use VEP VST as an instrument track. Record MIDI onto it, it's passed through the VST to your slave. (There is an option to enable external MIDI inputs in VEP, but there's no point to do that as you're using Cubase.)


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

Thanks for your reply LinusW, interesting to hear about your experience and set up! Currently I use VEP similar to you, using server mode, sending and receiving audio and midi through the VEP VSTi in Cubase to and from VEP in server mode on the slaves.

The way I *think* integrating Dante will work is:

On my slaves, VEP in stand-alone mode (rather than server mode) sending audio out via Dante to the master
Dante direct to Cubase audio inputs rather than using the VEP VSTi
MIDI out from the master to the slaves... somehow. Perhaps eith MIDIOverLAN? No idea!
Audio out from Cubase, into my converter (which has a Dante option)
In theory it seems like this should work, but I have no idea if it will actually be as simple as I imagine it!


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 30, 2019)

why do you want to work that way?


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> why do you want to work that way?


Basically, to keep latency as stable and low as possible.


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 30, 2019)

how do you think the dante method latency would be less then using VEP the normal way?

I don't see the point of going all the way to Dante. 

I mean, you could use virtual network midi to non-server-VEP on another machine and have both machines with their own sound card (of any kind, dante not needed) feeding into whatever sound system you're using, and that might eliminate some of the network latency typically found with VEP master-slave scenarios..but you open up some other issues in terms of having two machines that are not completely synchronized. 

But Dante is basically a more generic version of what VEP already does by itself. Its a way to route audio around over a network. I do not know whether Dante is more efficient at network transmission then VEP is...but I bet it would be a negligible difference, while adding a lot of complexity to your setup, and cost. 

One of the advantages of VEP, as you probably already know, is that the plugin latency will be reported back to your host and ensure your project is playing in sync..even when there is a slave adding extra network latency. I hear you that its a lot of latency though, but I'm not sure Dante would reduce that substantially, but if you decide to try it, I'd like to hear about your results for sure.


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## wst3 (Mar 30, 2019)

I use Dante every day in my day job. It is a remarkably stable protocol, and can operate at very low latencies. I've had Dante in my studio on a couple of occasions. It works well for machine to machine and as a way to expand inputs.

But so far I've not found it to be any more stable than VEP, and and there was no improvement in latency. I've used both open source rtpMIDI and MIDIOverLAN, and there was no real difference there either.

Using Dante provides some serious "cool" factor, but I think it is more expensive, and requires slightly more effort than VEP, so for now I'm sticking with VEP.

My two cents...


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

wst3 said:


> I use Dante every day in my day job. It is a remarkably stable protocol, and can operate at very low latencies. I've had Dante in my studio on a couple of occasions. It works well for machine to machine and as a way to expand inputs.
> 
> But so far I've not found it to be any more stable than VEP, and and there was no improvement in latency. I've used both open source rtpMIDI and MIDIOverLAN, and there was no real difference there either.
> 
> ...



Interesting! I think it's the latency that I'm most interested in. So far VEP has been very stable performance wise for me, no crashes etc. But latency isn't the greatest given the amount of demands I place on the server. Even with my template that uses no more thant 16 stereo connections to the server. I work with an extensive template and the more complex the music is, the higher I have to increase the buffer.

I'd like to stabilize latency and keep it low, and based on what you said, is it true to assume that I could achieve that?


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## Mishabou (Mar 30, 2019)

benatural said:


> I've searched older threads and haven't quite found what I'm looking for.
> 
> Does anyone have experience using a VEP with Dante? I run VEP on a master and two slaves, and if I knew with confidence that investing in Dante hardware would a. work well with VEP and Cubase, and b. help me keep latency low, I would strongly consider it.
> 
> ...




I upgraded my studio to Dante 2 years ago and love it. A couple of Cat6 cable replaced over two thousand feet of Mogami cables. The protocol is mature, reliable and sooooo flexible.

I'm using a nMP running CB10 and PT Ultimate and two VEP MacMini slaves. My AD/DA is a DADx32, sound card for the nMP is Dante Rednet PCIe, Rednet AM4 for headphones and Neve/Lynx Aurora preamp with Dante for tracking in various part of the house.

As for VEP, I tested the ''normal'' method vs stand alone (VEP with Rednet PCIe and MOL for midi). Stand alone method provides better latency and practically zero system overhead when sending over 100 channels of audio to the DAW via Dante but you obviously you loose all the cool features.


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## jamwerks (Mar 30, 2019)

You might get better latency figures by spending you $$ instead on powerful cpu's, that coupled with good drivers on your interface, should let you work at lower buffers (and thus less latency)?


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## Dewdman42 (Mar 30, 2019)

also make sure you are keeping an isolated network cable between master and slave VEP machines...don't try to do it through the same router and switch that all the rest of your house is using internet.


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

jamwerks said:


> You might get better latency figures by spending you $$ instead on powerful cpu's, that coupled with good drivers on your interface, should let you work at lower buffers (and thus less latency)?


I definitely have tried that route, and I believe I've maximized the potential of that setup. I really do have a crazy template - 2700 midi tracks and 40 channels from two VEP servers, 140gb loaded between them. CPU usage is low, RAM not maxed out, using a Lynx AES16e which has pretty low DPC, outboard reverb, minimal VST use, minimal submixes... Still relatively high latency.


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

Mishabou said:


> I upgraded my studio to Dante 2 years ago and love it. A couple of Cat6 cable replaced over two thousand feet of Mogami cables. The protocol is mature, reliable and sooooo flexible.
> 
> I'm using a nMP running CB10 and PT Ultimate and two VEP MacMini slaves. My AD/DA is a DADx32, sound card for the nMP is Dante Rednet PCIe, Rednet AM4 for headphones and Neve/Lynx Aurora preamp with Dante for tracking in various part of the house.
> 
> As for VEP, I tested the ''normal'' method vs stand alone (VEP with Rednet PCIe and MOL for midi). Stand alone method provides better latency and practically zero system overhead when sending over 100 channels of audio to the DAW via Dante but you obviously you loose all the cool features.


Nice! When you say you loose the cool features, do you mean things like ''raise instance"? Curious if you're using external instruments for routing audio and midi in Cubase?


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> also make sure you are keeping an isolated network cable between master and slave VEP machines...don't try to do it through the same router and switch that all the rest of your house is using internet.


Good advice. I work at a business that has a fast network, the slaves are in another room and direct patched to the wall ports in my office into a switch, and the switch is connected to the network. Unfortunately there's no way for me to avoid going through the switch unless I use a second NIC which might not be feasible for me.


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## JohnG (Mar 30, 2019)

Hi @benatural ,

I got considerable help from @Nathanael Iversen on this topic. The best suggestions he had were actually pretty simple. I monitor through Pro Tools and simply cutting the Playback Engine setting (essentially, the buffer) from 512 to 64 made a huge difference.

Should I have thought of it myself? Yes, of course! But sometimes things like that are staring one in the face.

I also replaced two aging PC satellite computers with a single i9-9900k and that allowed me to reduce further my buffer settings.

It has really helped when composing to have more "feel," especially for rhythmic passages and drums.

Your posts made me wonder if you're an in-house composer at a game company? 

Good luck!

John


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

JohnG said:


> Hi @benatural ,
> 
> I got considerable help from @Nathanael Iversen on this topic. The best suggestions he had were actually pretty simple. I monitor through Pro Tools and simply cutting the Playback Engine setting (essentially, the buffer) from 512 to 64 made a huge difference.
> 
> ...


Hey @JohnG thanks for that! Yes, I'm the Audio Director and Composer, in-house at a game developer. The network/office thing gave it away huh? 

To make sure I understand what you mean, are you saying you monitor your slaves that have VEP on standalone through Dante routed to Pro Tools on your master? Do you write in Pro Tools too?


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## wst3 (Mar 30, 2019)

benatural said:


> I'd like to stabilize latency and keep it low, and based on what you said, is it true to assume that I could achieve that?



No one can say for certain - based on your further descriptions of your system I'd say bottlenecks are not likely the network portion of VEPro, so whether VEPro or Dante requires more overhead on the machines is anyone's guess.

If I owned the VEPro licenses, and had to pay for the Dante hardware and software I don't think I'd stick with VEPro. I was able to borrow Dante hardware for my experiments. For me the result was such that it wasn't worth the change.

Then again, my standard template is nothing like yours<G>!


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## Mishabou (Mar 30, 2019)

benatural said:


> Nice! When you say you loose the cool features, do you mean things like ''raise instance"? Curious if you're using external instruments for routing audio and midi in Cubase?



Raise instance being one, but there are other nice features not available when you use VEP in stand alone mode.

I have a few hardware synth routed directly in CB and I also use the JL Cooper Master Fader Pro for CC, Roland A88 controller, iPad Pro and an Avid S6.


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

wst3 said:


> No one can say for certain - based on your further descriptions of your system I'd say bottlenecks are not likely the network portion of VEPro, so whether VEPro or Dante requires more overhead on the machines is anyone's guess.
> 
> If I owned the VEPro licenses, and had to pay for the Dante hardware and software I don't think I'd stick with VEPro. I was able to borrow Dante hardware for my experiments. For me the result was such that it wasn't worth the change.
> 
> Then again, my standard template is nothing like yours<G>!



Oh there's Dante software to buy too?


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## jamwerks (Mar 30, 2019)

What buffer settings are you able to use on you daw & VEP?


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

jamwerks said:


> What buffer settings are you able to use on you daw & VEP?


Depends on the complexity of the music, but it fluctuates between 256 to 1024. Obviously, the more instances I connect, the higher the buffer requirements.

I think most VEP instances are set to 1 or 2 buffers, can't remember off hand.


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## benatural (Mar 30, 2019)

Mishabou said:


> Raise instance being one, but there are other nice features not available when you use VEP in stand alone mode.
> 
> I have a few hardware synth routed directly in CB and I also use the JL Cooper Master Fader Pro for CC, Roland A88 controller, iPad Pro and an Avid S6.


Curious if you've tried using external instruments to route audio and midi via dante to your VEP slaves?


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## JohnG (Mar 30, 2019)

benatural said:


> To make sure I understand what you mean, are you saying you monitor your slaves that have VEP on standalone through Dante routed to Pro Tools on your master? Do you write in Pro Tools too?



I don't have Dante but if I were starting over I might go that way. I used to have five PC satellite computers playing samples back but am down to three now, with two Macs. Mac 1 is my DAW with Digital Performer and Finale (and Sibelius and probably Dorico at some point). 

Midi is on MidiOverLAN and audio is all hardware with RME and MOTU.

Mac 2 is more just a print-and-mix computer that has Pro Tools on it. I monitor through PT while composing and then once I'm ready to print and mix I raise the buffer from 64 to 512.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Mar 30, 2019)

I run both Dante and VEP, but for completely different purposes. This thread appears to conflate them. You CAN use Dante as a way to transport audio between sample servers and your DAW. In this way it might replace MADI or ADAT or something. That is not what I do.

I use VEP to connect two sample servers to the main DAW. MIDI and the sample audio all stream across a dedicated Ethernet network. This is physically separate from my Dante network.

On a separate Ethernet switch, I have a Dante network. It routes about 40ch of audio around the studio. The main outs of my DAW, for example, go out via Focusrite PCIe card to a Focusrite D16R, which feeds AES directly to my Genelec surround system. All monitor feeds in the studio are distributed via Ethernet to Focusrite AM2 boxes. It is very convenient. I can route any channel of audio anywhere, or to multiple places at once - this is how I feed my Midas M32 console that handles headphone mixes, and misc. audio routing duties. The PCIe card has been rock solid for me, and Ethernet is a delightfully easy way to move 128ch of audio anywhere.

I have a separate Internet network that some machines are on, but not all. 

Dante is the audio backbone of my studio, but everything related to samples runs through VEP in the standard way. I have about 600 tracks in the template at the moment, and it works quite smoothly.


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## benatural (Mar 31, 2019)

Nathanael Iversen said:


> I run both Dante and VEP, but for completely different purposes. This thread appears to conflate them. You CAN use Dante as a way to transport audio between sample servers and your DAW. In this way it might replace MADI or ADAT or something. That is not what I do.
> 
> I use VEP to connect two sample servers to the main DAW. MIDI and the sample audio all stream across a dedicated Ethernet network. This is physically separate from my Dante network.
> 
> ...


Thank you for sharing your setup. I think I'm going to pull the trigger and give it a shot.

If you don't mind me asking, what switch do you use for your Dante network?


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## jamwerks (Mar 31, 2019)

Just one thing, if you're on PC, last time I checked, Dante wasn't multi-client, which was a deal breaker for me!


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## benatural (Mar 31, 2019)

jamwerks said:


> Just one thing, if you're on PC, last time I checked, Dante wasn't multi-client, which was a deal breaker for me!


That's good to know, thank you for pointing that out. From what I understand, Dante VIA can be used as a work around, did you try that out?

https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-via


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## Nathanael Iversen (Mar 31, 2019)

RE: Dante Via - it is not low-latency. I use it for playing Spotify and audio from the Web. It is not for latency sensitive applications. Dante is not multi-client on PC, but then most things aren't. Not an issue for me, as I'm either in Cubase or in Dorico, but never both. But could be a deal-breaker for some. Technology. Many horses. Many courses...

Oh, and for Ethernet switch, I use a Linksys LGS116P. This is supports POE (Power over Ethernet). This lets me run an Ethernet cable to the AM2 headphone monitor boxes, and they get power and signal from the same Ethernet cable. Very slick. Any GBE switch will do for Dante, however.


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## jamwerks (Mar 31, 2019)

There must be some reason technical reason for Dante still not being multi-client on PC. FWIW, RME, Lynx and many others are multi-client. I often have Cubase, Dorico & PT open at the same time, and need that functionality. I went the RME route though I'm sure Dante is the future.


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## benatural (Mar 31, 2019)

Nathanael Iversen said:


> RE: Dante Via - it is not low-latency. I use it for playing Spotify and audio from the Web. It is not for latency sensitive applications. Dante is not multi-client on PC, but then most things aren't. Not an issue for me, as I'm either in Cubase or in Dorico, but never both. But could be a deal-breaker for some. Technology. Many horses. Many courses...
> 
> Oh, and for Ethernet switch, I use a Linksys LGS116P. This is supports POE (Power over Ethernet). This lets me run an Ethernet cable to the AM2 headphone monitor boxes, and they get power and signal from the same Ethernet cable. Very slick. Any GBE switch will do for Dante, however.



Very good to know. Does VIA when used with Dante hardware introduce latency to all Dante channels, hardware and virtual? Or is it just apps and devices that use VIA, and non VIA Dante hardware etc remain unaffected? If the latter then that will work for me.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Mar 31, 2019)

VIA only. The hardware and ASIO driver are what give low latency. VIA is just software and doesn't have dedicated hardware. 

I don't have VIA on my DAW. I run it on my laptop where email, etc. live. VIA is how the laptop connects into the studio infrastructure. I don't use Youtube, Spotify, etc. on my DAW. DAW is production tasks only, so I never miss it there.


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## Nathanael Iversen (Mar 31, 2019)

you may want to do a search to find the other threads where I have detailed my setup and motivations. I did Dante because I ran out of IO on an RME UFX. Once you get out of "interface + ADAT expansions", the options for low latency monitoring in particular, narrow significantly. I solved it for me in a way that uses Dante. But if I fit into normal interfaces, there is no question it is simpler (and cheaper). If you are running a multi-room facility, or have lots of audio moving around, the world looks different. That difference may or may not be important to what you are doing. I love being able to add more IO just by putting another box on the network. Is that important to your application? It may or may not be. Dante works. It is very reliable and fast for large channel counts. It is used extensively in live sound with massive channel counts. VSL uses it for orchestral recording. So it works, it is just a question of suitability for application.


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## danbo (Apr 6, 2019)

My studio is using Dante, hardware wise with Focusrite. I love it, with some Cisco business switches I already was plumbed with by happenstance I set it up with traffic prioritization and get millisecond latency. Advantages are the latency and it _just always works_ - no fiddling.

VEP would work but I don't want extra complexity, extra cost, new hardware keys and such. Dante at the moment is being just used for routing signal back and forth for recording, but I'm trying out using macOS NetworkMIDI + Dante as a replacement for VEP.

TLDR: Also, FWIW - I'm honestly skeptical of VEP's reported latencies. I was involved with the formation of the iee1588 standard at HP labs years ago, doing network measurements (data shuttling) is difficult because purely of latency due to the software stacks. Just knowing accurately what is your latency is difficult, it's more common to fool yourself rather than know what the latency really is. You need to scope it with a common 10MHz reference, just reporting on NTP and software stack ideas of time doesn't cut it. VEP are a bunch of software guys AFAIK, did they measure latency properly?

May not matter in practice, if it works it works well enough I guess, but I can't help but trust Dante over VEP with my background. I'll tell you, even in an ideal situation which is ASIC 1588 nodes and business switches with traffic shaping, you _still_ can/do get glitches. With regard to clocks digital doesn't really exist in the real world (just an approximation of a digital clock).

FWIW


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 6, 2019)

In my view NONE of the products are reporting true end to end latency anywhere because of so many pieces from different players involved. The only way to know for sure the latency you are getting is to do round trip loopback tests with the software you plan to use.


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## danbo (Apr 6, 2019)

Dewdman42 said:


> In my view NONE of the products are reporting true end to end latency anywhere because of so many pieces from different players involved. The only way to know for sure the latency you are getting is to do round trip loopback tests with the software you plan to use.



Dante conforms to 1588, its true latency.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 6, 2019)

From analog audio point to analog audio endpoint? Sorry I don’t trust any reported number unless you tested it yourself with RTL loopback


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## danbo (Apr 6, 2019)

I'm an engineer by day and at the moment happen to be working on a distributed 1588 measurement system. This uses GPS and triangulation for <something> location (think microseconds), and for the comm backplane it's 1588. All I'm saying is, that if a product conforms to 1588 and you believe them, then the latencies are accurate. I've read the whitepapers that Audionate put out and believe they know their stuff. Otherwise I don't know what you mean by 'analog to analog', the 1588 protocol is network defined. If you have a ASIC solution like I do then the spec is to the FPGA (which has latency but in practice is ignored), of course thunderbolt adds latency outside of that if you're not hardware mixing.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 6, 2019)

Network latencies maybe but that is not the complete picture.


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## danbo (Apr 6, 2019)

That's what I just said  ... anyhow we're off in the weeds. I'll report how well it goes doing a OS X network MIDI + Dante setup.


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## danbo (Apr 7, 2019)

OK I've done a basic experiment using Dante as the audio transport and macOS network MIDI as the MIDI transport. Within the confines of the experiment (a couple channels) it works perfectly with no discernible latency. There's a number of pieces to put together, I'll sketch it out. 

*Setup*

*Setup Dante network.* 
I have 32 channels of hardware Dante on the slave side, but I need 44 for a standard orchestra (24 instruments in stereo). I could go mono but decided to just DVS (Dante Virtual Soundcard) on both ends with 64 channels total. My network is configured properly with QoS on the switches. 
Just use Dante Controller to hook the outputs of the slave channels to the inputs of the controller/main computer

*Setup the MIDI network channel*
Go into Audio MIDI setup network panel and set up network MIDI channels. I need 24 so I created two sessions (16 MIDI channels per session) on both computers, then just had them connect to each other. 

*Setup the VI server.* 
There are articles on how to do this in Logic. One problem, Logic really likes to have a single audio interface, and a single document open at a time. With this I need AVS to be the audio device - not my hardware interface I normally use. Plus I didn't want this to interfere with the work I do on the 'slave' (it's really a slave to the other computer since it has the VI's, but I do most of my work on it). 
*Setup MainStage 3*. Neat solution, MainStage supports setting the audio interface per document, unlike Logic, and is better with multiple documents open. 
Create a new MainStage session, get rid of the junk in there, then create a bunch of "Keyboards" in the layout, but assign each one of them to one of the MIDI channels from the two network MIDI interfaces created earlier. 
Then add channel strips for each instrument (piccolo, flute, ...), and set them up to have MIDI input from each of the 'keyboard' objects. 
So basically piccolo takes your first network MIDI session channel 1 as it's input, flute takes the first session channel 2, etc. 
Then just route their respective outputs to AVS channels (1-2, 3-4, etc). 

*Setup the master computer*
This is in logic. Put down a bunch of "External MIDI" instruments. Route the MIDI to the network MIDI channels (piccolo goes to first interface channel 1, etc). Audio output goes to whatever you usually have. 

*Latency
*
I have three managed switches between the two computers which is the maximum recommended from Audinate

*AVS* 
allows for a minimum latency of 4mS
In Dante that means it's the maximum latency, you can get better than that

*Logic *
32 I/O buffer gives some glitches
64 is glitch free in my basic testing with a roundtrip of 9mS

*Dante*
Dante Controller normally gives you actual latencies per connection/device, but it's not pulling it in for some reason. Something to investigate, I've gotten this before

*Network MIDI*
Audio MIDI Setup is reporting 0 latency but I don't know if that's real



Done! I only set up a few because to get the templates worked out will take some time as it's a lot of repetitive setting of stuff, but it can obviously be saved to a template. Best is I can leave MainStage up all the time, it won't interfere with the Logic work on that computer, and then on my other computer now I can get some work done and stream all my samples from the computer which has them. 

Of course as said earlier this all could be done with VEP, but I'm already a Dante studio and like to stay with that if I can. I will go ahead and flesh out a full orchestra to see how it works with 44 channels of audio streaming with 24 channels of MIDI.


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## benatural (Apr 7, 2019)

danbo said:


> OK I've done a basic experiment using Dante as the audio transport and macOS network MIDI as the MIDI transport. Within the confines of the experiment (a couple channels) it works perfectly with no discernible latency. There's a number of pieces to put together, I'll sketch it out.
> 
> *Setup*
> 
> ...


Great walkthrough! Really curious to see how it scales up! Wish Windows had an equivalent to Mac osx network MIDI that shows up in VEP standalone.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 7, 2019)

I tried to get rtpmidi working on my pc and I couldn’t get reaper to see it either but it’s entirely possible I am missing a step, maybe you can still get that to work


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## danbo (Apr 8, 2019)

One annoying thing about macOS network MIDI is that it doesn't auto reconnect, but it just takes a few clicks. Here is a great new guide to network MIDI. In the comments the author mentions a script he has for sale ($5) which will do that for you. 

I'm setting up a big template, taking a while as I'm having issues with EWHO Play. Anyhow it's going fine, one thing is that MainStage does support custom articulation sets, but it's presented differently than in Logic. 

So far very pleased with this solution, a nice thing too with network MIDI is that you can connect multiple clients, which is useful since I use a number of computer. MainStage is a very capable performance oriented DAW and this brings up all sorts of possibilities. Such as MIDI scripting on the slave side, plugins or quickly switching between sets for working with different instrument sets. Experiments progressing ...


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 8, 2019)

danbo said:


> ........one thing is that MainStage does support custom articulation sets, but it's presented differently than in Logic.
> .



Can you please comment a little more about this?


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## danbo (Apr 8, 2019)

MS has much of the functionality of Logic but presented differently.


Select a channel strip to see the settings in the *Instrument Channel Strip Inspector*
Select the *MIDI Input* tab to set the MIDI network input, which comes from the keyboard control set up elsewhere. 
Select the *Layer Editor* tab to set the articulation set to be used. Any articulations created in Logic appear here, and you can make new ones that then would also show up in Logic. The editor is the exact same as used in Logic

One problem I realized is I’m working in surround. From an Audionate white paper I think 1 gbps Ethernet saturated at 128 bi directional channels, say using the Dante 128x128 PCI card, but that still only gives you 16 instruments. So you'd want to bus them, which I already do in Logic. I bus the woodwinds, brass, percussion, extra and strings in Summing Stacks. MainStage doesn't support surround, so you lose the nifty surround panner and simplicity (a single bus can handle any number of channels), but it can be done. 

Or of course I could slave with Logic which gives all that, then send the orchestra sessions (ww, brass, perc, extra and strings x 8 = 40 channels total)


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 8, 2019)

wow, I did not notice that articulation sets were added to MainStage. Thanks a LOT for that info!


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 8, 2019)

That's pretty cool! If you setup input keyswitches in the articulation set, the layer keyboard picture greys out the input key switch keys. Wow, thanks again for pointing that out... That opens up a bunch of possibilities for key switchable patches in MainStage.


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## danbo (Apr 8, 2019)

Glad to help - I didn't know either until setting up this demo and realized 'uh oh, what about key switching'? The only mention I found was in release notes, but it looked like maybe they just supported it with the built in instruments. Anyhow, turned out they added it simultaneously to Logic and MainStage, but you have to dig a small bit to find it in MainStage. 

Looks like you also have EWHO Diamond as I do, with this I was wondering if it's possible to get around the 16 patch articulation limit with Play. Meaning Play can load more patches per instance, but the only way you can address them in the articulation system is via the 16 MIDI channels. Anyhow I haven't come up with any tricky answers, maybe somebody will think of something.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 8, 2019)

We're getting Off Topic, but real quick I think Play is going to be 16 midi channels per play-instance, and whatever key switching play supports, which isn't much.


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## benatural (Apr 13, 2019)

Bit of an update. 

Finally got rtpMIDI to show up as a MIDI device in VEP. It wasn't showing up because.... I view my slave systems over remote desktop and it was taking over my audio devices. Turning that option off allowed rtpMIDI to show up in VEP stand alone and everything works fine on that front now. 

Next thing that I need to get working is Dante itself. I picked up 3 RedNet PCIeR cards, one for each system in my set up, and I can get Dante Controller to see them, but I can't route channels across cards yet for some reason, and the grandmaster clock says unknown. I've reached out to Focusrite so we'll see if they can help.


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## danbo (Apr 13, 2019)

benatural said:


> Next thing that I need to get working is Dante itself. I picked up 3 RedNet PCIeR cards, one for each system in my set up, and I can get Dante Controller to see them, but I can't route channels across cards yet for some reason, and the grandmaster clock says unknown.



Very nice!

Check the ethernet interface that Dante Controller is using, try the different ones on your computer. It can get a little picky about this. Also make sure you're networking it straight forward, it can't handle aggregate network devices, nor VPN's that block local traffic, it needs direct access to the raw ethernet interface.

The grand master is automatically configured by the network. Not seeing it likely means your computer is not seeing the network, not that the network isn't configured which all is automatic. Also that you can't do routing indicates this.


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## benatural (Apr 13, 2019)

danbo said:


> Very nice!
> 
> Check the ethernet interface that Dante Controller is using, try the different ones on your computer. It can get a little picky about this. Also make sure you're networking it straight forward, it can't handle aggregate network devices, nor VPN's that block local traffic, it needs direct access to the raw ethernet interface.
> 
> The grand master is automatically configured by the network. Not seeing it likely means your computer is not seeing the network, not that the network isn't configured which all is automatic. Also that you can't do routing indicates this.



I see, thank you! When you say try different ethernet interface, do you mean trying both the primary or secondary interface on the PCIeR cards?

Currently the Dante network is on a dedicated LAN with no other network traffic. It's routed through a Cisco SG350 managed switch, but I haven't tried configuring it. One thing I wonder about is whether the IP ranges need to be consistent on my computer and on the switch? My computers are in the 10.0.0.0 range and the switch, by default is, 192.168.0.0. Could this be the source of conflict perhaps?


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## danbo (Apr 13, 2019)

benatural said:


> I see, thank you! When you say try different ethernet interface, do you mean trying both the primary or secondary interface on the PCIeR cards?



No the second card interface is for failover, I think the problem is computer side - Dante Controller can't see the network the cards are on. Hard to debug without being in front of it. I was taking about the ethernet interfaces on whatever computer the Controller app is running on, that's probably the problem.




> Currently the Dante network is on a dedicated LAN with no other network traffic. It's routed through a Cisco SG350 managed switch, but I haven't tried configuring it. One thing I wonder about is whether the IP ranges need to be consistent on my computer and on the switch? My computers are in the 10.0.0.0 range and the switch, by default is, 192.168.0.0. Could this be the source of conflict perhaps?



I assume you mean that the switch web interface is on the 192 network, that's OK as long as it's routing the 10.0 traffic. However since this is a dedicated network yes there could be an issue - those PCI cards need a DHCP server for example to tell them their address. Check the blinky lights to see if there's some info there. Seeing all the interface pulse in sync at a rate of 10/second or something is the master clock sync. My entire network lights up with this like a metronome. If that's not the case then your network set has issues and the cards aren't seeing each other. 

By the way dedicated network is a common brute force approach but hardly necessary. With those Cisco switches you can configure traffic control. I have an incredibly busy shared network and don't drop packets because of proper traffic control. Audionate shows how to configure it for the Cisco switches on their website.


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## danbo (Apr 14, 2019)

Thoughts on good DAW's for pure plugin hosting? Again I'd like to see how well I can get this to work without VEP. All it needs to do is route MIDI and audio. MainStage works OK, but doesn't support surround and there might be better options.

Ardour is looking like a good option.


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## Dewdman42 (Apr 14, 2019)

Well there is the non server version of VEP... if you have it already...very capable, one nice thing about it is that it has an actual mixer with channel strips....that is rare to find in any hosts other than full out DAW's all of which would work fine for this task too.

Any DAW out there would work, such as Reaper, Ardour or any other.

BlueCatAudio PatchWorks, PlogueBidule, ImageLine Mini-host modular(free). None have a mixer channel paradigm, PlogueBidule might have surround capabilities, but I'm not sure.

On Windows there is VstHost, Cantabile

Not what sure what exactly is your need in surround, if you need actual surround panning as a built in feature, then you are probably best off just running another DAW that has surround panning.


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