# Dante Via: Questions and Problems



## Piano Pete (Oct 23, 2018)

Hopefully someone with more experience using Dante can chime in and point out where I am screwing up.

Now, I already have a lovely audio over ethernet setup that uses pricey hardware, but for funzies, I decided to try out a solution I have seen many people talk about on this forum: Dante Via + Dante VSC. This solution is potentially the cheapest way into Ethernet routing as it potentially bypasses having to purchase a dedicated bit of hardware.

Personally, I think it is fantastic that the software and equipment are getting to a point where we can do so much efficiently, and this has been an interesting way to kill some downtime while learning something.

Onto my tests and problems!

My first test is the ever faithful Sequencer to Stem printing setup. Dante Via is running on a "master" PC running Cubase 8.5, 9, and Reaper (to make sure any potential problems are not a Cubase issue) and a separate mac pro is running Pro Tools with Dante Virtual Sound Card. To connect to my studio monitors, I decided to try something someone on a budget might have lying around aside. In lieu of using my motu/RME kit, I found some ol' focusrite 2i-something or other from my shelf. 

Onto the testing!

Right off the bat everything was pretty easy to setup routing wise, audio was going from Cubase to Dante Via over the Dante Network into Protools, hurrah; however, the dreaded fuzzy noise/pops are ever present. This led me to dive into the settings in both my project and Dante. No amount of tweaking has fixed this problem. Now, the artifacts do not appear to make it into any printed audio that goes through the network, but it appears to be purely a monitoring issue. To further troubleshoot, I tried using Via as the main driver on the PC and watched some MP4 videos; next, I did the same thing on the mac (monitoring via the focusrite attached to the PC). In both scenarios the artifacts and noise are present.

Onto my question:
Is Dante, specifically Dante VIA, still dependent on having a physical interface or pci-e card in order to function without these problems? I used two computers that I know well and are on a network that is definitely not the bottleneck. (In this test I guess the focusrite is the weakest piece of gear, but that should not be a problem since Dante is only routing through it for the speakers). I saw a post on here discussing the weaks spots of using VIA as the ASIO within a DAW, but I am shocked the problem persisted outside of the DAW environment using audio purely contained within a single computer. 

How do you guys route and work with VIA/VSC? I like the idea of how cost effective this combination could be: cheap interface, VIA/VSC combo from Audinate, but if it is still dependent on a physical interface to tie everything together, which appear to still be fairly pricey, I do not know if I can recommend it to people on a budget. (I do not know if most people would buy a Rednet interface as their first one with the foresight of using its network capabilities down the road. I am purely doing this as if I am expanding my studio using equipment lying around). 

Now, do not get me wrong, I am probably doing something horribly wrong, but I figured instead of jumping to some conclusion, I would seek out the wisdom of those well versed in this gear!


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## danbo (Oct 27, 2018)

VSC - virtual sound card, check. 

I have a Focusrite X2P Dante connected to a RED4Pre, plus Via, VSC and a few AVIO devices. They all work together just fine with various routing around. Not sure what you're asking, but generally I'm sending audio all around the place with few problems. The only glitch is that if an interface comes up with a mismatched sample rate then the devices won't sync, but as soon as I fix the sample rate they connect right up no problem.


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## jamwerks (Oct 27, 2018)

@danbo, is Dante multi-client on Windows 10?


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## danbo (Oct 27, 2018)

jamwerks said:


> @danbo, is Dante multi-client on Windows 10?



I'm using it on macOS, but what do you mean by multi client? A single Dante connection is point to point, in Via two endpoints (only) share one connection, but any interface which has N endpoints can connect to any number of clients up to N. Example, a RED4Pre interface has 34 Dante I/O's or something, those can connect to 32 different clients, or 34 to one, or whatever. There's lots of resources on how this works if you do a search.


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## jamwerks (Oct 27, 2018)

danbo said:


> I'm using it on macOS, but what do you mean by multi client? A single Dante connection is point to point, in Via two endpoints.


Multi-client meaning being able to have multiple apps operating in parallel, and being able to get sound to and from each. 

That's standard on Mac apparently with drivers from any manufacturer. In the dark world of PC not everyone has drivers capable of multi-client. Last I checked Dante wasn't, but wondered if that had changed!


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## danbo (Oct 28, 2018)

jamwerks said:


> Multi-client meaning being able to have multiple apps operating in parallel, and being able to get sound to and from each.
> 
> That's standard on Mac apparently with drivers from any manufacturer. In the dark world of PC not everyone has drivers capable of multi-client. Last I checked Dante wasn't, but wondered if that had changed!



So for example, two apps (like MainStage and Logic on mac) both accessing the same sound card, or virtual card or driver like Dante virtual sound card? Yes generally shouldn't be a problem on Mac that I'm aware of, I do see issues sometimes though because of conflicts. Like one will want to reset the interface which glitches up the other somewhat, or they fight over sample rates.

I haven't tested it much because as much as possible I devote different drivers/interfaces to different applications. For example I have two audio interfaces - a Apogee Elements for general computer playback and the RED4Pre for Logic exclusively. YouTube for example can only handle 44.1 so I keep the Apogee in a stock simple configuration for that, playback and MainStage. Both interfaces route to a Drawmer MC7.1 monitor controller (which in 2.1 has 3x1 in and 1x4 out), which allows me to send in from three interfaces and out to four various outputs for testing, including the main monitor output. Works really well and is flexible, I can listen to a different audio path or combine with the flip of a few switches.


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## GP_Hawk (Nov 4, 2018)

Piano Pete said:


> Hopefully someone with more experience using Dante can chime in and point out where I am screwing up.
> 
> Now, I already have a lovely audio over ethernet setup that uses pricey hardware, but for funzies, I decided to try out a solution I have seen many people talk about on this forum: Dante Via + Dante VSC. This solution is potentially the cheapest way into Ethernet routing as it potentially bypasses having to purchase a dedicated bit of hardware.
> 
> ...


If you're getting pops and clicks you probably need to set the latency to 10ms on DVS.


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