If I were building a networked audio studio today I'd go with Dante, it won the battle with AVB - largely a marketing victory, but what matters is that they won. I don't know that they won the war - AVB is huge in the auto industry, and like almost every other industry, it dwarfs us, even when you lump live sound, theme parks, theatre, etc in.
Are you aware that Samsung bought Harman (who bought Lexicon, BSS, AKG, Crown, JBL and handful of other audio companies)? Why would Samsung buy an audio company? Not for the audio, but because Crown and BSS had some real expertise in AVB. And Dante, and CobraNet, and their own proprietary network as well. When the folks from Harman used to introduce themselves at industry panels they'd call themselves the ABCD company because they had gear that worked on all four networks. But I digress...
AVB is making a small comeback in the professional audio market. I think it will be slow, and I do not think they will unseat Dante, but they could remain a force. So don't discount AVB.
IP over Ethernet, or just plain Ethernet (pick your poison) is the most promising way to get high channel counts at low latency at a reasonable cost. MADI is expensive and complex, PCIe cards are old news, Thunderbolt and USBc are promising, but even smaller niche players than Dante.
In a few years the idea of using multiple Lightpipe based solutions will seem as silly as magnetic tape seems today.
Back to the topic at hand (finally) - if I were Chillbot I'd build a faster machine, but I don't think I'd abandon the current workflow. It works, it is really flexible, and it works. Reducing latency may be more a tweak or two to workflow than expensive hardware. May be. Every studio is different, so these questions often become spirals into uncertainty.
Are you aware that Samsung bought Harman (who bought Lexicon, BSS, AKG, Crown, JBL and handful of other audio companies)? Why would Samsung buy an audio company? Not for the audio, but because Crown and BSS had some real expertise in AVB. And Dante, and CobraNet, and their own proprietary network as well. When the folks from Harman used to introduce themselves at industry panels they'd call themselves the ABCD company because they had gear that worked on all four networks. But I digress...
AVB is making a small comeback in the professional audio market. I think it will be slow, and I do not think they will unseat Dante, but they could remain a force. So don't discount AVB.
IP over Ethernet, or just plain Ethernet (pick your poison) is the most promising way to get high channel counts at low latency at a reasonable cost. MADI is expensive and complex, PCIe cards are old news, Thunderbolt and USBc are promising, but even smaller niche players than Dante.
In a few years the idea of using multiple Lightpipe based solutions will seem as silly as magnetic tape seems today.
Back to the topic at hand (finally) - if I were Chillbot I'd build a faster machine, but I don't think I'd abandon the current workflow. It works, it is really flexible, and it works. Reducing latency may be more a tweak or two to workflow than expensive hardware. May be. Every studio is different, so these questions often become spirals into uncertainty.