Topic: Qos Error, Dante Card? | Allen & Heath Digital Community

Qos Error, Dante Card?

This topic has 14 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 10 months ago by BobWitte.

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2012/07/20 at 2:42 am #23230

BobWitte
Participant

Just got a new 120 Meter A&H Ethernet cable reel and we are testing it with the GLD80 to an AR84 (right next to the GLD). We were using a short cable with 0 errors. Now with the long cable reel we get QOS Error (lose the green checkbox on the Home Screen). Audio keeps going and it recovers but this is very disconcerting! This happens every 30 seconds to a minute or two!

Anyone else with this issue?

A&H comment?

We will be contacting our distributor.

To top this off we received our Dante card with RMA paperwork in it and the reason it had been returned to A&H. The card was “bare” in foam (no antistatic bag) and no AudioNate license info.

It has not been a good night!!!! And we have a Gig this Tuesday we wanted to use this on!

A&H – HELP. We are contacting our distributor for this too!

Bob

2012/07/20 at 5:02 am #31022

Stix
Participant

Couple of suggestions:
1 -Test the cable for pin to pin continuity if you have a tester (I had one of the supplied A&H Cables have an intermittent single wire connection fault on one end)Fixed it by reterminating.

2 – Roll the cable out. Any cable in a coil near any magnetic field can be a problem.

Cheers

Richard Howey
Audio Dynamite Ltd
IDR48/IDR16/T112/R72/Mixpad,Tweak,
Dual M-Dante/DVS, 17″MBP/Logic 9/Custom Mackie Control

2012/07/20 at 4:25 pm #31028

BobWitte
Participant

Stix, thanks for replying.

I hope that sitting on our family room floor under a card table with the GLD80 does not have a magnetic field of any significance nearby. We can roll out part of the cable to see if that helps, but I hope the design is robust enough to handle half of the cable rolled up in some way since we bought the long cable to handle various cable run situations…..

We will try to check the cable (after contacting the distributor).

quote:

Originally posted by Stix

Couple of suggestions:
1 -Test the cable for pin to pin continuity if you have a tester (I had one of the supplied A&H Cables have an intermittent single wire connection fault on one end)Fixed it by reterminating.

2 – Roll the cable out. Any cable in a coil near any magnetic field can be a problem.

Cheers

Richard Howey
Audio Dynamite Ltd
IDR48/IDR16/T112/R72/Mixpad,Tweak,
Dual M-Dante/DVS, 17″MBP/Logic 9/Custom Mackie Control

Bob

2012/07/20 at 11:19 pm #31031

Stix
Participant

Magnetic field or electrical current. Even your power cable to the GLD or under floor power cables could have an effect on the coiled snake if close enough.
Worth rolling some out to try anyway. Let us know how you get on.

Cheers

Richard Howey
Audio Dynamite Ltd
IDR48/IDR16/T112/R72/Mixpad,Tweak,
Dual M-Dante/DVS, 17″MBP/Logic 9/Custom Mackie Control

2012/07/27 at 5:53 pm #31073

BobWitte
Participant

We are getting a replacement cable reel since our A&H rep agreed that having to roll any cable out should not be necessary. Otherwise, what happens with a short distance event if you only roll out xx feet? “xx” would need to specified…..

The cable appears to be a shielded ethernet cable which should eliminate most electromagnetic issues. If the cable is this sensitive, then we the design is too close to the design limits.

We’ll see what happens with the next cable… which we need very soon.

Still waiting on the Dante card replacement too.[]

Bob

2012/07/31 at 3:23 am #31092

papromike
Participant

Rollout some cable off the reel. The tightly wound drums produces bit of inductance. OneCe you unspool some cable, itll work fine. I know its weird but it works

Vice President of Sales
Allen & Heath USA

2012/08/01 at 8:46 pm #31098

BobWitte
Participant

OK – we will try this. I am an engineer and Quality manager so I have to ask: How much is “some”? Is their a minimum amount that needs to be unrolled specification? We have the long A&H cable reel, 120 meters. How much of it needs to be be pulled off? Typical Gigs will be 75 – 200 feet. So it better not have the error at all in this range! We can’t afford the short reels for some events and the long ones for others….

quote:

Originally posted by papromike

Rollout some cable off the reel. The tightly wound drums produces bit of inductance. OneCe you unspool some cable, itll work fine. I know its weird but it works

Vice President of Sales
Allen & Heath USA

Bob

2012/08/01 at 8:59 pm #31099

BobWitte
Participant

Also, why, after being sent a bad Dante card (it was a failed unit with RMA paperwork in the box sent to us as NEW and did not have the Audionate license info with it) do we have to wait for over a month (more like 6-8 weeks) to get a new one? Doesn’t A&H have cards available for customers that a card fails on them and they need an immediate replacement for the next event? That is how this should be treated. We would have recorded last nights event if we had a working Dante card. I have everything else ready other than the Audionate soundcard driver software that a license key # is supplied with the card! Last night we ran analog snakes and used a short Ethernet cable to at least use the mixer which did work great! Not a great start for us. And we recommend audio solution to Churches in our area and having a good start with this product would have been (and could be) an experience we can use to help sell others. Frustrated but still optimistic!

quote:

Originally posted by papromike

Rollout some cable off the reel. The tightly wound drums produces bit of inductance. OneCe you unspool some cable, itll work fine. I know its weird but it works

Vice President of Sales
Allen & Heath USA

Bob

2012/08/02 at 3:14 am #31101

BobWitte
Participant

Just pulled off over 50 feet and now we get an IMMEDIATE QOS error and constant blinking yellow then Red status lights on the AR2412. It is WORSE. Completely spooled we never loss synchronization (status was always blinking yellow) but had an occasional QOS error.

I believe we indeed do have a defective cable. With just a 6 foot cable it runs flawlessly (we did an event Tuesday night with our analog snake – ran for 5+ hours without a problem).

quote:

Originally posted by papromike

Rollout some cable off the reel. The tightly wound drums produces bit of inductance. OneCe you unspool some cable, itll work fine. I know its weird but it works

Vice President of Sales
Allen & Heath USA

Bob

2012/08/24 at 7:20 am #31206

bssmusic
Participant

Hm,
I think the cable is not necessarily defective. 120 m is near the limit, and furthermore – is it a CAT 5 or a CAT 6 cable?
We use a 93 m CAT 6 cable delivered by ‘ADAM HALL’ – manufactured by ‘Sommer Cable’ in Germany – without any problems. And last weekend the cable drum was located between the power distributor and an amp rack.

Peter

pbg

2012/08/27 at 5:49 pm #31230

BobWitte
Participant

Richard,

The cable reels are the ones A&H sells for the GLD. I would assume that what they sell meets the requirements that they have designed too.

I tested a 100 foot CAT5E cable I had in the house and it works fine.

I am still waiting for the replacement cable reel and the second one we ordered. An still no Dante card.

Next Gig is tomorrow (Tues).

Bob

Bob

2013/01/23 at 6:42 pm #32787

BobWitte
Participant

More:

We are ready to send back our 120 Meter rolls. Nothing but problems. QOS errors. Red lights on the rear LED network indicator. 150 foot cables work fine. Ethernet standards do not recommend stranded Ethernet cable for long runs (one reference: https://www.askturck.com/docs/TURCK-Ethernet-Cable-White-Paper.pdf). The Allen and Heath cable is stranded – yes a high quality stranded, but still stranded (Neatrik Etherflex). Soundcraft recommends a max of 80M and hey use the same make cable (Neutrik Etherflex) as A&H. Once you go higher they recommend CAT7 install cable.

Our experience is completely in line with what I read in the industry and what a main competitor recommends. The laws of physics are hard to overcome. We love the feel/look, but 120M just does not work reliably. We have two new reels of 120M and both cause occasional errors and even complete drop offs of an AR84 at times which is unacceptable. This has happened with the cable on the reel or extended out for hundreds of feet – in our house or at a gig.

We are looking at solid stranded cable which is less durable but handles longer distances due to its inherent electrical characteristics – possibly Rapco Duracat! Or we will go to the 80M A&H reel or Proplex.

Anyone using the 120M cable successfully with the GLD80?

Bob

GLD80, AR2412, 2xAR84, Dante

2013/01/23 at 8:54 pm #32789

jonnyweston
Participant

Well…

My friend up the road uses the 120m A&H cable with no worries at all, and never really uses much more than about 90ft of cable at a time.

I myself have just today ordered

https://www.directcablesystems.com/site/product_details.php?section_id=8&sub_section_id=546&category_id=89

https://www.thomann.de/gb/pro_snake_8838550.htm

But after much questioning of both these guys @ £312 and Thomann @ £210 (delivered) I have discovered after a 45 minute long call with a thomann techie and much digging aboutbn his part…. that actually the above cables each are of more of less identical specification.

Neither cable are shielded nor do they have a protective braid on the cable – only a thicker PVC outer. On these two cables there’s nothing really special about them seemingly other than this.

I will let you know what I make of these cables but intend on giving it a full on test.

But I needed it for this weekend for a gig and did not have about £800 for the A&H option I am afraid (though it is awesome with the braid in it), and Thomann did not have the 75m or 100m in stock, and seemingly have this afternoon removed them each from the website. They were on the thomann site this morning before I called.

I wonder have thomann priced the pro snake too cheaply for the longer lengths and removed them pending review.

If I see they go up again, I am going to order one, in fact when cash flow gets a bit better I might order a 50m one anyway as I have two desks under my wings as such and two Dante cards.

All fun and games eh boys!!

A&H GLD80, AR2412 & Dante Card x 2
Korg M50, Novation SL25 MKII, Akai MPD26
Logic Studio 9, Reason 6.5, Ableton 8

2013/01/31 at 4:51 pm #32925

BobWitte
Participant

Update:

250 Feet of Duracat cable – no errors. This is for a customer for an event that we are live recording 16 rooms with three laptops on a Dante network. We will have an AR2412, AR84 and a second AR84 located from 100 to 250 feet away and run mic cables in the ceilings to them along with the four GLD local channels.

Duraat from RapcoHorizon may be what we try next at 300 feet.

Bob

GLD80, AR2412, 2xAR84, Dante

2013/02/05 at 6:10 pm #32982

BobWitte
Participant

UPDATE

The event went perfectly. I did reload the Firmware (reloaded the same version we had which is the lates) too after having problems with the A&H 120M cable. Will try the 120M cable again when we can get the mixer set up. I have a small hunch that possibly something else was wrong and the reload of the firmware fixed the problem.

quote:

Originally posted by BobWitte

Update:

250 Feet of Duracat cable – no errors. This is for a customer for an event that we are live recording 16 rooms with three laptops on a Dante network. We will have an AR2412, AR84 and a second AR84 located from 100 to 250 feet away and run mic cables in the ceilings to them along with the four GLD local channels.

Duraat from RapcoHorizon may be what we try next at 300 feet.

Bob

GLD80, AR2412, 2xAR84, Dante

Bob

GLD80, AR2412, 2xAR84, Dante
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