DANTE Hardware Question

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This topic contains 9 replies, has 7 voices, and was last updated by Profile photo of Biggsounds Biggsounds 11 years, 7 months ago.

Viewing 10 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
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  • #23259
    Profile photo of Andy
    Andy
    Participant

    Hello everybody,

    I’m planning purchasing the DANTE card for my iLive (T112+iDR48).

    I’m thinking of using a refubished Thinkpad (Windows XP professional)with a solid state drive for the OS and a good external harddisc for the recording.

    Is this agood solution, or is it better to use a new notebook with Windows7 ?

    Can anybody tell me dhe pros and cons of both solutions?

    Thank you very much.

    Andy

    #31175
    Profile photo of Stix
    Stix
    Participant

    How many tracks do you want to record and what software do you plan to use? I use a MacBookpro with logic and so far have been fine recording direct to the internal 7200RPM drive although I have only needed to record around 24 tracks.

    Cheers

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

    #31178
    Profile photo of Geddy
    Geddy
    Participant

    Hello Andy,

    first of all, using DANTE for multitrack recording with iLive is a good choice. This works fine and reliable for me from early availability.

    In my point of view you have to deal with two limitating factors, which is
    – CPU/Memory resources of hardware vs. modern DAW software and OS demands
    – USB transfer rate and HDD speed vs. channel count

    New ProTools, Cubase, Nuendo -Version need WIN7 to run. But the latest Version of Reaper runs fine with WinXP, and doesnt need that much CUP/MEM resources as others do.

    32+ Channels via USB2 could get a critical path if the HDD is slow (5400rpm), the HDD-controller firmware is bad, etc.

    You need a minimum of 1,1MByte/s transfer rate at 24Bit/48kHz sampling rate.
    USB 2.0 in theory transfers 480MBit/s = 60MByte/s, sound like it can handle 50 channel.

    Long story short, USB 2.0 works fine up to 32 channels with a couple of USB2.0 external HDD’s.

    For more channels check USB 3.0 or eSATA and a up to date HW.

    I’m running MacBook Pro’s with external FW800 HDD’s up to 54 channels with Reaper, Nuendo/Cubase without any problems.

    But Dante is great, it’s so easy to set up more PC to the network you can use as fault tolerant or hot spare recorder, playback systems, virtual sound checks,…

    Cheers

    Gunter

    Günter Eisbach
    dL-Recording
    Darmstadt / Germany

    #31180
    Profile photo of Nicola A&H
    Nicola A&H
    Keymaster

    Hi Andy,

    I wouldn’t recommend XP for high channel count recordings with Dante. We’ve never managed more than 32 channels of simultaneous recording/playback with XP and were told it’s due to the way XP handles network data. Although XP is officially supported by Audinate, our experience suggests Windows 7 and OS X are much better performers where Dante is concerned.

    quote:


    Originally posted by GuenterEisbach

    You need a minimum of 1,1MByte/s transfer rate at 24Bit/48kHz sampling rate.
    USB 2.0 in theory transfers 480MBit/s = 60MByte/s, sound like it can handle 50 channel.


    24bit 48kHz is 1.152Mbit/s (144kB/s)- theoretical USB2 transfer rate should cope with hundreds of channels. In reality, the USB bus might be shared with other peripherals, the OS & USB driver don’t allow full transfer rate, and as Gunter pointed out, HD speed and driver quality are additional bottlenecks. Even expensive hard disks cannot quite reach the full data transfer rate of the protocol they use. For more than 32ch I would invest in a good, reliable drive. We’ve tested the LACIE Little Big Disk Quadra (specs are 30-35MB/s over USB2 and 75-85MB/s over FW800, both figures burst read rate at maximum drive speed) with up to 32 channels continuous recording over USB2 and 64 channels over FW800.

    I hope this helps

    Nicola
    A&H

    #31183
    Profile photo of tk2k
    tk2k
    Participant

    I think somehting everyone is missing is the access speed of the external hard drive. A single drive will usually not break 60MBps in an external configuration. That means at 1.15 MBps you are limited to 32 channels.

    So, this is where a two drive raid array, or an external solid state drive, might make some sense. If you’re thinking of recording one show ‘on site’ then trasnferring data and editing offline, you could very easily get away with a smaller sized SSD.

    On the whole FW vs USB. usb sucks because it’s not an error checking protocol. Firewire has redundancy built in, and makes sure every data bit gets to the hard drive. This is why it was the pro standard (and still is honestly) for recording interfaces. Dante has mimicked a bit of what firewire does in their software protocol, but honestly you want a firewire 800 external hard drive for recording.

    Look for drive access time, with multitrack recording you are doing a lot of switching between multiple tasks. Large buffer on the hard drive itself will help with this as well.

    If you have the money, get a server grade hard drive, multitrack recording is very similar to high density database systems.

    #31185
    Profile photo of clarocque
    clarocque
    Participant

    +1 for FW800

    I recorded 40+ hours in 4 days at a Festival using 46 channels via a FW800 Glyph drive and redundantly to FW OWC drive (via DANTE). One machine was Mac Book Pro and one was Mac Mini.

    My recent tests of SDD drives supported recording 64 tracks while playing back 191 for 3 hours straight. This was with a mac mini, FW800 SDD drive sitting in a dock (for testing purposes) with Logic.

    I really did not see any benefit when I compared to real life applications using our eSata set up.

    T112, iDR48, M-DANTE, PL10, MixPad, Editor
    MacBook Pro, Mac Mini
    Lion/Logic Pro
    All latest versions/firmware

    #31241
    Profile photo of Biggsounds
    Biggsounds
    Participant

    I’ve had nothing but dramas running a Win7Pro ASUS laptop with Dante – it’s just too hit & miss… I’ve just been pricing today a Mac MINI with a small SSD drive for the program drive & either the stock 500gb 7200 drive or possibly a 1TB internal drive as the tracking drive. I’ve also just borrowed a friends Mac Mini to try out for stability, and am currently monitoring the resulting playback for errors (32 channels in, returning 32 channels to the rack)… sounds rock solid so far!
    I tracked it for 3 hours with 32 channels armed via Presonus’ ‘Capture’ software… I’m thinking this will be a lot less demanding on RAM than any DAW for basic live capture purposes?
    Anyone else want to put in their 2cents on the Presonus software for Dante use?

    Adam Biggs
    T80 surface & iDR48
    MixPad for iPad & Tweak for iPhone apps
    Asus N61 Laptop (x2 wireless)
    Windows 7 Pro 64bit
    with Belkin PlayMax N600 HD router
    Dante card tracking into Reaper with playback via FooBar

    #31242
    Profile photo of tk2k
    tk2k
    Participant

    quote:


    Originally posted by Biggsounds

    I’ve had nothing but dramas running a Win7Pro ASUS laptop with Dante – it’s just too hit & miss… I’ve just been pricing today a Mac MINI with a small SSD drive for the program drive & either the stock 500gb 7200 drive or possibly a 1TB internal drive as the tracking drive. I’ve also just borrowed a friends Mac Mini to try out for stability, and am currently monitoring the resulting playback for errors (32 channels in, returning 32 channels to the rack)… sounds rock solid so far!
    I tracked it for 3 hours with 32 channels armed via Presonus’ ‘Capture’ software… I’m thinking this will be a lot less demanding on RAM than any DAW for basic live capture purposes?
    Anyone else want to put in their 2cents on the Presonus software for Dante use?

    Adam Biggs
    T80 surface & iDR48
    MixPad for iPad & Tweak for iPhone apps
    Asus N61 Laptop (x2 wireless)
    Windows 7 Pro 64bit
    with Belkin PlayMax N600 HD router
    Dante card tracking into Reaper with playback via FooBar


    +1 for the mac, core audio is just a better framework then ASIO.

    For me, stability is of highest importance.

    That being said, other than system resource concerns, you should treat your DAW just like any other DAW. I can’t think of any reason it’d treat the Dante input any different than any other audio input. I’ve had good luck with Logic, but again it’s really just a question of ‘what software do you use’

    #31248
    Profile photo of Biggsounds
    Biggsounds
    Participant

    I ran tests at 32+32 (3hrs solid tracking) & 48+48 (1hr) Dante streams last night – not a glitch using a standard configuration… planning to order a Mac Mini server today!!!

    Adam Biggs
    T80 surface & iDR48
    MixPad for iPad & Tweak for iPhone apps
    Asus N61 Laptop (x2 wireless)
    Windows 7 Pro 64bit
    with Belkin PlayMax N600 HD router
    Dante card tracking into Reaper with playback via FooBar

    #31259
    Profile photo of Biggsounds
    Biggsounds
    Participant

    So I was just about ready to jump on the Mac Mini when the friend who had lent me his reminded me to check compatibility with the new OSX Mountain Lion – after much hassling about I’ve had the chance today to check DVS & Controller on a Mac running the new OSX & it didn’t seem to blip, then I had an email from Audinate this afternoon to this effect:

    “Mountain Lion testing is going well in the lab. It is not officially supported yet but in reality should be no significant issues.”

    Anyway, that’s one less headache for those considering upgrading!

    Adam Biggs
    T80 surface & iDR48
    MixPad for iPad & Tweak for iPhone apps
    Asus N61 Laptop (x2 wireless)
    Windows 7 Pro 64bit
    with Belkin PlayMax N600 HD router
    Dante card tracking into Reaper with playback via FooBar

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