Dante dropped audio from virtual sound card.

[Jtoney7852Participant]

I have been experiencing audio dropouts from a computer running virtual sound card. This was the same setup I had on a Behringer X32 and all we did was change out the console to the Dlive CDM48. The version 3 Dante card is located at the mix rack and not on the surface.

For the network it’s all layer 2 switches and everything is self-assigned IP addresses. This was how the network was set up prior to me being there so I have not changed anything.

Audinate told me that The issue comes from The Dante card on the console being an ipv4 problem. They said it was up to A&H to fix that. This was what they said at the NAB show last week when I asked about this problem. I showed them a photo of all of the card versions as well as the firmware and software versions and they pointed out all this information to me. It’s a known issue.

Has anyone experienced this issue before? Is there a solution for this? This is the playback computer that I’m using with propresenter so I need to get that working. No there is no latency issues or anything else that’s causing this and I can go from one computer to another on the same network and not have any audio dropouts.

[BrianParticipant]

Just to start with the basics:

Your DLive console should have it’s clock set to “internal”.
Your DLive Dante card should have it’s clock set to “enable sync to EXT” as well as have the “Preferred Master” option selected.
All other Dante devices should have the “Preferred Master” option not selected.

[Jtoney7852Participant]

Yes that’s already like that. I said all that up at the beginning.

[BrianParticipant]

What exactly did Audinate mean by IPV4 issue?

The only thing I can think of is maybe the A&H stuff doesn’t like dynamic IP addresses. A&H seems to uniformly recommend static IP addresses on all of their systems and perhaps it’s because they know there are some weird issues like this that can occur when using dynamic IP addresses. I think I would try static IP addresses (at least for the A&H equipment) to see if that fixes the issue.

[msteelParticipant]

This reminded me of a thread I read recently. It doesn’t really sound like what you describe, but it might be worth reading just in case, especially since it kind of sounds like the IPv4 known issue comment from Audinate. https://community.allen-heath.com/forums/topic/dhcp-leaking-with-dante-control-bridge-disabled

As far as automatic vs manual addresses, I am not aware of any issues with DHCP and either of the A&H Dante cards I use. I did have a situation where auto assigned IP addresses contributed to a problem with clicks and pops in Dante Virtual Soundcard. There were a lot of pieces to the problem, but the part relevant to addressing was that with a link local address, Windows identified the Dante interface as a “public” network. As a result Windows Defender was more aggressive with its packet inspection. Somehow the packet inspection was causing clicks and pops in Pro Tools, even though neither Pro Tools nor Dante Controller complained. After switching to static addressing, the interface became a “private” network and Windows was not so hyper.

[WassingueParticipant]

I had a few drops, with the DVS which was connected to the DANTE card of the MixRack (I/O port 1).
The problem was solved by setting the dLive clock on the DANTE card and assigning it a frequency of 48kHz.
In the Dante Controller, the master clock is fixed on the DANTE card.

all IP addresses are assigned automatically, no fixed IPs in my network.

[msteelParticipant]

I had a few drops, with the DVS which was connected to the DANTE card of the MixRack (I/O port 1).
The problem was solved by setting the dLive clock on the DANTE card and assigning it a frequency of 48kHz.
In the Dante Controller, the master clock is fixed on the DANTE card.

Yes, you must either clock the Dante card from the dLive (by setting “sync to external”) or else set the dLive to clock from the Dante card (in the Mix Rack audio settings).
If you do not, then the mixer and the card will run at slightly different rates, and periodically you will get clicks/pops/dropouts.

If clocking the Dante card from the dLive, then the Dante system will know that the card needs to also be the Leader Clock for the Dante network and Dante Controller will complain if there is some reason that cannot happen (for example if two Dante devices are synced to external).

If clocking the dLive from the Dante card, the card might also be the Leader Clock of the Dante system or it might follow another Dante Leader Clock and pass that clock along to the dLive.

[Author]

Posts