Dante & GigaAce through One Cat5

[IsidoreParticipant]

Hello people,

(To begin, sorry for my english i’m French)

I’m looking to buy a Dlive setup, including a CMD32 and a Dante 128 channel card and i want to control it with my laptop.
What i want to do is, by one cat5 cable, getting the control of the mixrack via GigaAce, and also getting Dante to send some Xlr input/output for (Talkback/House music/Pafl/Main out) the cat5 will go through an Rme digiface Dante. I will get the Pafl with the headphone out of the the Rme and in and house music/talk back and main out with a Allen heath DT22 interface

If you guys could helm me on this setup, i would be really happy!

Thankss!!

[RSParticipant]

There is one misconception in your plan. If you want to use a laptop for control, GigaAce is not the way to go. The laptop has to be connected to the network connector on the MixRack.

I run a surface less setup containing at StageRack: CDM32 (with Dante), 19″ effect unit, WLAN access point and at FoH: Computer with touchscreen, 2 x IP8, various Dante devices for INs/OUTs/Headphone all connected over one CAT cable for more then 6 years now. Works like a charm.

[Julian TinaoParticipant]

If you use the “internal network bridge” of the dante card switch on. Then you will have the dlive control acces from the dante card ports. So with 1 cable on the dante card you have both connections.
Also will have dante control on the gigaAce ports, BUT the gigaAce connection will filter the audio part of dante, you will have dante controller working, but no audio passing.

[BrianParticipant]

The Director software is literally just a “remote control” of the MixRack. The Director software does not handle any audio transmission and therefore “audio” is simply not part of the Director Software. In other words, the Director software does not need, nor does it support any audio transmission with the MixRack. This also means that unlike a actual Surface device, you do not need a GigaAce connection with the MixRack for your computer. Actually it is physically impossible to create a GigaAce link with a laptop because there is no GigaAce computer card or software/drivers. All you need to do is connect the laptop to the same computer network that the MixRack is connected to. That can be done in a variety of ways – WiFi, a hardwired network connection, or as Julian Tinao mentioned, a Dante connection where the Dante card has the “internal network switch” turned on, or is otherwise plugged into the same computer network as the MixRack via the Dante Control port on the Dante card. (The “internal network switch” simply makes this connection inside of the Dante card so that you don’t have to make two separate connections to the console’s Dante card).

That being said, you also don’t need to connect your computer to the Dante audio network unless you want to send Dante audio to/from the laptop. It is common that you might want to do this to multitrack record on the computer, or play back tracks from the computer on the MixRack, etc,. But if you don’t need Dante audio on the computer for some reason, there is no requirement that the computer connected to the Dante audio network. If you want to use Dante Controller to set up the Dante network, then obviously the computer will need to be connected to at least the Dante control port or the computer network that the Dante card is plugged into if the internal network switch on the Dante card is turned on.

Hopefully that helps explain the situation.

[IsidoreParticipant]

Thank you guys!

[Author]

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