DANTE OR WAVES

[U-ngoParticipant]

Hi all, im new to these forum but alls well. i wanted to ask which would be best between the Dante and Waves add on cards for my D-Live c3500. I do lots of FOH and live recordings with this console on tour and at an installation.
2ndly is it posible to have a split between the D-live and a QU console i.e One for FOH and the other for stage mix?
A quick responce will help

[ShowtimeParticipant]

Waves3 is 96khz Dante with letterbox is 48khz.

Best options is a waves3 in the console and a giga ace card in the stagerack.

With a giga ace card you can split to a sq console, qu is digital with dlive not possible

Richard

[U-ngoParticipant]

Which is better for multi track recording. Waves pluggins are costly..so if i had the dante on the console and giga ace on the stage rack i still cannot do a split to qu from the dlive?

[U-ngoParticipant]

I also forgot i also use me-1s

[ArtParticipant]

Which is better for multi track recording. Waves pluggins are costly..so if i had the dante on the console and giga ace on the stage rack i still cannot do a split to qu from the dlive?

The current Dante card is 64 channels @ 48kHz. The current Waves card is 128 channels @ 96kH. Do you want to record at 48Khz or 96Khz? If 48K, it doesn’t matter unless you’re going to be recording more than 64 channels.

Because you have to use the adapter for the Dante card, it will cost you more.

One other advantage of the Waves card is that you don’t have to purchase any plugins for it to work. But if you decide down the road that you want to, you’ve already got the card.

Art

[WolfgangParticipant]

there is no “this is only possible” here.
you have to decide what you want to achieve.
the colleagues have already given good tips.
first of all you have to clarify which sample rate you want to have.

you are relatively free to decide whether the cards should be installed in the mixrack or in the surface.
i have e.g. a MADI and a Dante card, both are in the mixrack. for recording i use two computers (because of backup), one of them has a MADI card and is built into the mixrack, the other one has a Dante DVS and is at the FOH.

[ThatComplicatedMidiGuyParticipant]

For me, on the recording side it boils down to – do I want to burn the disk space required for 96k? Does it sound that much better than 48k? That is an argument that is hashed out over and over in all kinds of forum. I personally can’t think of a good reason to record at 96k, but there are folks who will fight you tooth and nail on that.

Concerning DSP – Latency-wise, it’s pretty negligible between waves and Dante, although 96k is technically faster in terms of overall send/return latency. It also depends on how you have your Dante network configured. Dante is also significantly more compatible with… everything. My understanding is with the latest Dante firmware update, Brooklyn II chips are now fully AES67 compatible, meaning you could theoretically even use it to bridge non-dante i/o that also complies with the spec.

In my own workflow, I also really like that I’m not tied to SoundGrid for processing. While there is some argument for redundancy in a SoundGrid system, the plugs and hardware are all typically more costly to implement. Live Professor, on the other hand, only costs $70, runs w/ as low latency as your machine/io can handle, and allows you to use any AU/VST plugins you already own, including Waves. I’ve been using it consistently for well over a year with zero failures (a kill switch just in case,) including sessions that are heavy in processing while *also* running other software in the background, such as Reaper for multitrack, Ableton for show triggers, Osculator Etc. All on a 2012 Mac Mini w/ 8gB ram. For FOH I do use a Rednet PCIE to keep overall latency in the uSec range, but you can definitely, *definitely*, get away with using DVS if you can tolerate 8ms round trip on a DSP path.

[Jens-DroesslerParticipant]

Actually it’s easy. There will be a new Dante card soon which will support 96kHz as well. So it boils down to this: If you want to connect additional audio devices in the future, like amplifiers, wireless mics and so on, it needs to be Dante. If you’re thinking of adding Waves plugins in the future (even the small server with a nice live plugin pack isn’t even that expensive. The card is more expensive than it…), well, it should be the Waves card then. Recordingwise both can do the same. If none of those apply to you, just let the price decide.

[JayParticipant]

I use both Waves and Dante on almost every show.

Dante has laptops for Smaart & show control/timecode (DVS), video playback (samples, click, timecode), an I/O device and an S5000 along with redundant switches. Sometimes I pick up house Dante for output. I plug it in and it all just works with all I/O ports labeled. The most I touch here is any house routing.

Waves is used just for recording. Single point-to-point cable. Reboot the laptop (driver won’t connect if it didn’t go to sleep right), start Soundgrid Studio, pick the right interface, load the configuration then load Tracks Live and test to make sure I have audio.

Dante just works for a given configuration once built. Waves requires you know what you are doing every time and how to troubleshoot.

The only thing that will mandate Waves is if you need to record more than 64 channels.

Jay

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