Dante Routing to and from Avantis for LiveTrax Recording and Playback

[Jeff]

Just got a Dante 64×64 card for my Avantis. Connected it to and from my laptop and have been successful recording with LiveTrax and using Virtual SoundCheck from same. No router or switch involved and the Dante patch is 1:1 between the mixer and computer both ways.

I wanted to redirect some channels using Dante patching with Dante Controller but don’t seem to have any luck with that even though the Dante patching table shows the change. E.g. – Patch mixer input channel 1 to computer (LiveTrax) input 20. Everything still goes between the mixer and computer as though the Dante patch hasn’t been changed. I must be doing something wrong. Any thoughts on this? (By the way, I know I can change the Avantis patch in Virtual SoundCheck but want to try this method out as well. It could help me down the road and improve my understanding of Dante patching.)

Thanks in advance for spending some of your bandwidth helping me.

[SteffenR]

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you are trying to do.
You can’t patch inputs to inputs.

[Brian]

There are three places you have to patch Dante audio: in the console via the I/O card slot, in Dante Controller software, and at the “end point (Harrison LiveTrax in this case). You need to set up input and output routing at all three locations.

While there is no set rules for this routing, personally I ALWAYS leave the Dante Controller routing set 1:1. The makes Dante Controller a “pass through” device when it comes to routing. It simply takes the routing it is given and sends it on without alteration. This is the most desirable thing to do because Dante Controller is the last place people are going to look for routing issues. Setting it as 1:1 routing will ensure that any routing problems in the future are not the result of something being done in Dante Controller. Setting it up like this also allows you to set it up once and then “forget” about it because there should be no changes occurring in Dante Controller. Any routing changes should be done at the “ends” of the audio chain, not the middle.

Typically I would also leave the routing in the console set to 1:1 unless there is some special situation where I need to change the default routing going out to EVERY Dante device. Again, channel 1 in the console is always going to be channel 1, there is no need to start complicating things at this end by changing the I/O routing to something other than 1:1 IMHO.

This leaves most routing changes to be handled at the “end points”. If you want to have channel 1 from the console going to input 20 in LiveTrax, and have output 20 of LiveTrax go back to input 1 on the console, then set this routing up in LiveTrax (both the input and output side). This also seems to be the most logical place to do it IMHO because your “weird channel order” is only found in LiveTrax. Everywhere else it should still be set to the default 1:1 routing. For example, input 1 is still input 1 in the console’s I/O routing and in Dante Controller. It’s only in LiveTrax that you need to change input 1 to input 20 (for whatever personal reason you need to set it up like that), and therefore the routing change should ONLY be done in LiveTrax.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[Brian]

PS – I guess I should clarify that there are sometimes when you might need to handle routing at the Dante Controller level…. That’s for devices that don’t have the ability to change routing at the endpoint. For example, I don’t think the Dante Avio adapters have any GUI interface that you can change the routing in. In this case, the Dante Controller software is effectively the “end point” routing for these devices and you’ll be forced to utilize it to make changes to the default routing scheme if needed.

However, for any endpoint that does have a GUI where you can change the audio routing, I would absolutely leave Dante Controller set to 1:1 on these devices to ensure it only acts as a “pass through” device for these types of connected devices.

[Jeff]

Just wanted to post this clarification to Steffen’s comment:

Yeah, I expected that wording would seem wrong. Avantis sends its input signal to LiveTrax, clearly via a Dante channel output to the computer. I could have done better. Does that clarify the situation?

And I should have referred to the Dante connections as ‘subscriptions’ for clarity, rather than ‘patches’.

[Jeff]

Brian – Thanks for the responses. All are sage points about where to do the patching to reroute signals, which I will follow. However, I’m still left with the general question as to why changing the Dante subscriptions seemed to be ineffective. This is somewhat just a point of curiosity for me, and to be sure I CAN tweak the Dante subscriptions if I need to for some reason in the future. Just want to know how to use my tools successfully.

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