Dante virtual sound card vs USB lattency

[Nemydom]

Hi A&H, I need your advice. If I buy a dante card to use it with my pc over Dante virtual sound card, will I get any benefits over using USB connection?
If there is latency improvement, could you please provide the numbers as well as some comments, as I am not that experienced to understand the numbers only.
Any other benefits to use this connection over USB? I am intrested in everything: recording, playback, using plugins on pc, and doing all these three at the same time. …and how else One could use SQ DANTe card plus the virtual sound card combo? Some examples would be nice.
Thanks

[KeithJ A&H]

@Nemydom

It’s not possible to provide a single figure for latency due to it being highly dependent on your specific setup (e.g. computer and host/processing you might be running signal through) and settings (e.g. buffer sizes).
Relatively though, the latency you would experience with a Dante card and Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS) would be similar to that which you’d get using the built-in USB-B interface.
This is because although the Dante card/network can run at very low latency, DVS adds quite a bit.
Hence why users like Dylan Mitrovich ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEq_B5Vhw4I and https://www.facebook.com/AllenHeathofficial/videos/486799352333242 ) are using Dante PCIe cards which will allow for a far lower latency than running DVS with your computer’s network card.

The main benefits of using Dante compared to USB-B (without a low latency Dante interface to your computer) are:

• Connection to other Dante enabled equipment
• Sending and receiving audio over long distances
• Higher channel count – The Dante card is 64×64 compared to USB-B which is 32×32, though note that when running at 96kHz, DVS channel count is 32×32.

To answer the extra question you sent to us separately (for anybody else who may be wondering).

“Also would it be realistic to connect sq to two computers at the same time, one over usb and the other one via dante vsc? Asking as with the recent AKAI mpc update I want to be able to use SQ as a class complient interface with my MPC and record via dante vsc to my pc at the same time.”

Yes, you can indeed use the USB-B interface (which is class compliant) and Dante at the same time. You can even use Tie Lines to patch between the two of them without using up any input/output processing channels. 🙂

Thanks!
Keith.

[Nemydom]

Thanks for your response Keith. That makes sence. I have seen what Dylan is using – great video.

After you confirmed what I already suspected (DVS does add significant latency), I have another question:
What about RME Digiface Dante USB3 interface? Would it be similar to a PCI dante card?
Thanks

[KeithJ A&H]

@Nemydom

RME do achieve very low latency in their USB interfaces, so I imagine you would be closer to the PCIe setup than the DVS setup.
As you mentioned in the other message that you might not be using Dante for any other connections (at this time?) though and seem to be looking more for the lowest possible latency – you might also want to look into the Waves or MADI option cards too.

Thanks,
Keith.

[Nemydom]

Thanks Keith

[Brian]

Here is my unscientific thoughts. Running Dante out of a I/O card into a computer running DVS software results in latency times about 1/2 of running through a USB connection. Running Dante out of a I/O card into a computer running a PCI Dante card results in latency times about 1/2 of running through DVS software.

While I haven’t had access to a Dante PCI card myself, I’ve found (and read other people’s reports) that USB latency times are generally 12-15ms, Dante to DVS latency times are generally 6-8ms, and Dante to Dante PCI card latency times are generally 3-5ms.

Obviously these times will be different depending on the equipment/setup used, but hopefully that gives you a basic idea of what the different latency times might be.

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