GLD + Dante + MultiRack?

[Exit21Steve]

Hello, anyone out there been able to use Waves MultiRack with the Dante card on a GLD 80? I’ve been able to get it patched so I’ve got signal to and through the Multirack but I’m lost on how to route it back as a true insert on a single channel. To be honest, I’ve yet to really grasp the whole In and Out concept used on this desk/Dante. Nothing out there I can find that explains it well. If I can get some help I’d be happy to create a document and post it. Anyone? https://www.waves.com/mixers-racks/multirack

[TobyDE]

Unfortunately I cannot answer your question. Just have experience with the Waves card and SoundGrid. But I have a question: do you use the Dante virtual sound card or the dante pci card? How about latency without a SoundGrid server? Does it work well for live processing?

Best regards
Toby

[Nicola A&H]

Hi Steve,

To route Insert sends / returns via the I/O Port you have to use the channel Processing / Insert screen. Choose the desired I/O Port (Waves) output and input, for example the attached picture shows Waves out 1 as the Insert send and Waves in 1 as the Insert return for Channel 1. In Multirack you would then configure a rack to use In 1 mono and Out 1 mono.

Hope this helps.

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[Exit21Steve]

Toby, I’m using the Dante Virtual Sound card (DVS). Looks like Nicola has the answer I’m looking for so I will let you know on the latency.

[Exit21Steve]

Nicola! Thanks man!! I feel a little silly that I couldn’t figure that out myself. Probably another case of “READ THE MANUAL”. I will make good on my offer to put a doc together on using this with MultiRack Native. Assuming it actually works I guess.

[Nicola A&H]

The overall roundtrip latency will be dependant on a number of settings including:
– The Dante Latency set in the DVS panel (default is 10ms, min value 4ms depending on system performance) – more on this in the DVS User Guide.
– On a Windows PC, the ASIO Latency set in the DVS panel / ASIO.
– The buffer size. On a Windows PC this is usually dictated by the driver (again under DVS / ASIO). On a Mac this is typically controlled by the host application (DAW request buffer size).
– The processing latency of the plugins, shown here in samples.

Finding the right balance requires some trial and error but even with the best computer you will still have several ms of latency (I couldn’t get below 5.3ms each way on my MBPro). This might be acceptable in a live application for FoH use, provided you delay compensate all correlated channels to avoid comb filtering (by routing them all into Multirack and using the software group delay features). For applications where low latency and reliability are critical you should really look at the M-Waves card together with a SoundGrid Server.

Hope this helps.

[Ana]

Hi, i use a setup like this. My hardware includes 2xGLD80’s with dante cards, Focusrite Rednet PCI, Focusrite Rednet 3 for a 32 channel snake, and a system running DVS.

It allows me to have 96 mix channels and insane amounts of DSP. I use this setup for theatre, one GLD for the band and the other for mics and master matrix outs etc etc.

As far as latency, you need the pci card for sure, i made a detailed analysis of the latency steps in this post on the prosound web forums here: https://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php/topic,141889.msg1367870.html#msg1367870

The latency of DANTE trumps the waves system for sure, and allows for much more integration of 3rd party hardware.

Hope that helps

Ben

[Exit21Steve]

Thanks Ben, I checked out your post. So if I read it right, besides buffer settings the key factor in your setup is the Dante/RedNet PCI card? I’m using a Mac Mini (fastest I could get about 6 moths ago) so I don’t have the option for a PCIE card unfortunately. I’m just hard wired between my GLD and the Mini with DVS so there is no external switching or routing in the picture here. Just FYI, I”m using the Mini b/c I want this whole thing to be very portable.

I was playing around with the Waves MultiRack app and had all kinds of odd noise, not really pops and clicks but more like scratchy noise. I suspect I could have tweaked some buffers or ?? and cleaned that up but didn’t have time. Just for the heck of it I routed a track through PreSonus Studio One (V2) with the same plugins and had no problems with noise at all, very clean. There was some latency and it was just barely noticeable. That setup would likely work OK for live but not monitors but I would have to figure out a way to delay all of the tracks to match the ones with plugging. I guess I could route all of the tracks through Studio One or ProTools but that seems like a lot of added failure points for a live rig. Am I being too picky there? At that point I had to get back to working something else and my trial ran out. I’m glad you told me all this because I had come to the conclusion I should get the Waves card in my GLD but maybe what I really need is a computer with the Dante PCIE card.

Another thing I observed while trying this out was it seemed like the whole setup with MultiRack was very fragile. At one point I turned off the DVS for a second to make a change and this put the whole rig into a hideous loop, good thing I had the PA turned down or I might have been replacing drivers, it was terrible! That really concerns me for live use, I wonder what else could trigger this?

Anyway, I had promised to write up an instruction document when I got this working but it doesn’t look like I’m going to be able to do this with my current rig. Too bad, I’m not about to pay triple for every Waves plugin and the DigiGrid stuff. I guess I understand Waves thought process with those prices but that doesn’t work for me. So at this juncture, the whole idea goes to the back burner. : (
Unless someone has a suggestion anyway.

[Ana]

If you want to use a daw for this application, Ableton live would be the go. There was an article in SOS in Aus about this, the engineer for the Sydney Opera house uses Ableton live to host the plugins he wants to use for the orchestra, controls the plugins via lemur and its running from an SD7.

Noise can occur when there is a clocking problem on the Dante network, typically setting the GLD to source its clock from the Dante Card, rather than internally is the best option. I clock my entire Dante network with a Black Lion Micro Clock via the Rednet 3, and the Dante clock monitor shows absolutely 0 variation in the clock offsets for each device.

Make sure your sample rate is set at 48khz as well, and also if the cpu is overloading you will get these artifacts due to dropped samples and multirack clearly shows cpu overload at the top when this happens. increasing the i/o buffer significantly reduces the load on the CPU. On my pc i am able to run about 150 power hungry plugins before it overloads on a 32 i/o, but it is top of the range hardware. I imagine the mac mini would be capable of far less.

Multirack is solid as a rock if everything is up to date, it is extremely well programmed and will let you know when you are out of processing power to add more plugins. There are also more and more software programs propping up written for this application that are not limited to waves plugs, and a google search will reveal these.

I had the looping issue for a particular version of Rednet pci Drivers. Typically on a mac, two or more different programs can access the same inputs from a device, however with one driver version when a second program attempted to access the inputs from the pci card it would create a loop. However newer drivers fixed this issue. I record the same inputs as the waves multiracks use, so Logic and Multirack share the same inputs.

The other option is that the Rednet pci card is compatible with certain thunderbolt pcie enclosures. There is no sacrifice in latency as the thunderbolt port is in essence an extension of the pcie bus of the motherboard.

Multirack has delay groups to maintain even latency between certain channels, despite all having different plugins and different amounts of sample delay. It simply moves them all to the largest delay.

Perhaps look at other software that hosts non waves plugins, but still with the dante back bone. Dante is easily the best audio over IP architecture and is quickly been adopted by many manufacturers. I was at the same juncture when choosing between the waves card and Dante years ago, and Dante has proven all ready to be the more future proof option. Have a look at the Audinate website at how many manufacturers use dante, and they all work together no questions asked.

Hope that helps

Ben

[prophet_id]

Hi Nicola, can you please share the I/O page setting look like?

Thank you!

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