GLD Dante Setup HELP

[MattParticipant]

Searched the forum, haven’t found exactly what I’m looking for.

We are going to be switching from ACE cards to Dante cards very soon. Mainly for multitrack recording and using click and tracks live. We have a GLD 112 at FOH and a GLD 80 for broadcast. FOH has dSNake and expanders and broadcast has an expander. I want to confirm: will Dante “see” all of my inputs and outputs from these varying snakes? Both consoles will need Dante cards correct?

Also, we are getting to ready to upgrade out old Aviom system to a ME-1 system. Aviom system is coming out of the monitor port on the FOH dSnake. This shouldn’t be affected by Dante because it’s separate correct?

[JeffParticipant]

Hi Matt,
We have the ACE cards as well with a FOH and Broadcast setup (both GLD-80’s), but have done some research into Dante. Yes, you need a Dante card on each GLD Mixer. The Dante cards operate exactly the same as the ACE cards as far as assignment, since you are doing the assigning to either card itself on the I/O page. When you assign output channels to an I/O Card, you are choosing from whatever sources are assigned to that desk. On the Dante side of things (i.e. in a Dante-equipped DAW or other Dante-equipped mixer), you will see available whatever sources are assigned to the Output ports of that devices I/O card. I.e., your Broadcast GLD sees whatever sources are available on the FOH GLD, depending on what you’ve assigned to them on the FOH GLD.

The ME-1 system comes out of the same Monitor port on the FOH dSnake stagebox and isn’t affected by the Dante change, as you do the assigning on the Monitor I/O page. Your list of sources may change though, so verify all of the assignments on the Monitor page are correct after switching over. Plus, you want to be sure to set the Monitor operating method from Aviom to ME-1 to take advantage of the addition 32 channels. Btw, you will love the ME-1 system. We switched over from Avioms to the ME-1’s when we upgraded to the GLDs and never looked back.

Hope this helps,
Jeff

[SteffenRParticipant]

I will add some stuff on the Dante side…

Since Dante is a network solution you are able to route every Dante input to every Dante output or split inputs to many outputs just with the routing to many destinations…
this makes it easy to add more devices to the network and make more I/O available on the system.

But you have to be aware that you will need a PC/MAC to assign the routing (that’s what the Dante controller is for).
Once your routing is established you don’t need the Dante controller anymore for regular use, but it’s a convenient tool for Dante monitoring as well.

I would suggest the use of a GBit switch to have the advantages of the network at hand instantly…
Now you are able to add more devices for playback or recording.
If you choose a POE switch you can add devices like the Neutrik 2×2 I/O or the Dante adapters with ease.
And even the integration of an additional computer for playback or recording is easy.

To make your dSnake inputs available on all positions in the network you need to assign them to the Dante cards in your GLD’s.
Keep in mind that you can control the preamps from the associated GLD only.

[GrahamFParticipant]

Thanks Steffen,

That’s really helpful input for me as well. Would you recommend Dante for this, rather than the Waves card. The Waves card seems to offer the possibility of adding extra sound effects, which could also be useful, but maybe it does not support the very flexible routing options that Dante does?

Thanks,

Graham

[BrianParticipant]

IF this is a double post, I apologize. My initial post is not showing up (even after refreshing the screen) and I wanted to copy the post while I still could. If my original post shows up eventually, then it will end up being a double post.

Original Post

The Dante card and the Waves card both distribute audio over a digital cable. There are pro and cons of each architecture however.
– Dante allows you to distribute that audio over the regular network system already in place.
– Waves cards need to be plugged into their own unique network (you might be able to leverage existing wiring as long as that wiring can be separated from the regular network).
– Dante is more “universal” meaning there are many more devices that can utilize the Dante scheme.
– Waves is required if you want to utilize the Waves Soundgrid Servers. The Soundgrid servers offer very low latency connections, but they are NOT the only way to use plugins, nor is it the only way to get very low latency connections.
– Dante cards tend to be more expensive than the Waves cards

– Both cards can be used to create a multitrack recording solution
– Both cards can be part of a system that allows the use of plugins (including Waves)

Our church recently moved from a basic X32 setup (without any Dante/Waves) to an Avantis console with a Dante card. We have set up a Windows machine running a DAW (Reaper) that allows us to use plugins. That being said, we aren’t trying to use a ton of plugins and primarily we use the Waves Tune Realtime plugin to auto-correct any small pitch issues with our singers. We also multitrack record everything in Reaper as well, along with a L/R mix of our FOH feed and a L/R mix of our streaming feed (incase we want to review those mixes in the future).

While the Dante card was more expensive, I think it is a better choice for our use. For example, in addition to the Windows machine, we have one of the Audinate USB Dante devices connected to a Mac Mini that the church uses for material that is distributed to our screens. If there is a video that needs to be played for example, that audio comes into the board via Dante instead of using adapters and the headphone jack. We have also connected a X32 Rack console via Dante (although it could have been done with Waves cards too) and we run our stereo IEM off that machine which takes a bunch of groups and outputs off our FOH board.

We considered a Waves card and honestly the functionality would be nearly the same with either card. The only thing we do currently that requires Dante is the Dante USB stick on the Mac Mini. But we could connect that computer to the console using the headphone jack just like we did with the X32 if we had a Waves card. In our case however, the ability to use the current network to distribute audio is much more flexible than having to have a unique Waves network set up and that is why we decided to go with the Dante system.

Many times people think that a Waves card only allows you to connect to a Soundgrid Server or that it is the only way to utilize plugins with a console. Neither of these is true and hopefully our use case helps you out.

[MattParticipant]

Thanks everyone for the replies! Very helpful.

[BrianParticipant]

I reread my post and I just wanted to clarify something. Both cards (Dante and Waves) can pass audio between devices that are connected with matching cards. So in my example, if we had gone with a Waves card instead of Dante, we could have put a Waves card in our X32 Rack console and distributed our IEM mixes to the X32 through that connection.

So really I should have posted this:
– Both cards can be used to create a multitrack recording solution
– Both cards can be part of a system that allows the use of plugins (including Waves)
– Both cards can pass audio between devices (Dante either 64 or 128 channels depending on the card, Waves is usually 128 channels) when cards are inserted into each device

And perhaps I should have added this in the “differences” section:
– Waves cards generally have 128 channel capacity
– Dante cards generally have 64 channel or 128 channel capacity depending on what card you purchase.

I will say that once you start passing audio to different devices using cards like this, the channel count can increase much faster than you think. We purchased a 64 channel card for the Avantis (because the 128 channel card is outrageously expensive) and I initially thought I would just send 32 channels for multitrack recording (we only have 32 input channels currently). Now we are at 46 channels and quickly heading towards the 64 channel max! I definitely think that getting a card that is 2x the total channel count you use is a smart thing.

Here is a list of our outputs
32 channels of inputs (to Windows machine for multitrack recording and also X32 Rack for EIM mixing)
4 channels (2x stereo) of mix outputs (for recording)
2 channels (stereo) to Mac Mini for recording (backup recording method – primarily for posting sermon online)
8 channels for vocal effect sends/returns (running plugins)
(This can grow even further if we decide to run more plugins as inserts)

Here is a list of our inputs
10 channels from X32 rack (expanding our input capacity because we only have one A&H stage box currently)
2 channels from Mac Mini
8 channels for vocal effect/returns
(This can grow even further if we decide to run more plugins as inserts)

We can also send 32 channels of multitrack playback for virtual sound check when needed. But that doesn’t occur during an event.

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