Audio over Ethernet

[PBuryk]

Greetings, All -

I was poking around the Internet earlier this morning, looking for some information on running audio over Ethernet
and came across this interesting workshop from 2013. It consists of a couple hour-long videos and covers a LOT of
information that I thought might be useful to others here, especially those who have or are thinking about upgrading
their studios to use CAT5/6 type cabling for various audio connections.

Cheers!
Patrick

Part 1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKp6AaIf42o&t=0s
Part 2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDX3DknLmv0

[PBuryk]

One particularly interesting piece of info is scrolled around 18:30 of video #2.
It describes issues using "ordinary" CAT5 cable with a Behringer X32, or Midas console.
Too bad the "hands-on" portion of the workshop was not video'd.

Cheers!
Patrick

[Scardanelli]

Surprising how fascinating the video is!

I use CAT5e for everything in my studio except raw audio.

DVI to CAT 5e converter box to send the monitor to the control room 20 metres from where the Mac Pro is (no fan / drive noise!)
USB to CAT5e convertor box same
and before I upgraded to Metric Halo 3D my Firewire interfaces were running through a Firewire to CAT 5e convertor box too. But now the Metric Halo interfaces plug directly into the Ethernet port on the Mac. 128 channels of audio down a CAT5e cable!

It was my intolerance of any background noise in the control room that led me to find the appropriate convertors for the USB, FW & DVI - now I moan about the minute residual hum of one of the power amps... If I ever build the corridor / annex then everything can go in a little bunker, but for now it works well.

[sunrat]

Audio over ethernet is quite popular in professional audio, particularly live concerts where Dante, Ravenna, or MADI is common. The venue I work at uses two Digico desks with audio over MADI and it's been rock solid. It's not always 100% reliable though; I went to a talk/Q&A with Paul McCartney's sound engineer Paul Boothroyd several years ago the night after a concert in Melbourne. Apparently the Dante network had failed and they had to fall back to analogue!

[bjohnh]

Reliability and configuration hassles are the main thing that have kept me from going the AOIP route. Everyone says AOIP is the future, but I guess it's not my future. I've been very tempted to get the Merging Anubis (the new "music mission" software will be released on 20 May) but after reading all the horror stories from users who suffered dropouts, incompatibilities, 4-hour help sessions with Merging to get things working, day-long reconfigurations after firmware updates, etc., I decided to stay away for now and revisit in 5 years to see if they get the bugs ironed out.

[Scardanelli]

Reliability and configuration hassles are the main thing that have kept me from going the AOIP route. Everyone says AOIP is the future, but I guess it's not my future. I've been very tempted to get the Merging Anubis (the new "music mission" software will be released on 20 May) but after reading all the horror stories from users who suffered dropouts, incompatibilities, 4-hour help sessions with Merging to get things working, day-long reconfigurations after firmware updates, etc., I decided to stay away for now and revisit in 5 years to see if they get the bugs ironed out.

You should really check out the Metric Halo 3D systems.

[DannyBoy]

Check out Motu AVB soundcards. Buy one AVB router and you are the king of routing via ethernet in your studio. Getting audio to work over ethernet without hassel is not always that easy. Thats why i did buy 2 x Motu AVB cards and the AVB router to route audio over ethernet with very low latency. I really like it because it is easy to set up via the AVB app.

[Frank]

Audio over ethernet is is a normal standard now. You have propriety protocols like Dante, Rednet and more  (expensive) and the industry standard : AVB/TSN =audio video bridge / time shared networking  ( Motu, Presonus ).

With a TSN there is a garanteed arrival time of the network packages.  Switches have to be able to deal with TSN protocol.


Setting up a network is a breeze. Plug in the devices, run discovery and you are done. With mutiple devices one has to decide wich one is the clock master.

With one simple device, like the Motu AVB light, one can service two machines : one with ethernet, one with USB or thunderbolt.

For more computers : an AVB switch ( like more Apple's)  , and or more Interfaces.

On apple an AVB interface gives 16 I/O channels. 
The ethernet cable can run lots of channels

For me it is a dream come true. All is web based. can control . setup on any machine in the net.. 

questions ?


Frank
[url=https://www.presonus.com/learn/technical-articles/An-Introduction-To-Avb-Networking][/url]