Dante Virtual sound card - Watchout Support?

[tobiasbecker]

Hi,

 

I have tried to install the Dante Virtual sound card on a WO display computer in April 2012.

The display computer had 2 physical ethernet ports on the motherboard.

One was used with a separate gigabit switch for the Watchout network exclusivly, the other one was used with a different gigabit switch for Dante.

 

WO IPs were 192.168.x.y

Dante IPs were 169.254.x.y (thats what they default to, its a feature not a missing DHCP).

Subnet mask on both interfaces was class b or c / 255.255.0/255.0.

 

So from a networking standpoint all WO traffic should have been routed to interface 1, and all Dante traffic should have been routed to interface 2.

 

For some reason at the time (I didn't had the time to investigate further) as soon as Dante was activated the display computers would not play in sync any more and there were occasional dropouts in the communication.

We then went back to a RME Fireface to playout the multichannel audio.

 

 

As Dante is now more common in the industry and multi channel application happen day to day with WO I was wondering if there are any plans to extend the support of Dante networking?

In this thread I already found a tool to assign Mono or Stereo files to specific output tracks, which is a good starting point to make the handling of multi channel audio files in the WO interface much easier ( http://forum.dataton.com/topic/2-is-there-a-possibility-of-multi-tracking-and-outputting-within-the-watchout/ ).

 

Has anybody tested the Virtual sound card with WO and found similar issues?

Wouldn't it be great if one could from within Watchout assign input and outputs channel to and from Dante?

 

More about Virtual sound card:

http://www.audinate.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=235

 

Thanks

Tobi

[Jonas Dannert]

Tobias,

 

you have to excuse my lack of knowledge here, but I've never heard of Dante at all.

So your claim that "Dante is now more common in the industry", is that a german market view?

 

/jonas

[Walter]

As far as I know, Dante is a multichannel standard intended for use as digital multicore, just like MADI, cobranet or aes50. (With the added benefit it works on standard ip networks). But as are those, it's not common as a source format, which is still mostly just analog (xlr/trs (un)balanced) or digital (aes/ebu). Never ran into a client stating it wanted to deliver Dante to my sound system ;-) So basically you would always need a (expensive) breakout box to supply the signals to the venue you're working in. (And there and then you could always make the necessary patching). Or in the rare situation the venue has a Dante interface in the mixer, you can make the patch there, so why would WO accommodate the patching in the software? ;-)

 

Anyway, don't think it's a good idea to implement a virtual soundcard in a WO system. Obvious network issues aside. But that's my personal opinion of course! Could you elaborate on the specific benefits? Or is it more like a "we do it because we can" kind of thing? ;-)

[Mike Fahl]

I would assume you can get this to work by arranging the interface used by WATCHOUT at the top of the interface list in Windows, which determines the default order of priority among interfaces. Presumably, the interface you use for your sound system is at the top of the list now, causing some WATCHOUT related traffic to take that route, resulting in failure to synchronize the computers in the cluster.

 

   http://levynewsnetwork.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/windows-7-default-internet-connection-choice/

 

Please give this a try and let us know if it helped.

 

Mike

[mitreklov]

Tobi

 

We have had some success with Dante virtual sound card and Watchout and indeed many other media severs. We have a sister sound company Dimension Audio who are using the Dante system extensively now and we have been working with them on testing our Watchout systems with Dante.

 

Mike is correct that if you get the network interface set up Dante and Watchout will play together well, we've seen and tested this in real world events.

 

Jonas, the dante system is affordable, implemented by multiple manufactures, extremely versatile and reliable all of which mean it is gaining favour in the corporate audio world and beyond. It's one of those systems that once you have used it you wonder what you did without it!

 

The major drawback with the Dante Virtual Sound Card is that at a Windows level Watchout can only access 2 of the potential 64 audio channels that Dante can offer.

 

When installing DVSC you have the choice of installing an ASIO or WDM driver. ASIO works with pro audio suites and supports unto 128 channels with a dedicated PCI card or 64 on an onboard NIC. However the ASIO driver is no good for Watchout as Watchout likes windows controlled devices. The WDM drivers offer 8 channels that present themselves as 4 stereo pairs. Windows only allows the selection of any one pair as the default output and that would be where Watchout would route audio to. 

Therefore to be able to use the eight Dante WDM driven channels Watchout would need some kind of audio routing facility to be able to map file audio files to the outputs. The channel allocation could just exist in the audio file itself but for this work Watchout needs to be able to access all the audio system devices.

 

I had a similar email conversation with Mike a couple of months ago so I'm interested to see if others may find this facility of use and it looks it might.

Mike, any further thought on this? 

Not forgetting that if Watchout could access all WDM type system audio devices then any audio interface that is handled by Windows could work in multichannel mode (if the hardware supports multiple channels of course).

 

Thoughts comments welcome.

 

Tim

[Hugo Janzen]

[Watchout 5.5.1]

 

Hi,

 

Has anyone of you successfully used a digital way of reproducing audio.

 

Dante is a well known digital network platform that could be of great value for Watchout.

 

I used multichannel wave file quite often and make them analog, using a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 for example, but my question is about your experience keeping audio signals digital.

 

Please respond,

 

 

 

Hugo

[jfk]

Yes, we had found an accessory sound card compatible with WATCHOUT 5 / Windows 7,

that output multi-channel digital audio signal (7.1 Optical & Coaxial S/PDIF),

but they have since been discontinued.

Accessory sound card Windows 7 and 8 support for WDM audio is shrinking.

 

When necessary, we add Ovation audio systems to WATCHOUT systems

to overcome WDM shortcomings. A bit of a pricey solution though.

[NNinja]

I have tested Dante Virtual Sound card (downloaded from audinate website and using a license I have) successfully for 2 channel audio. Unfortunately couldn't do the multichannel audio

[nikolai]

There are plenty of audio devices with digital output (?) We use RME cards, and you can choose to route to headphones or line out ,or MADI or AES.

Dante is cool, but I guess you would need a separate Network card or Dante card.

[Jonas Dannert]

AES/EBU is only digital 2-channel, right?

 

Hugo's question was about digital multichannel, any success there?

 

/jonas

[nikolai]

Jonas, ok just to clear thing up.

Well yes one AES/Signal is 2 channel but if you use something like RME HDSPe AES-32 you get 16 channels of audio. (Over 8 cables)

 

As far as I can see, Watchout is using directsound (Standard windows audio) so WO only sees the devices as standard windows audio devices.

A single hardware device (Like a madi card) will show up as mulitple devices in the windows control panel "Sound" window.

If the actual audio device output Analog, digital, or smoke signals should not make a difference to WO.

What matters is how WO uses multiple windows audio devices.

So, Dataton, how does Watchout use multiple audio channels, how does it choose what devices to use?

In v.6 I hope there is a dialog to let us choose MIDI devices and audio devices.

[Jonas Dannert]

As of now, multiple 2-channel devices will not work,

only a multichannel device will, AFAIK.

 

What happens in WATCHOUT version 6 is another matter...

 

/jonas

[jfk]

The selection of the audio device is done in Windows, and WATCHOUT uses whatever Windows presents as the currently selected audio device.

So theoretically, if windows allows you to select multiple Directsound audio devices, then WATCHOUT should have access to them.

I did not think Windows allowed multiple audio devices to be selected though 

[nikolai]

You are right on all points jfk.

So the way that other applications handle multichannel audio is to let the user select a number of devices/channels in the program it self. I have a feeling they'll get this sorted in v6

I dont know of any professional audio devices that present them self as a single multi channel device in windows.

[jfk]

... I dont know of any professional audio devices that present them self as a single multi channel device in windows.

 

True, but I do not know of any professional audio devices that uses WDM either,

they all use ASIO, which is a different can of worms. 

[mindopera]

I continue to be asked to add an extra network card in my machines for audio delivery using the Dante Virtual Card.   It would deliver sound as a digital source and no need to convert an analog signal.

Does anyone have any experience with this method and product using WO?  Is this a good idea to use this product with WO?   Is Dataton working on or testing this delivery method?

Thanks

[NNinja]

Hi

 

If you read the posts above - there are many people (including myself) that succeeded in using Dante Virtual Soundcard but only for 2 channel audio.

IMHO what Dataton should be working on is maybe implementing ASIO if possible so the multichannel capability could also be used.

 

But honestly for the moment I don't see any pros in using DVS over RME, MOTU or whatever other hardware solution.