Tio 1608-D Dante Setup Help Needed

[elcornell]

Hey guys. I am in the midst of rebuilding one of my motu/focusrite sac rigs to a dante setup using Yamaha 1608-D Pres and a focusrite dante network card (rednet pcie). I have the dante network working well, everything shows it is synced and stable. But, when I go in to sac and select the Asio Rednet PCIe device and go to audio device setup there is nothing assigned. When I attempt to assign something there are no choices. What am I missing? I have set up about a dozen other systems of various interface types and not had this issue. Any ideas?

[Bob L]

Did the focusrite driver install complain about anything... are you running Win 7, 8 or 10... Focusrite does not have XP drivers.

Bob L

[Enrico]

...very intresting. I'm due the same setup switch in next days, from a couple of Motu 24i to Dante and Yamaha Tio1608. Did you tried with the built-in network adapter and Dante Virtual Soun Card? I dont'know if Dante Vitual Souncard is ir required with Focusrite Rednet pcie adapter too... Have you tried the outputs with some other DAW on the same PC ?

[elcornell]

Actually, I just found the issue. The firmware in the focusrite pcie card needed to be updated. Got it up and running burning in. So far very stable and sounds good. I will do the official roll out in a couple of weeks when I have time to install it.

[elcornell]

...very intresting. I'm due the same setup switch in next days, from a couple of Motu 24i to Dante and Yamaha Tio1608. Did you tried with the built-in network adapter and Dante Virtual Soun Card? I dont'know if Dante Vitual Souncard is ir required with Focusrite Rednet pcie adapter too... Have you tried the outputs with some other DAW on the same PC ?

I did try to install the virtual sound card on this computer and another but it failed to install. I sent a message to audinate with the log file to see if they have any ideas. But I updated the focusrite pcie firmware (there were two files included in the Rednet control download). The second one worked and everything is working very well now. Burning it in and testing but remote control with the R Remote software is great and honestly is sounds very good.

[Enrico]

Glad you solved with firmware update elcornell!
But the fact that Virtual Souncard won't install on some machine of yours... it's not a good news. Maybe a little OT, but I'm at the first experience with Audinate, ad I decided to use Virtual Soundcard with my default network adapter, without Rednet pcie card. It's very priced and I'm on laptop. So a question: what kind of effective features does a Focusrite Rednet card (900$) add to a Dante system, instead of a cheap 15$ Gygabyte network adapter? Neither Audinate or Focusrite seems to clarify this question.

[Wurst Werner]

You need a DANTE PCIe card, when going with low latency. If I remeber correctly the fastest setting on the Dante VSC is 128Samples only.

[RBIngraham]

Dante Virtual Sound Card can not be used with either the TIO or RIO boxes directly as your audio interface. Neither TIO or RIO can act as the Dante Master clock and neither does DVS. You would have to put some other device into the system to act as the master clock. The cheapest solution I know about would be the Yamaha TF series console with the add on Dante card. But that is far more expensive than just buying one of the Dante PCIe card options. (there are other suppliers than Focusrite by the way, but they are all made by Audinate and essentially the same thing)

Anyway you can not just hook up Dante I/O boxes directly to DVS unless they can act as the master clock and most do not. Also the PCIe card take a lot of the load of processing the packets away from the computer. That is what allows the PCIe card to run low at low latencies and DVS does not. DVS is NOT a suitable solution for live mixing. I don't remember the numbers any more but it adds significant amounts of latency when you stream to and from it. Impractical for live mixing. Works just fine for recording and playback needs but it's not something you want to use for anything that needs to be as close to real time as possible.

Also, keep in mind that if you're only going to use a couple of boxes and one computer that $15 GB Switch will likely suffice. However if you want to run many dozen channels or more importantly you want to have other network traffic on the same switch or network (in other words you're not using a dedicated switch just for Dante with a few devices) you are going to want to get yourself a switch that is a little bit higher end than your typical $15 model. You'll at the very least want something that can handle QOS messaging on the network so the Dante packets take priority over other network data. And you should keep an eye on the data throughput limit of the switch in total. Just because it's a gigabit switch and each port is capable of a gigabit connection doesn't mean that the switch's processor is capable of processing full duplex gigabit data flows from every port all at once. That is why good switches cost more than $15.

That doesn't mean it won't work with the cheap switch. And there is no harm in trying either. But a modest 10 port Cisco 300 series doesn't really cost that much and it will handle hundreds of channels of audio routing all over the place. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Granted it all depends on what your needs are.

If you're making the leap to Dante just remember all the extra pieces and what those are going to cost you to do it right. This is why my system is still based on MOTU 24 I/Os and other Audiowire I/O boxes. Even with relatively inexpensive Dante I/O units coming out, it's still just a bit too rich for the budgets I'm working on. Of course I already have a bunch of Aviom Pro 16 stuff for a digital snake.

Something to think about....

[Enrico]

...very bad news.
On Yamaha website there are no specs about the Master Clock of Tio system, and reading Audinate DVS technical sheet there aren't references to the capability to drive Dante devices without on-board master clock. Everything it's explained "between the lines", in my opinion... Thanks to RBinghram who clarify the whole situation with rednet card and switches.
I scheduled a big update of signal format for live sound and for the recording studio too... but with these detailed news I confess the leap make me a little scared.
Following Audinate's philosophy my thought was to buy a cost-effective solution to carry out audio signal inside the recording studio and outside with live job. And make everyting compatible, in order to expand (if needed) the one or the other setup. Adding about 1000€ on every DAW it's a loosing game just now in my mind. The market already has a lot solution with expensive dsp card linked at their system. I go with Avid Native just now in studio, but I think to MADI, AVB, SoundGrid, ecc... Dante protocol have (and will have) for sure a great diffusion, but now honestly it's not so brighting in my plans...

[KUI]

Did the focusrite driver install complain about anything... are you running Win 7, 8 or 10... Focusrite does not have XP drivers.

Bob L

Update the PCIe card firmware..Then reboot..

KUI