Dante Virtual Soundcard Driver vs RME Digiface Dante

[John F]

My church has decided they want an Allen & Heath dLive system for FOH, and use SAC/SAW for streaming/recording in a different room. We'll be using Dante to move the audio around to the various points. The vendor we're working with tells me that to get the Dante audio into my SAC computer, I can go one of two ways: 1) If I have a fast computer, I can use the Dante Virtual Soundcard Driver and just plug the Dante cable into my ethernet port, or 2) get a hardware Dante decoder, like the RME Digiface Dante, and plug it into a USB slot. I'm using an RME Digiface ADAT unit now on a different machine and love it - that would be my first choice. But before I dismiss the Dante driver out of hand and add an additional $1800 to the build, I thought I should ask if anyone has any experience with the Dante Virtual Soundcard Driver.

Anyone?

Thanks!

John Francis
Rolla, MO

[Bob L]

Works great as long as you are not using SAC for performer monitors... if the stage is being fed by a hardware console and SAC is used for just recording and streaming... Virtual Soundcard is all you need.

If SAC is sending performer in-ears or wedges, then you would do better with the RME hardware to get the needed low latency.

Bob L

[TomyN]

Agreed. And in case you'll want to use hardware dante, I'd use a dante pci card like the yamaha AIC-128D, which bypass the 'bottleneck' USB and would be cheaper than the RME solution.