Ins and Outs on Different Soundcards??

[John F]

My church is purchasing a new sound system, and we'll be using SAC for the webstream part of it. I've just run into an issue I didn't think about - we're going to be using Dante with the Dante Virtual Soundcard driver to feed the inputs to SAC. I was planning on taking the outputs to a Focusrite 4i4 to run the monitor speakers plus the live stream audio. But that will require me to have inputs from one soundcard and outputs on another. Is there a way to do this with SAC? Or is there another way of doing this?

Thank you for your any help you can give me!

John Francis
Rolla, MO

[John F]

I might have just answered my own question. I'll bet I use the Dante soundcard and assign my monitor speakers as outputs from the Dante-enabled stagebox. I could then (probably) run cables from that stagebox into my Focusrite inputs for the speakers, livestream and headphones. Does that sound right, for those of you who have done this before?

John Francis
Rolla, MO

[cgrafx]

The Dante Virtual sound card driver may have too much latency to use for monitor mixes (although they do say 4, 6, or 10ms). The question is going to be what is the input to output latency through the entire audio chain.

It will definitely work fine for a live audio stream, but if your also streaming video your going to need a way to delay either the video or audio in order to sync your video and audio.

[John F]

Thanks for your input. I have it on good authority (Bob himself) that the Dante virtual soundcard will work fine as long as I'm not using SAC to run stage monitors. (I only need it for my own studio monitors) I"m planning to use a delay plug-in on the master output to sync the audio with the video, unless there's a better way to do that I don't yet know about!

John Francis
Rolla, MO

[cgrafx]

I"m planning to use a delay plug-in on the master output to sync the audio with the video, unless there's a better way to do that I don't yet know about!

John Francis
Rolla, MO

Delay on the output is good if audio is early, but doesn't help if the video is ahead of the audio. A lot will depend on how the video is being processed/switched and streamed. If your using something like OBS as your streaming server there are audio delay tools built into OBS and I'd do the sync in OBS rather than pre-delay the incoming audio before it gets to the server.

[John F]

So as it turns out, I am running the SAC main output #1 to a Dante channel that feeds my Focusrite for the studio monitors. SAC Main Output #2 feeds a Dante channel that is the actual stream, and all my input channels feed both mains. I had to do it this way because my Focusrite 4i4 apparently does NOT treat it's headphone jack as a separate output, so in order to have a functioning SOLO button on SAC, I had to have the solo bus feed the monitors and a separate feed for the stream. The delay is handled by some backroom Dante/QSYS voodoo that I don't yet understand. Still learning - with the new console and all the digital distribution and DSP, it's a fairly complex installation for my small brain!

John Francis
Rolla, MO