Dante, AVB, & More... The Best Audio Over Ethernet Systems for Home Studios

[@soundproofyourstudio]

FREE Soundproofing Workshop: www.soundproofyourstudio.com/workshop

[@worldline7147]

PCIe (peripheral component interconnect express) : "eye", not "el".

[@EqDior]

Awesome. Just a quick fyi for people that don't know. You don't need a soundgrid interface, you only need soundgrid studio and maybe the sg serverif u are offloading waves plugins and of course a switch according on how many devices

[@doctorscoot]

If you have a Mac Studio, the Ethernet can go straight into the Ethernet port as Macs support it directly. Obviously you still need an ‘interface’ directly to get the analogue I/O. Dante seems more widely supported by interface manufacturers though.

[@simonbaxtermusic]

Do you know about the option to use Ethernet as audio cables directly, no expensive encoding solutions or proprietary hardware? There are breakout modules that convert one Ethernet cable into 4 xlr connections. Incredibly cheap and simple to use.

[@vk3fbab]

They work. It is entirely analogue. The ones from Rat sound look good. More correctly it is audio over Ethernet cabling. When using Audio over Ethernet (digital) you'll be able to support many more channels over a single cable than 4 and won't have to worry so much about noise.

[@simonbaxtermusic]

@@vk3fbabI agree about the benefits of digital, I’m just surprised he didn’t mention the option for analogue. It’s a great solution for home studios.

[@soundproofyourstudio]

Good point I will have to make another vid on that. The benefit of these is the patching is all digital and can support complex set ups with video and potentially lighting.

[@mecprosound]

A few things to note about the analog options that send audio over ethernet cables. You should only use shielded ethernet cable only. Either Cat5E or Cat6 shielded cable. You mentioned it is only 4 channels. Those 4 channels share a common ground. Which means that if you activate phantom power +48v on one channel, you get +48v on all 4 channels. Also if you have a ground loop and one of the 4 channels is generating noise you will more than likely get noise on all 4 channels if that noise gets introduced on the ground pin of any of those channels. The boxes are great for very specific purposes, but are no where close to the AOIP protocols of Dante/AVB/AES67/Ravenna that can allow hundreds of channels to be transmitted and received across 1 ethernet cable.

[@simonbaxtermusic]

@@mecprosound Excellent points. Overall I think it's a question of who's the target audience? If it's for a home studio the audio over ethernet option can be ideal. If it's a Nashville-level home studio or something professional then absolutely go with a premium option.

[@mecprosound]

I would add RAVENNA/AES67 to this list before QSC Q-SYS. Products such as the Neumann MT48 and the Merging technology gear uses RAVENNA/AES67. AES67 is a good option to allow different AOIP(Audio Over IP) protocols to talk to one another. Most Dante devices allow you to run them either in Dante or AES67 mode.

[@Lutzifer31337]

there is also AES50 with the behringer digital consoles and stageboxes

[@dirface]

Great vid! Headsup; when you talk about the Audinate PCIe card for Dante, you're actually showing the Yamaha addon interface card for digital mixers. That's a completely different card. Also, the PCI card doesn't 'enhance the audio signal' as Dante is just a network protocol (with added hardware). 🤘

[@soundproofyourstudio]

Ah thanks for the correction. I will have to do more research on the PCI card. The whole setup is really cool, but so complex.

[@dirface]

@@soundproofyourstudio Thnx for the video! Checking out your latest one now!

[@deiwar2994]

Good review! I would just add that Waves is actually AVB and AVB does not play nice with Network Switches

[@soundproofyourstudio]

Ah interesting why is that? Just had a bad experience with it?

[@mecprosound]

Not sure where you got that info from. In order to get Soundgrid streams to AVB it requires a Soundgrid to AVB Bridge in order for the two different protocols to send networked audio streams between them.

[@deiwar2994]

Cat6A cable is preferred! Not sure about Cat7? Any comments

[@vk3fbab]

Increased category cables allow you to run faster ethernet speeds. Most of this audio is gigabit which is supported by Cat 5e. As the signalling is digital you will not notice any difference in the audio. Also UTP will work fine for gigabit ethernet so no need for shields.