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Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 1:55 pm
by roblof
Since there is no avb section here I'll use the dante section instead...

Is it possible to have two macs communicate audio using avb and nothing else in between or is it like dante that you need a master clock device to make things work?

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 1:11 pm
by colinbart
With Dante, you actually don't need a network switch to set up connectivity between two devices. it simply becomes a point to point connection, with each device assigning itself a link local IP address and one of the two devices taking over the role of preferred master (clock).

With how Presonus has engineered AVB for series III mixers, you can simply plug your AVB compliant computer (AKA Mac) into the device and you're rolling. If you wanted to integrate 2 computers and a mixer, you would then need to use an AVB compliant switch to enable connectivity between the three devices. However, As far as I know, Presonus has not yet engineered the ability to have digital splits with AVB the same way it works for Dante.

If what you're asking is if you can simply stream audio between two Macs using AVB, you would need to have an AVB sound card installed on each computer. Mac's are NOT AVB devices, they're simply able to recognize AVB devices as Core Audio devices. As of right now, I'm not aware of any AVB soundcard that isn't outrageously priced. If you want to simply stream audio between two computers, I'd recommend taking a look at Dante Via.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Tue Jan 02, 2018 2:24 pm
by roblof
I’m already heavily into dante/aes67 including dante dvs and via.

I was hoping to pass audio between two macs without any other avb device in the ‘middle’ so I could take advantage of avb low latency. Dante via has a 10ms system latency and it would be nice to go lower than that.

Using dante or aes67 you need a network clock to make things work. I’m also able to use the waves soundgrid for shuffling audio between computers but there is still some system latency to account for.

Perhaps I’ll try and use an xcore as an avb network device just for fun to see if that will work as a bridge.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 5:27 pm
by Karyn
If all you're doing is passing audio from one PC to another, why do you need lower latency than Via can provide?
Whatever method you use, you need a master clock of some sort. Dante can do latency down to 0.125ms with the right hardware. or 10ms (actually less if you actually measure it) with just Via.

As colinbart said, Macs are not AVB devices, nor are they Dante devices, they just happen to have the correct network chipset to pass AVB which PCs don't. Then core audio can create a virtual AVB sound card in the same way Audinate has DVS. But you still require a hardware clock...

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 8:00 pm
by roblof
This is for my own pleasure but I also looked into having a licence free way of distributing networked audio without the use of 3’rd party hardware and thought that maybe the native avb on macs was a viable solution.

I also wanted be able to have plugins and vsti’s offloaded from a master daw computer running on a secondary computer so low latency/rtl is a must.

This is obviously not possible according to the info given. At least until someone develops an avb virtual soundcard, but that will probably cost some money and probably not give me any 1-2ms rtl.

Oh, well. It was a nice thought though....

Btw, what is the rtl using the slmk3 avb and a mac if you were to run plugins on the mac inserted into a channel/bus?

Karyn wroteIf all you're doing is passing audio from one PC to another, why do you need lower latency than Via can provide?
Whatever method you use, you need a master clock of some sort. Dante can do latency down to 0.125ms with the right hardware. or 10ms (actually less if you actually measure it) with just Via.

As colinbart said, Macs are not AVB devices, nor are they Dante devices, they just happen to have the correct network chipset to pass AVB which PCs don't. Then core audio can create a virtual AVB sound card in the same way Audinate has DVS. But you still require a hardware clock...

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2018 8:06 am
by colinbart
I can't speak on this because I don't own a StudioLive III or a mac, but the reported latency for the Studiolive MkIII is 1.9ms. I'd also be interested to see what the round trip on the latency is on StudioLive over AVB to something like Waves multirack.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2018 10:28 am
by roblof
Just as for a reference.

A couple of weeks ago I measured a full RTL of 6.4ms from analog input to analog output using MultiRack Native with the behringer x32 and the usb connection on the x-live (should be the same with x-usb) using a 32 samples buffer on my Mac. That is quite a low number for this type of setup.

Some day I’ll measure the firewire400 performance as well to see how it compares.

A similar setup but instead using the x-wsg soundgrid card, multirack soundgrid and the impact server gives me a full RTL of 1.7ms.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 5:50 am
by roblof
I saw this on facebook, but my ipad won’t let me copy the link :-(

Hello all,

Question about latency when using Series III 32R.

When hooking this up to my daw on my maxed out (2.9 ghz, 16gb ram) 2016 macbook pro using native AVB, the best I can do is 14ms or 15ms roundtrip with 48k and 128 sample buffer. Any smaller of a buffer and i get audible distortion.

However, if i connect with USB, I get much better latency by about half, and I can even go down to 64 samples with no distortion or clicks / pops. This results in only about 6-7ms roundtrip latency.

I thought AVB was supposed to have better latency / performance, and I don't like having to sacrifice 16 ins/outs by switching back to USB. However, I don't think the latency on AVB will be usable when performing live.

Any thoughts or tips on optimizing AVB on OSX?


colinbart wroteI can't speak on this because I don't own a StudioLive III or a mac, but the reported latency for the Studiolive MkIII is 1.9ms. I'd also be interested to see what the round trip on the latency is on StudioLive over AVB to something like Waves multirack.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 8:08 am
by Karyn
roblof wroteA couple of weeks ago I measured a full RTL of 6.4ms from analog input to analog output using MultiRack Native with the behringer x32 and the usb connection....

A similar setup but instead using the x-wsg soundgrid card, multirack soundgrid and the impact server gives me a full RTL of 1.7ms.


Waves' published RTL for Soundgrid through a Soundgrid server is 0.8ms, leaving your Behringer with about 1ms latency, which is about right. I would expect StudioLive to be about the same.

There is no reason why AVB should be any slower than Dante or Soundgrid, the hardware is the same.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 1:07 pm
by roblof
I need to sit down and test RTL using dante dvs and compare it to the FB reported RTL for his avb setup.

I was kind of expecting avb to outperform dante due to its hardware and system integration on mac/osx compared to the general approach made by dante. If the avb latency is about 2ms as mentioned above then that is quite high compared to dante and aes50. I know for a fact that aes50 latency on the x32 is 3 samples and dante can be as low as 0.15ms.

I’m surprised that none of the heavy guns here haven’t replied about the RTL for their mk3 mixers and avb. Someone on this forum must have tested this?! Also, what is the latency when using the new ’stageboxes’?

Karyn wroteThere is no reason why AVB should be any slower than Dante or Soundgrid, the hardware is the same.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:54 pm
by sjc193
roblof wroteI’m surprised that none of the heavy guns here haven’t replied about the RTL for their mk3 mixers and avb. Someone on this forum must have tested this?! Also, what is the latency when using the new ’stageboxes’?


I didn't think that that was up and running yet. . . although I don't have one so I could be wrong, but I believe you can only record (or do plugins multirack type things) using the USB at this point in time for series iii mixers. That would explain why there haven't been any comments about how well it works. . .

Steve

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 3:37 pm
by roblof
If that was the case, then that facebook user wouldn't have been able to list the 16ms RTL using avb for his mk3 rackmixer.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2360753 ... 1349707402

I wonder why I cant copy facebook links on my ipad... :-(

sjc193 wrote
roblof wroteI’m surprised that none of the heavy guns here haven’t replied about the RTL for their mk3 mixers and avb. Someone on this forum must have tested this?! Also, what is the latency when using the new ’stageboxes’?


I didn't think that that was up and running yet. . . although I don't have one so I could be wrong, but I believe you can only record (or do plugins multirack type things) using the USB at this point in time for series iii mixers. That would explain why there haven't been any comments about how well it works. . .

Steve

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:49 pm
by wahlerstudios
I don't remember any remark about AVB latency in "Answers" or in the forums and I can not read what is said in a closed Facebook group (I am not a member of Facebook), so I guess somebody must have misunderstood something. If I understand it right AVB with a single Series III rack mixer means "recording over AVB" and is limited to Macs, but excludes networking (no stagebox mode possible). There is an article in Knowledge Base dealing with this theme (https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002408943-Using-AVB-with-a-StudioLive-Series-III-mixer-and-a-Mac). This article was also published in "Answers" (http://answers.presonus.com/21890/how-do-i-use-avb-with-a-studiolive-series-iii-mixer-and-a-mac) on Octover 2017. If there is some latency, I suppose it has to do with wrong settings in the Mac.

Haven't read anything about AVB recording and PC...

:reading:

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 3:38 am
by roblof
I was not aware of the stagebox limitation and avb with mac until you mentioned it. It sounds crazy that you are at risk of disrupting audio if you connect a mac to the network used by avb?!

https://support.presonus.com/hc/en-us/a ... with-a-Mac

But on the otherhand they say:

With any network audio technology, you can have one talker go to many listeners, but a listener can only listen to one talker

With dante you can definitely listen to many talkers, the core foundation of single channel audiodevices like dante enabled microphones and the main purpose to have a master network clock, so the quote above makes no sense to me. Is this some inherent avb limitation? :reading:

Reading about this osx limitation as well I read between the lines that redundant recordings using avb is not possible either.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Sat Jan 13, 2018 8:27 am
by wahlerstudios
I didn't want to bring up the third document, as it can be found easily. As you say: In a setting Series III console and rack mixer (used as digital stagebox) there is NO RECORDING OVER AVB POSSIBLE and therefore no "redundant recordings". If you want to involve a computer for recording or playbacks, you need to use USB as a replacement for FireWire - with all the known limitations. Structurally I don't see anything which has become better by AVB II. It is a network on its own and for its own purposes.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 5:27 am
by Karyn
roblof wrote
With any network audio technology, you can have one talker go to many listeners, but a listener can only listen to one talker

With dante you can definitely listen to many talkers, the core foundation of single channel audiodevices like dante enabled microphones and the main purpose to have a master network clock, so the quote above makes no sense to me. Is this some inherent avb limitation?

"Talker" and "Listener" refer to a single channel being output or input by a device, not the entire device.

A single output channel can be sent out to many devices, either by sending multiple copies of the data (one to each device) or by Multicast (one data stream received by multiple devices). So your Dante microphone can talk (transmit) to the FOH mixer and the monitor mixer and the recording computer and to the broadcast system, etc. all at the same time.

However, an input channel can listen to only one source at once... if you want to hear 2 or 3 or 128 microphones all at the same time... that is what a mixer is for... each mixer input channel is a Listener (in Dante terms, a Receiver)

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 8:08 am
by roblof
One can wonder what presonus actually means by that paragraph since they talk about limitations not existing in e.g. dante environment.

Avb is supposed to be this new and modern super thing and all I hear is special hardware requirements, limitations and interoperability problems. Where are all the benefits?

You want to have a stagebox/monitor mixer connected by avb and record to the computer at the same time? Then you need to record over usb since avb is a no-go. You want to record to your computer and have redundancy? Sure, one computer on the avb network and the other on the usb port since osx does not allow more than one computer connected to a device. Three computers? Sorry, no go.

I’m very curious how this will interact with the forthcoming avb<—>soundgrid implementation given the present limitations I keep hearing about...

And I’m still wondering about the latency when using a single mk3-mixer with avb and a mac. I’m also interested in knowing if the avb latency of 1.9ms mentioned above has anything to do with using stageboxes since it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with RTL using a mac. I would investigate this myself if I had access to the gear, but I currently don’t.

Karyn wrote
roblof wrote
With any network audio technology, you can have one talker go to many listeners, but a listener can only listen to one talker

With dante you can definitely listen to many talkers, the core foundation of single channel audiodevices like dante enabled microphones and the main purpose to have a master network clock, so the quote above makes no sense to me. Is this some inherent avb limitation?

"Talker" and "Listener" refer to a single channel being output or input by a device, not the entire device.

A single output channel can be sent out to many devices, either by sending multiple copies of the data (one to each device) or by Multicast (one data stream received by multiple devices). So your Dante microphone can talk (transmit) to the FOH mixer and the monitor mixer and the recording computer and to the broadcast system, etc. all at the same time.

However, an input channel can listen to only one source at once... if you want to hear 2 or 3 or 128 microphones all at the same time... that is what a mixer is for... each mixer input channel is a Listener (in Dante terms, a Receiver)

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2018 1:12 pm
by Karyn
roblof wroteAvb is supposed to be this new and modern super thing and all I hear is special hardware requirements, limitations and interoperability problems. Where are all the benefits?

What does AVB Mean?
AVB stands for Audio Video Bridge. A "bridge" in network terms is any device that connects any two, usually unconnected, devices together.

What is AVB?
AVB is a "Standard" for transporting data packets in real time across an Ethernet compliant network.

So what is Dante?
Dante is a "Product" for transporting data packets in real time across an Ethernet compliant network.

What is the difference between a Standard and a Product?
A Product actually exists and actually does something.
A Standard is document that lists methods required to do something. If different manufacturers all comply with the same Standard then their products should be compatible.

So why can't I connect my AVB mixer to my computer?
Because AVB is a Standard, not a Product (see above) every manufacturer has to create every required piece of a product in order for the product to work.
Everything that Audinate have created for Dante that allows all the fancy routing and recording across devices and Ethernet will have to be replicated by PreSonus from scratch for their AVB solution.

What other choices are there?
A short list would be:
Ravenna
Ethersound
Soundgrid
Ace / GigaAce

With all these systems available why is Dante different?
While all the alternatives work perfectly well for what they're intended, including products created using AVB, Dante is the only one which guarantees compatibility between ANY product by ANY manufacturer on ANY network.
SoundGrid (Waves) and GigaAce (A&H) are bespoke solutions created by individual companies for their own products.
Ethersound was intended as a universal solution requiring only standard equipment, but will only work on a dedicated network with no other network traffic.
Ravenna was developed by ALC NetworX, but is open for any developer to create their own solution (and many do). This means that specific versions can be customised to local requirements, but that can mean missing "features" leading to incompatibility.

Dante is a single chip solution (or small daughter card). Everything required for Network Audio is already on the chip with no further work by the manufacturer. Dante is designed to work with standard Ethernet hardware and is tolerant of other network traffic.

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:01 am
by matthewseymour
A key point regarding standards, and just one of the reasons AVB is so terrible in reality, is a standard can be implemented in different ways. In theory it shouldn't happen, but in practice two manufacturers can implement a standard and have compatibility problems.

Mostly manufacturers deal with this by being part of industry bodies that work this stuff through. However, you can just go your own way and build something that claims to support the standard but has problems.

This is where Presonus ended up with the RM mixers. They bought a chip that implemented AVB but not enough of the standard for it to work as a user might expect. So although Presonus have, and continue to use AVB (for some reason) they have only ever implemented enough of the standard to do what they need.

In terms of the current world of networked audio Dante has won out precisely because it's a product that exists and works, and doesn't need magic network switches, actually works out there in the real world and is being used. I see no reason why anybody would start a fight with AVB when there's an alternative. If there's no alternative offered by the vendor you've chosen, you've chosen the wrong vendor ;)

Re: Going avb from mac to mac?

Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2019 7:25 pm
by bartonpopenoe
sjc193 wrote
roblof wroteI’m surprised that none of the heavy guns here haven’t replied about the RTL for their mk3 mixers and avb. Someone on this forum must have tested this?! Also, what is the latency when using the new ’stageboxes’?


I didn't think that that was up and running yet. . . although I don't have one so I could be wrong, but I believe you can only record (or do plugins multirack type things) using the USB at this point in time for series iii mixers. That would explain why there haven't been any comments about how well it works. . .

Steve


I've been using my StudioLive Series III, routing through Waves MultiRack via AVB, for about six months. It's been great so far. I spent some time when I initially set-up up my routings to fine tune and test the configuration and it's been great ever since.

Once nice benefit is that MultiRack can store rack settings to Snapshots, which can be recalled using MIDI. I use Universal Control to tune levels and EQ for each venue, but can recall my Waves snapshots as part of my MIDI settings that get sent through my MOTU midi interface for every song.