The Divine Network: Using Dante with Playback
What's happening, everybody? Welcome back to behind the space bar. This is the podcast that helps you become a world class playback engineer, and our way to do that is you submit questions to us. I hopefully answer those, and then you become a world class playback engineer. In order to help make that happen, I brought along my good friend and buddy, Reese Bagwell.
Will:What's happening, Reese? How are you, man?
Reese:I'm doing really good, man. I'm ready to go. I'm ready to answer some more questions. It's gonna be good.
Will:Let's let's do it. We've been on a recording frenzy lately. You guys have submitted some fantastic questions. Before you give me the first question, which just so you guys know the context here, I I Reese and I have not discussed the questions. I don't know what they are, and so this is always fun to catch me in the moment.
Will:And so we'll do that in just a moment. But, Reese, before that, let us know how people can submit questions to have me answer them.
Reese:You need to find us on Instagram from studio to stage IG. That's the place best place to follow for all of our newest content. And, also, if you have a burning question that just cannot wait, send us a DM, and we will get it answered right here on the podcast.
Will:Love it. Love it, man. Okay. What do you got for me today? What's up first?
Reese:Okay. So this is gonna be a recurring theme, it feels like, but I'm probably gonna butcher this name. First and foremost, let's get that out of the way. But this is a message from Instagram. I I believe this guy's name is Sahil.
Reese:If I got that wrong, I'm sorry, buddy. Okay. We're trying our best.
Will:There we go.
Reese:Two guys from the South here. I mean, what what can you do? Yeah.
Will:That's It
Reese:is what it is.
Will:That's right.
Reese:So he here's his question and we'll bring out some links to maybe get some context to this as well. I want my playback tracks from Ableton to go directly to my Dante network. I am considering using Dante Virtual Soundcard on two laptops and going into a one x r m e digit face Dante or Xbox m d. Do you recommend this? And follow-up questions, kind of a two parter.
Reese:Without Play Audio One u in this setup, can I still achieve redundancy for my Mio XM from these two laptops running the same session? Thank you.
Will:Well, that's good. Before I answer this, Rhys, do you have links to the RME one that he mentioned? Do you have that
Reese:Yes. I do. I can pull that up right now. Actually, we're we're heading over to always trustworthy and reliable Sweetwater to take a look this one.
Will:Okay. So let's let's see if we can parse out his question really quick. He wants to send he and he did say redundant. Correct? Is that right?
Will:Uh-huh. Okay. So he wants redundancy with Dante. Alright? With Dante.
Will:And he's talking about DBS. He mentioned three options. DBS, this RME Digiface, and then the other one was the Xbox MD, which we'll talk about that in a moment. I know a lot about that one. But, yeah.
Will:So let's talk about this. First, this RME, Digiface Dante USB three point o audio interface. I've never used this. I personally don't have any RME gear. There's no, nothing against them.
Will:I just don't have that. Yeah. What I was gonna say is I'm assuming there's a USB port on this. We connect that to our computer, and then this outputs, a certain amount of outputs to our Dante interface. Dante network is what I'm assuming.
Will:So, can you scroll down, Reese? Let's see if we could take a look and see if it tells us how many outputs over USB to Dante. Sixty four. Okay. So I saw it.
Will:I go down a little bit more.
Reese:I'm gonna go to specs here.
Will:64 by 64 Dante. So, Sahil, what that means is you can send up to 64 outputs via this, to your Dante network. But you mentioned three different ways to do this. So let's kill this one for second. Let's chat for a second here.
Will:He Sahil mentioned three ways to get audio out of his computer. One is DVS, which stands for Dante Virtual Soundcard. That's a $50.60 dollar purchase. It basically is a digital piece of software that acts as if it's a audio interface, and it takes your audio from your DAW, in our case, Ableton, and it sends that to your Dante network. K?
Will:Side note, Sahil, if you're interested in diving deeper into this, check out our using Dante with Ableton Live course. Reese, if we can link that up Yep. For Sahil or anyone interested. Our Dante with Ableton Live course walks you through how to set all this up. DVS is like a $50.60 dollar purchase.
Will:Right? So that's how we could get audio out of our computer using DVS. We could get audio out of our computer skipping DVS and using that RME Digiface, which would be a USB to Dante connection. Uh-huh. There there's also a new DVS, I think, called DVS Pro.
Will:I know the previous DVS, which is what I'm currently using, does 64 channels as well. I believe DVS Pro gives you more outputs from there. So those are the two kind of options Sai Hill mentioned is DVS and that RME Digipace. Now I'm gonna talk about that third in just a second. But, Reese, just to set the the table and make it super clear for everyone, two computers.
Will:Right? We need a way to get audio out of those two computers. He gave us two ways. One would be DVS. If we did DVS, we need a copy of DVS on both of those computers.
Will:Right? Right. Yeah. DDS on both of those computers. Both of those computers could send up to 64 outputs individually, and then we need some sort of way to switch between computer A, computer B.
Will:Okay? Mhmm. If we did the Army Digiface, we don't need a DVS. We don't need DVS. We need a Digiface on computer a and a Digiface on computer b.
Will:Okay? Right. So and that would output 64 channels between both of those. Now I don't personally see a reason to go hardware except unless you that hardware provides lower latency at the sample rate and the output track count that you need. Now as you change your track count in Dante, as you change your sample rate from forty four one to 96, latency will go up.
Will:Right? And so some people do hardware solutions. Like, the DADCORE two fifty six is a Thunderbolt connection. It gives you super low latency. My buddy Willie shout out to Willie.
Will:He's a big fan of the DADCORE stuff. But in general, for most of us wanting to do this, DVS is the the cheapest, easiest solution to get audio out of your computers. K? So let's start there. Right.
Will:So between DVS or the RME Digiface, I personally would go with DVS. K? And I'll explain why. That's like $50.60 bucks, twice for either computer for both computers. K.
Will:Playback a, playback b, both have DVS. But when it comes to Dante, we need some sort of way to switch those. Right? When it comes to redundancy, rather, we need some sort of way to switch those. And what's really interesting is every time we talk about redundancy and I talk about the PlayAudi one u, I'll get some wise guy that'll say, or you could just plug an Ethernet cable in your computer and use DBS and call it a day.
Will:And that person is right, but they have again, I I think I talked in a previous episode that when you've been doing this for twenty plus years, you can plot on the graph where people are on their journey, and and the guy that makes that comment is in their journey to the point where they have not had a catastrophic computer failure, and they've yet to have to answer the question, how do I have a redundant playback system with Dante? And then there's also typically the and it's typically no offense. The church IT guy, church production guy that says, but, Will, you're forgetting that Dante, Dante network is redundant in nature. Reese, could you pull back up that RME real quick if you wouldn't mind? I'm putting you on the spot here.
Will:But let's take a look at that. I wanna look at the the Ethernet ports on this because it's important. If you could scroll up for us, you'll notice on the back of the Ethernet ports here, and if you can, like, zoom kinda on that picture, what you'll see is you'll see, primary and secondary. Okay? And on every piece of Dante gear and I don't know this in particular, so I don't know necessarily why there's, you know, maybe it's 64 channels on each as I don't know why there's four ports unless it just serves as a network switch.
Will:But what we what we get on every piece of Dante gear is two ports. We get a primary port and a secondary port. The way Dante is inherently created is it's supposed to be redundant. So you have a primary Dante network and a secondary Dante network. Okay.
Will:So we could kill that screenshot or screen share for now. A lot of concepts rolling around here, and we'll recap all this as we go. It's important to understand the distinction, and Sahil gets this. He knows this already. A redundant Dante playback system is different than a redundant Dante network.
Will:K. So to be clear, redundant a Dante network is inherently redundant. Redundant playback requires two computers. Right now, we're saying DVS out of those, up to 64 channels, and then we need a way to switch. And the switching is automatic or manual failover.
Will:How do we make it to where if our playback a computer goes down, our playback b computer automatically takes over? K? In the analog world, the cheapest, easiest way to do that is the Play Audio one u. And I think he he actually mentioned the Play Audio one u. I'll come back to that in
Reese:a second.
Will:But how do we switch our our our outputs of both those computers in a digital format using Dante? K? He mentioned a third piece of gear, and this is the one I really wanna camp on. This is the Xbox MD by Direct Out. This is the piece of gear I personally have that I personally own that I bought from Direct Out that I use, and this is a Dante redundancy switcher.
Will:K? Direct Out has multiple levels of gear. I have a Xbox MD. They have a SoundGrid version of the Xbox. They have the Prodigy MP, the Prodigy MC.
Will:They have the Raven, I think, is their new one. A lot of different pieces of kit. But, and you can see this has four ports on it. And the way that this works is, Sahil, you will take the DVS outputs of your a computer and your b computer. You will route it to this box, and then you'll come out of this box to your Dante network.
Will:So, Sahil, you you obviously know a lot about Dante or seems like you do. You probably know Dante Controller. Again, those of you watching and listening that don't check out our Dante course. But what you'll you'll you'll learn in that is we will send DVS to our Xbox MD, and then an Dante controller will come out of our Xbox MD to our soundboard inputs. K?
Will:The way the Xbox MD works in particular is it receives 32 channels on either side. So I can't do sixty four and sixty four. I could do thirty two and thirty two. The last channel on each of these is a tone. K?
Will:So output 32 on this machine, output 64 or 32 based on how you set it up. On this machine is tone. K? So I get 31 outputs from a, 31 outputs from b. Now the artist that I'm currently touring with, we have a Prodigy MP or, excuse me, MC, and we go Dante.
Will:We do DVS out of our computers into the MC, and then we go Maddie out of the MC into the soundboard. The beautiful thing about this setup is all I'm concerned with is opening DVS on both machines, making sure the Xbox is seeing making sure the Prodigy MC is seeing that input. They handle all the MADI processing, all that sort of stuff in conversion post that that path. K? So, Sahil, what you're really looking at to make this happen is DVS on both machines, number one.
Will:Two copies of it. Number two is a direct out Xbox MD or a direct out Prodigy, MC that will take that and and pass us over. Now as far as I understand, the the reason to go from a Xbox to a MC is if you have to run at 96 k. I believe the MC does sample rate conversion up to 96, and the Xbox is limited, I believe, only to 48. Unless you're on a pro level tour or unless the sound engineer you're working with is like a stickler and believes they can hear the difference between forty eight and ninety six, which not a single human on the face of the planet can hear the difference while in a arena listening to a band playing.
Will:Yeah. It's it's impossible. Despite what you think you can hear, you can't. But if you're in a 96 k system, again, I believe you'd have to have a MC for that. So as we're recapping here, DVS into the Xbox MD, and that would handle all your switching for that.
Will:Okay? The beauty of all that, we've got a course on the site that shows you exactly how to set that up step by step. K? Reese, does that make sense up to that point? I know there's a second half of the question.
Will:We'll get to that in a second. But does that make sense up to that point in the in the discussion? Any questions you have for me? Anything you wanna push back on? Anything like that?
Reese:I'm following with you. I'm my only question is, are you ready for the hate? Because there's gonna be people out there that says they can hear the difference. So, I mean, just get ready for it. That's awesome.
Will:That's true. And I I and again, let me clarify. It's certainly possible someone in the world can hear the difference between different sample rates. Yeah. But there's not a I will bet my life on not a single human being that can hear the difference between, a playback interface, the sample rate of a playback interface, while a live band is playing on top of that Yeah.
Will:While in a giant arena. No one can hear the difference, so stop worrying about it. Yeah. That's my my my
Reese:point of that. Got I know you got thick skin, though, but, you know, I just I just we we have to be ready because it's it's always coming. You know? You you've been dealing with it for a long time.
Will:The haters are have a big supply of hater aid, and they're they're constantly, have a lot of it. So let me recap this real quick. And then, before I get to the second half of that question, Reese, I wanna give people a free resource they can find here in a second. Absolutely. Let's let's recap.
Will:Let's free let's get in that resource, and then we'll answer the second half of this. So, again, Sahil, redundant Dante setup, DVS on both computers. That's gonna give you up to 64 outputs, but I want you to purchase a direct out Xbox MD. That is gonna handle your switching. The way that works is it'll give you 32 from a, 32 from b.
Will:That'll allow you to do automatic or manual switching up to that point. K? So that's where we are in the discussion so far. Are there other ways to do this? Certainly.
Will:If you're at a pro pro level gig, what you're gonna do is you're gonna buy a Prodigy MC, and you're going to get analog outputs for that. And you're probably gonna do MADI, and you're gonna add a a antelope audio thing in. You're gonna spend 16 to $18,000 to have a multi output analog interface setup that's can do digital and can do MADI. And God bless you if that's what you want. That's great.
Will:But Sahil asked just specifically for Dante, so that's what we're giving him. So, Sahil, great question. We're gonna get to the second half of this in a second. But if you're listening to this and you're going, well, I really like playback. I've done this a little bit.
Will:I wanna learn how to do a little better. I'm a drummer. I'm a guitar player. I wanna dive deep into playback. How can I learn to do this?
Will:I have a free resource for you that's the best thing on the Internet. It's the cheapest thing on the Internet, and you get more than, anything else you can get for free. Head to from studiotostage.com/template. And when you go there, you're gonna get access to my free basic playback template, plus you're gonna get access to my two courses, that are part of the playback method, the prep stage, the program stage. You're gonna learn the 11 step, song programming process.
Will:You'll learn how to program your songs in a way that are efficient, stable, flexible. You'll learn the three part playback framework, that allows you to program songs, just like I do for my work with Grammy award winning and nominated artist. The same exact process is what I use. Plus, you'll get access to my backline gear database, and this is a list of every piece of gear I use, every suggestion of interface. Sahil, this is a great resource for you, my man.
Will:Head over there to check out all that gear. You guys can find all that for free at from Studio.com/template. From StudioStage.com/template. Okay. With that, Reese, I've been talking so long.
Will:I forgot the second half of the question. So if you'll read the second half of the question, then we'll we'll tackle that.
Reese:Okay. So he's saying without a Play Audio one u in this setup, can I still achieve redundancy for my MEO XM from these two laptops running the same session?
Will:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good question.
Will:So, Sahil, this would be one where, it would be be better for me to ask this question of you, for us to be chatting face to face because I would wanna get a little clarity on how are you using your MEO XM. Right? I'm gonna offer a couple assumptions on how you may be using it. I'll give you options for either one. But so far in our path, we have two playback computers, same exact Ableton set, same exact Ableton computers.
Will:Our way of getting audio out is DVS. Our way of switching audio is the Xbox MD, but we need a way to control both of those and keep them in sync. How can we do that? We need a way to take one MIDI controller, split the signal of that MIDI controller to both computers. K?
Will:Sai Hill, if you don't wanna use a Play Audio One U, you could buy a LEOBOX v two. Has two outputs on it. Great solution. You could buy OakBoard Slide Duo. Has two outputs on it.
Will:Great solution. Neither of those require a MEO XM or Play Audio One u. K? So that's a that's a great solution there. So can you can you keep your computers in sync?
Will:Can you split signals from your MIDI controller without a Play Audio One u 100%? LayObox v two, outboard slide duo two. Reese, let's let's throw links to both of those in the show notes as well too, if you don't mind. For sure. Now if you have a MEO XM and you have a MIDI controller that just has one output, can you use that MEO XM to split that signal to both computers 100%?
Will:That is not MIDI redundancy. That is using the MEO XM as a MIDI splitter. What a MIDI splitter does is takes one input and goes to multiple outputs. In your case, one input to two outputs. Okay?
Will:With your MEO XM, you could plug into USB. You could plug into DIN, and then you've got those DIN outputs that would connect to both your computers. If you did DIN, you'd have to have, like, a the the the easiest hardware only solution would be to have two MEO XCs by iConnectivity in your rig, and two of these plus a MEO XM. I personally would not do that. That's a lot of gear.
Will:Or you could use your MEO XM and have that connect to both of your computers using a RTP MIDI network session. But that is functioning as our MIDI splitter. Okay? Not MIDI redundancy, but MIDI splitter if your MIDI controller only has one output. You said MIDI redundancy, though.
Will:So, Sahil, I'm assuming what you're talking about is on the back end of this. You've got your two playback computers. You're sending program changes from them to your quad cortex, to your Nord, to your SPD SX to change presets. You wanna send MIDI clock to information on stage. Maybe you even wanna use something like a LEO box or a Oakboard slide duo on stage to control your gear as a playback engineer on stage.
Will:Can you do that without a Play Audio One U? You can't do MIDI redundancy with anything other than a Play Audio One U. And and I wanna clarify here. With a MEO XM, you could have the output of your computers go into your MEO XM, and you could save one preset that only sends from your a computer at a time. Then you could say preset two only sending from your b computer at a time, and then you could toggle on the front screen.
Will:K. It's not redundancy. It it would be like, I guess, a manual failover in a way to to think about that. But the only way to trigger that manual failover is using the front panel of the MEO XM. Right?
Will:So computer a, computer a goes down, hit preset two on it, and it starts sending from computer b. Right? That's what you could do. Now that that would work. Your XMS will live with you, though.
Will:If you wanna be able to to control your playback server, your playback rig like I do offstage, but have send MIDI information onstage to different people to do different things, you're gonna want a MEO XM onstage. So then you're gonna need a MEO XM here, another MEO XM. You're gonna have to get information from that XM back to both of your computers, so you'd have to do a RTP network MIDI session from that. Starts to get really, really confusing. So, Sahil, here's my suggestion for you.
Will:Buy a Play Audio One U, and your Play Audio One U, your MIDI controller's gonna go into your Play Audio One U. K? And then that's going to you'll have a USB connection from your One U to computer A, USB connection to computer B. That's gonna handle your MIDI split. It goes to both computers automatically.
Will:Then, Sahil, the beauty of this, if you already have your XM, put your XM on stage. That can serve as a control hub. That's what we teach in the Future Egg framework. You, with your Play Audio One u, have MIDI redundancy. And what I mean by that is you have automatic failover.
Will:You can adjust your failover settings so it uses MIDI as opposed to, audio. You can pass your audio via Dante. You can pass your MIDI via the Play Audio One u, and all of your MIDI outputs from your computer are redundant, either automatic or failover. We have 22 RTP ports on the Play Audio one u, which means 22 discrete connections to things on stage, 22 connections to MEO XMs, 22 connections to computers. We have our five pin DIN and out, DIN in and out.
Will:We have our USB host connection. What I could tell you, Sahil, is for the easiest, most expandable, flexible setup, I would suggest you buy a Play Audio One u. Your MIDI controller goes into your Play Audio One u. Your two computers, you use DVS to get audio out of those. Those go into an Xbox MD that handles your your MIDI split there, which is which is great and is handled.
Will:And that's kind of the whole kit. Right? That's everything you need. If you've already got that XM, let's throw it on stage to expand and and, create what I call an on stage performance network. There's some other gear you'll want in that.
Will:You can find all that in backline, which is from Studiosege.com/template. But that's the gear, Sahil. That's a fantastic question. Took us the whole episode to get through this, Reese, which I'm okay with. Yeah.
Will:But it was a fantastic question and really good stuff. So one more time recap. DVS on both computers, Xbox MD for your switching, Play Audio One U for your MIDI split, and for true automatic or manual MIDI failover, and then it can connect to that MEO XM as well. That's what I would suggest and what I would, personally that would be the route that I would personally go.
Reese:Good stuff. Hey, sometimes it's worth it to get in the weeds like this. You know, some of these questions are a little bit more in-depth than some of the issues that we've addressed in previous episodes. Not that they aren't all valuable, but like, you know, you gotta take the time to explain this stuff. And check the show notes like we talked about.
Reese:If you're unfamiliar with any of this gear, it's well worth digging into. I've yet to go down the route of the Xbox MD. To be perfectly honest, it's a little pricey for me right now, but having dipped my toe into the Dante Pond, I can say that that is all well worth your time. Check out our course on it. You can even get certified in it as well.
Reese:So, yeah, good stuff, man. I think we I think we covered it all. Hopefully, answers his question, but I think I think we need to call it a day.
Will:This is a good episode. I think so, Therese. That was a great question, Sahil. Thanks for submitting that. If you guys have a question like Sahil's, Reese, why don't you remind them one more time before we call it quits for today how they can get their question answered as well.
Reese:Studio to Sage IG. Find us on Instagram. Follow us. Send us a direct message. That's gonna get you in the queue, and we will answer these questions as soon as we possibly can.
Reese:We're recording like crazy, so subscribe wherever you're listening to your podcast, follow us on YouTube, whatever you need to do, to get those notifications, and we will be coming at you every Monday for the foreseeable future.
Will:I love it, Reese. Thanks for your time today, man. Great question. Sahil, thank you for submitting that question. Thank you for listening.
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Will:Take care, everybody. Bye.
Reese:See you. Bye.