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Old 04-02-2020, 11:36 AM   #1
Fergler
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Default What options have I not considered for streaming?

I have a bit of a pickle for audio routing.

I want to stream audio from my Windows PC, which is connected to an audio interface, to a Mac laptop that only has the combo mic/output 1/8" jack. The Mac is doing the video stream I want to add the audio to it in real time.

Streaming from the Windows machine is not an option because the internet has to be off to avoid CPU interrupts by my Wifi adapter (confirmed with LatencyMon that this makes a huge difference), and besides asking it to also stream HD video at the same time is asking a lot from a project that has 15 live inputs and 56 tracks recording at the same time.

I do have HDMI ports on both computers but can't figure out how to use them for audio. I have no USB left on the Windows computer (using both ports and one port is connected to a 4 port extender, also all used up).

I'm thinking the only logical way is to use a second interface to take line outs from the windows interface to the mac. Maybe one of those small USB stereo input ones around $30.
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Old 04-02-2020, 02:56 PM   #2
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Cabel network with reastream?
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Old 04-03-2020, 07:51 AM   #3
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Just run everything on the Mac. Route the audio from Reaper to OBS (or whatever streaming app) with a virtual audio device like Soundflower or Loopback.
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Old 04-03-2020, 08:03 AM   #4
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I do have HDMI ports on both computers but can't figure out how to use them for audio. I have no USB left on the Windows computer (using both ports and one port is connected to a 4 port extender, also all used up).

I'm thinking the only logical way is to use a second interface to take line outs from the windows interface to the mac. Maybe one of those small USB stereo input ones around $30.
I think the HDMI devices need to be recognized as such, if that were the case then HDMI becomes a choice for sound card output - I don't 'think' this will work just connecting two computers but could be wrong. .

Being a live stream, I see nothing wrong with just directly running the audio from one to the other but beware of potential ground loops (would have the same risk with HDMI). There is a tiny chance you could use that mic input but you'd need to drop the signal level most likely. Otherwise, a decent stereo interface

My PC is setup with OBS to do exactly what you want but I don't have the Wifi/interrupt issue you are having so it's not a problem. Basically, I can stream 4k video from my Sony A6400 along with full 'mix' from reaper through OBS to YT etc. - Except I usually use 1080P because the online services don't handle 4K streaming that well due to the vast bandwidth.

That said, due to on-the-fly compression the live stream will never be the original quality - so what I usually do is use multiple cameras, stream the main cam. Then later I cut a production multi-cam video and replace the original stream with the production vid a few days later. Even if I just use one camera, I will cut a production HD version and re-post.
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Old 04-03-2020, 02:41 PM   #5
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Just run everything on the Mac. Route the audio from Reaper to OBS (or whatever streaming app) with a virtual audio device like Soundflower or Loopback.
Can't, there is no line in on the Mac. Only a Microhpone in which is Mono and I don't have a cable that can send to just the mic input anyway.

I can't run the looping setup that is outputting the audio on the Mac. The CPU is too weak to run it (Intel Core Duo 2.1ghz, vs Quad core 2.8ghz on Windows) firstly, and secondly I have a reliance on multiple Windows only plugins.

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Cabel network with reastream?
Could elaborate on this? Looks like this needs ethernet and port forwarding and that sorta thing. Unfortunately, the ethernet adapter on the windows laptop has been broken since I bought it (refurb). Never concerned me as I've never needed to use it.
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Old 04-06-2020, 02:57 AM   #6
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Cabel network with reastream?
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Could elaborate on this? Looks like this needs ethernet and port forwarding and that sorta thing. Unfortunately, the ethernet adapter on the windows laptop has been broken since I bought it (refurb). Never concerned me as I've never needed to use it.
I actually did this for the first time yesterday. My audio pc is an old Windows XP box. It does not get connected to internet. I wanted to stream some multitrack audio though, cannot get my audio interface on the newer pc, nor will I connect my old audio pc to the internet.

So on the ole audio pc I set up Reaper with all the required input channels. Then I added the ReaStream plugin on the master out, configured to "Send audio". The W10 pc that is on the internets also has Reaper. This Reaper instance has one track only, again with ReaStream plugin, but this one is configured to "Receive audio". Mind you, both are on the same home network. This is required for ReaStream to work.

Taking care of the usual stuff like matching sample rate and bit depth between the two Reaper instances, it worked pretty much out of the box.

Now to get the audio from the second Reaper instance to another application on that W10 pc was another can of worms altogether, that's beyond your question.
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Old 04-09-2020, 05:05 PM   #7
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Now to get the audio from the second Reaper instance to another application on that W10 pc was another can of worms altogether, that's beyond your question.
For that have a look at VoiceMeeter Banana. I've also recently learned about Synchronous Audio Router but I wasn't able to configure it properly and once during testing I got very loud white noise so be careful there... I gave up after that as I don't actually need the features I was just testing it for future use.

My mac does not have an ethernet input anyway so the network thing wouldn't work. I think I will just suck up the occasional bugs from having my wifi adaptor on and send my audio over WiFi network to the Mac. It's not like I'm streaming to millions.. and actually the stream users probably won't hear anything wrong. It's only on my end I get the clicks and crackles when the adaptor interupts the audio threads, doesn't seem to reflect recordings of the output stream when I've tested that (File > Render > Render live output).
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Old 04-10-2020, 09:20 PM   #8
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@AntonZ - Not to be that guy, but unless you’ve got two different licenses, your usage is technically a violation.

Also, though, the “yada yada” part where it gets from Reaper to OBS is actually the important part. How are you getting that to happen? If I have to download something like VoiceMeter, I’m just gonna keep the analog connection I’m already using.
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Old 04-14-2020, 08:26 AM   #9
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@ashcat_lt
Yes I understand. I have one paid license, not two. I have tried this once to see if it would work and it does. I have now indeed managed to get it to work with a small external audio interface directly connected to the laptop and going through only one instance of Reaper via Voicemeeter. It does feel clumsy to have to go through yet another piece of software just to get the plumbing to work of routing one software's audio output to another software's audio input.

Someone in another thread recently mentioned that it would be nice if in addition to virtual ASIO inputs ReaRoute would also offer WDM or WASAPI inputs to other software.
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Old 05-10-2020, 07:42 AM   #10
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you should take a look at Audinate's "Dante Virtual Soundcard - Dante Via" bundle (https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-via) for 60 $ plus purchase two new ethernet adapters for your mac and the pc (15 $ each) and then you can route up to 48 channels of uncompressed audio from any audio hardware device or application on both computers to any other application or computer. Dante Via will aggregate all software and hardware audio sources on the computer it is running on and make them all available on the network, ready to be picked up by other computers running Dante Virtual Soundcard.

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Old 05-10-2020, 11:26 AM   #11
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you should take a look at Audinate's "Dante Virtual Soundcard - Dante Via" bundle (https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-via) for 60 $ plus purchase two new ethernet adapters for your mac and the pc (15 $ each) and then you can route up to 48 channels of uncompressed audio from any audio hardware device or application on both computers to any other application or computer. Dante Via will aggregate all software and hardware audio sources on the computer it is running on and make them all available on the network, ready to be picked up by other computers running Dante Virtual Soundcard.

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Wow, that's interesting.

It's $60 per license, but that's per computer? So if you wanted to send audio amongst multiple computers on the same LAN, you'd need a license for each?
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Old 05-10-2020, 01:11 PM   #12
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Yes, the "Dante Via + Dante Virtual Soundcard" bundle for 60$ encompasses one discounted license for each of them so that you can connect two computers. For each computer you'd like to add afterwards, you'd need an additional license (either Via or DVS). Like an audio interface that is physically attached to only a single computer, the Dante licenses are tied to one computer during activation. Licenses can't be transferred to another computer.

Dante Via is needed in a software-only-based Dante audio-over-IP network because it can provide the required PTP audio clocking. DVS doesn't have this capability so you couldn't connect only two computers running DVS. At least one computer in the network is required to run Dante Via unless you add Dante hardware devices. In this case, one of the hardware device will automatcally become the Clock Master multiple and peers may be running DVS.

What makes Dante Via special is its capability to aggregate all audio applications running on a single computer as well as all USB/Firewire audio devices attached to the same computer (48 channels in total)!!! All those audio channels will be accessible to any other Dante peer present on the network (hardware and software alike) and they can subscribe to any of them with a mouse click. Signals can also be split to arrive at multiple receivers (no hardware splitters required). Dante Virtual Soundcard is a software driver which turns the existing LAN port of a computer (mac or pc) into a 64x64 audio interface. On Windows, you can choose to have it run in ASIO or WDM mode.

Another option to stream hi-res audio between two computers is to use Dante AVIO adapters. These are small Dante hardware devices which can - depending on the model - convert analog mono, analog stereo, AES3 or USB to Dante audio-over-IP (https://www.sweetwater.com/store/det...x2-usb-adapter). They do not require any software or drivers to be installed on computers. The USB 2in/2out version is class-compliant and is recognized as a stereo ASIO audio device. It can deliver Dante clocking for the entire audio network (so you wouldn't need Dante Via). If you only need to stream two channels (bi-directionally), a Dante AVIO USB 2x2 attached to one computer and the second computer running Dante Virtual Soundcard is all that is required.

My studio's Dante network encompasses various Dante hardware devices (consoles, converter, PCIe card, AVIO USB 2x2 and several AVIO stereo analog out adapters to supply cue mixes to the two live rooms) plus a laptop running DVS, providing 64 ins/64 outs to/from a slave DAW. Distances between devices can be huge (75 m max. to the next device or network switch and so on). Latency is between 0.15 ms and around 5 ms depending on the device/software.

Many interesting videos on the topic can be foud on the audinate.com website and on youtube.

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Old 05-10-2020, 11:51 PM   #13
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Thank you for the excellent information.
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Old 05-11-2020, 03:12 AM   #14
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So I'm using the free trial to play around with Dante Via.

I like how I can use it to route audio on the same PC. It's going to be really useful for that. But I'm having some trouble getting one of the PCs to work with Dante Controller.

The PC shows up as a device, and I can seemingly make connections using devices attached to it since I'm getting green checkmarks here:





However, I have an error icon for the PC under Subscription Status, and audio being routed from it can't be heard on the destination PC:





The sample rates of both PCs are set to 48k. The default sound devices in Windows 10 settings are Dante Transmit and Receive. Windows Firewall is disabled on both PCs via Group Policy Editor. I use the same brand of Ethernet switches throughout the house. The correct NIC is selected in Dante Via on the PC with the subscription error, and indeed appears to be connected:





Any ideas? I'm not sure what else to try.
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Old 05-11-2020, 03:35 AM   #15
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Hmmm, further experimentation has revealed that I am sending some audio successfully at least, because I plugged in a guitar to try something on the PC with the error and to my surprise I heard it coming from the speakers connected to the PC in the other room...
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Old 05-11-2020, 04:37 AM   #16
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so, in the meantime, you got it working? If I understand it correctly, you have installed trial versions of Via on both machines. If it's not working yet, please feel free to PM me screenshots of all tabs in Dante Controller as well as the Device View tabs for both computers (after double-clicking a bold computer name in Dante Controller). (everything zipped into a single zip file)

Are the computers connected via direct ethernet cabling? What type of cable are you using (cat 5, cat 6, SFTP, UTP, etc.). If you are using a network switch, is it a manageable gigabit switch?

In the nic port's properties (Windows device manager), is some kind of throttling enabled? Is full speed full duplex functionality enabled?

What does the error log page in Dante Controller show?

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Old 05-11-2020, 04:57 AM   #17
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so, in the meantime, you got it working? If I understand it correctly, you have installed trial versions of Via on both machines. If it's not working yet, please feel free to PM me screenshots of all tabs in Dante Controller as well as the Device View tabs for both computers (after double-clicking a bold computer name in Dante Controller). (everything zipped into a single zip file)

Are the computers connected via direct ethernet cabling? What type of cable are you using (cat 5, cat 6, SFTP, UTP, etc.). If you are using a network switch, is it a manageable gigabit switch?

In the nic port's properties (Windows device manager), is some kind of throttling enabled? Is full speed full duplex functionality enabled?

What does the error log page in Dante Controller show?

.
Yes, I think I've just figured it out now! My problem was that I was trying to send the "Focusrite USB Audio" sources to the other computer, mistakenly thinking that because I was monitoring that on one computer, that was what I wanted to hear on the other computer.

Instead, I routed "Reaper 1/2" (which is a stereo master-track send called Dante tx 1/2 in Reaper) to the other computer and I can hear it just fine!

I also managed to set up some routing within a single PC. I can plug my guitar into my audio interface, hook up my webcam, then route the webcam mic audio and the guitar audio into a teleconferencing application like Skype. This audio interface has direct monitoring, so I'm not hearing a delayed guitar signal. Of course, my voice is delayed by the standard 10 ms that is expected with Dante Via.

I think next I will try using an actual microphone plugged into my audio interface (it has two inputs), because again I can utilize the direct monitoring to avoid the Via latency.

One day, I am going to look into these RedNet PCIe cards or something like the Ferrofish stuff to interconnect all my stuff. I just can't justify the expense at the moment. But it's very exciting technology and I'm glad you mentioned it in this thread.

With the sub-millisecond latencies possible through Dante hardware, can you actually use this routing for recording? For example, could you have people in different rooms playing in real-time with each other without noticeable delay (other than whatever the audio interfaces are introducing)?
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Old 05-11-2020, 05:45 AM   #18
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you're welcome! Glad you sorted it out. Once you understand the audio networking concept, it's such a revelation. It makes everything easier. I've been using Dante since 2015 and I can't imagine going back to the very limiting point-to-point cablings like USB, etc.

Dante PCIe accelerator cards are very low latency - comparable to MADI gear. The latency can be set low enough to monitor virtual instruments while playing them (incl. other processing plugins on top) and having multiple rooms connected is no problem. You should be able to push down perceivable latency to something below 4 ms.

The nice thing is that you may not need to get rid of any of your equipment to make the transition to Dante. Depending on what you already have, you may simply add the appropriate Dante bridging device (analog to Dante, ADAT to Dante, etc. - like Ferrofish VERTO32) and keep on using your valuable stuff while enjoying audio networking. Once you have networked your stuff, you are automatically set to have a MIDI network also (by using the free CopperLan and rtpMIDI apps). These apps are achieving for MIDI what Dante ia doing on the audio side: networking. You are getting much more routing options and distances between gear are no longer a problem. Dante plus CopperLan enable you to sample-accurately sync transports of multiple devices or daws. A MIDI keyboard attached to one computer is automatically available as a MIDI input device to play virtual instruments on any networked computer. This approach allows sharing the processing load for a production between multiple machines while the shared Reaper projects melt together as a single audio performance thanks to Dante.

I just purchased the Cinara MidiGateway. It was the last piece to complete the networking puzzle. I now have complete audio and MIDI networking throughout my studio. The benefits are numerous and it's great fun to work this way! Btw, I'm about to upload a video to my youtube channel where I'm showing the MidiGateway. Stay tuned

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Old 05-13-2020, 09:03 AM   #19
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@SonicAxiom, can you point to any tech info on the clocking over the Dante network? I think I need to finally investigate the network approach. The clocking though... How stable is it? The word clock wire is literally being broken. What's the fallout? Is there any good reading around the limitations and what kind of instability to expect? I'd kind of like to get a sense of where the line in the sand is as it were ahead of time. Thanks!
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Old 05-14-2020, 12:36 PM   #20
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@SonicAxiom, can you point to any tech info on the clocking over the Dante network? I think I need to finally investigate the network approach. The clocking though... How stable is it? The word clock wire is literally being broken. What's the fallout? Is there any good reading around the limitations and what kind of instability to expect? I'd kind of like to get a sense of where the line in the sand is as it were ahead of time. Thanks!
you can find quite a few Dante clocking-related videos on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/results?sear...dante+clocking

and there are the Dante FAQs on the Audinate website which you can filter for the desired topics

https://www.audinate.com/learning/faqs/clocking

In short, Dante clocking is a no-brainer and as accurate as you can get with any existing clocking. I never had to care less about the clocking of my fairly complex studio setup. The nice thing is that Dante clocking is based on Precision Time Protocol (PTP) network messages and, being part of the network paradigm, works by auto-administration. With traditional setups, the clocking depends on questions like "Which device is capable of delivering the most precise clock"? "Is this device the one that remains powered on most of the time?", etc.

In a Dante network where any number of additional devices can be added or removed at any time by simply powering them on/off or plugging/unplugging them into/from a common network switch, the Dante system itself constantly evaluates the device delivering the most accurate clock and seemlessly elects it the Grand Master Clock for the entire system without you noticing it. The only requirement for adding a Dante device to a Dante network is that its sample rate is set to match that of the other devices. Without you interacting, as soon as a Dante device is connected to the network, it will A) auto-negociate an appropriate IP addess, it will B) auto-clock-sync (maybe even get elected the network's grand clock master) and C) it will auto-advertise all its audio ins and outs to all other devices. Finally, it will re-establish all audio routing subscriptions from the last session within seconds. (Dante audio routing subscriptions are made/changed in Dante Controller software but those subscriptions are immediately stored inside the respective device's Dante modules so that they can remember their subscriptions without Dante Controller running at all, so no need to keep Dante Controller running permanently in the background.)

Dante will switch clocks in the background automatically if necessary while never ever causing a singe audible glitch. It is designed to work this way. You can safely add/remove (poweron/off) Dante devices on-the-fly without causing any audible glitch (unless, of course, you are removing a device currently playing back audio). Dante makes use of the inherent network packet's latency to guarantee that the audio flow of running devices will not be disturbed by devices that are being added or removed. It will constantly evaluate all available, individual clocks and immediately elect the most accurate one. No problems are to be expected by this!

You can choose to have your Dante system clocked by an external (conventional) clock master that is no Dante device. This scenario is only recommended if there's no other way of integrating the particular digital audio device. Whenever possible, you should let Dante care about clocking!

In fact, in contrast to conventional wordclock signals, Dante clocking via PTP messages is a completely different approach (rather astonishing really): Instead of using the traditional high-frequency clocking signal that comes at the exact clocking rate it represents, Dante PTP clocking messages are sent only 4 times per second!!! It's mind-blowing! It can still achieve at least the same clocking accuracy than that of high-frequency clocking signals (if not better)! I can absolutely confirm that the clocking is as stable as it can get in my daily use, arbitrarily turning on and off Dante devices as I need them without ever caring about clocking.

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Old 05-14-2020, 05:24 PM   #21
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Thanks for that SonicAxiom!
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Old 05-14-2020, 06:12 PM   #22
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Thanks for that SonicAxiom!
you're most welcome

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