Hi everyone,
Is it best to place Dante card it in the Surface or directly in the MixRack? C3500 and CDM48
My main use cases for the Dante card will be multitrack recording and virtual soundcheck.
From a workflow and system stability standpoint, what are the main advantages or potential pitfalls of choosing one location over the other?
- If I put it in the Surface, does it add any unwanted latency or strain to the gigaACE link?
- If I put it in the MixRack (70 meters away from the Surface), are there any limitations regarding routing or Port A/B flexibility?
I would love to hear how you have configured your rigs and what you would recommend for this setup.
Thanks in advancement for any advice!
While there is going to be a slight difference in latency between the I/O in the Mixrack vs the I/O in the Surface, the “extra” GigaAce transport latency for Surface I/O is just 5 samples (52 microseconds or 52μ) each way. So yes, if you measure the system latency of Dante I/O with the card installed in both locations, there will be a slight difference between the two. While you will never notice the timing difference itself, the difference could cause phasing between to identical audio sources that are routed through the system differently, but heard/summed at the same destination. But honestly that is no different that using the local I/O on the Surface vs using I/O on the Mixrack vs using attached stage boxes to the Mixrack vs using attached stage boxes to the Surface either, etc, etc, etc. All of those different I/O paths have different overall latency times, but it is such a rare thing to cause a problem that most people don’t even think twice about the timing differences in the various ways they get I/O through the system.
Long story short, I would recommend that you put the card wherever it is most convenient. If putting it in the Mixrack is easier, then put it there. If putting it in the Surface is easier, then put it there.
That being said, if there is no preference between the two, I absolutely would put it in the Mixrack because that does ensure more Dante system reliability by reducing one potential failure point. If your Dante card is installed in the Surface and the Surface goes down hard for some reason, you’ll lose your Dante audio as well. If the Dante card is in the Mixrack, losing the Surface will not interrupt the Dante audio.
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What Brian said - it doesn’t matter much. We have two permanently installed systems with Dante cards, and we have the card in the Mix Rack on one and the Surface on the other.
Both Mix Racks stay on 24/7 but we power off the surfaces when not in use. I like the idea that the Dante could be available at all times, so I chose to put it in the Mix Rack in the one room.
In the other room we have one mix rack with two surfaces. Because it is a C series mix rack there is only one I/O slot, and that needs to have a GigaACE card for the second surface. In that room the Dante card is in the Primary Surface. In addition to multitrack recording, we also use Dante for QLab playback. In theory it might be nice to have that available at all times, but practically it hasn’t created any problems I can remember.