[LAD] Audio over net - an observation

[Reuben Martin]

On Sunday, September 28, 2014 08:52:10 AM Len Ovens wrote:
> Yet Focusrite sells a RedNet PCIe
> card for around $800... one hopes it has more on it than an ethernet port

A lot of the work is offloaded onto hardware rather than CPU, so it can provide 
more stability and deterministic latency. It also allows you to bypass the 
networking stack. When you have four 64 channel audio consoles on the same 
network using things such a multi-flows (dante can use multicast when a single 
source has more than one destination) the traffic can get quite intense and a 
hardwired dante card starts to make a lot of sense. In live audio the 32 bit 
sample size is more important than the sample rate. 48k is plenty, and you can 
set latencies down to .2ms at that sampling rate on a dante network. Besides, 
sticking with 48k makes integration with broadcast folks a lot easier.

> I am not suggesting that the Linux world embrace Dante as a protocol so
> much as learning from its implementation.

I think Linux world should keep an eye on the adoption of AES67. AVB is 
(almost) dead since there has been no serious commitment to it from the 
network switch manufactures. Audinate has committed to supporting it. I've 
already seen QSC demo their newest Q-SYS product line that supports AES67. 
Harman's BLU Link products are starting to support it. I don't think there is 
a single proprietary layer-3 audio transport that hasn't at least claimed they 
will support it.

-Reuben