31 Mar
2017
31 Mar
'17
7:07 p.m.
On Thu, 30 Mar 2017, list wrote:
Just put my hands on one Motu Ultralite AVB
Work out of the box - Debian/Gnu 8.7 - with Jackd / Qjackctl (with
an .asoundrc, not sure usefull to record, but needed to play audio from
the browser with html5 videos online)
Plugged in USB.
Plugged with RJ45 cable to a hub, total access to the internal software
with firefox on the IP address assigned to the card - DHCP working - to
change all the routing/effects/mixing of the card.
Firmware update through the web interface too.
Plugged quickly a microphone, worked with Ardour.
Thank you for your report. That is one of the AIs I have been looking at
to replace my aging delta66. I have been looking at that one both because
it is USB 2.0 compliant (as your report comfirms) and because it has AVB
(and is therefore expandable) which I would like to experiment with. I
have already picked up an intel i210 NIC (two of them actually) for this
purpose.
This is a really good idea to put all the controls on
the card, with a
web browser, this make this card «agnostic» from the OS
Can not believe this from MOTU...hope others major brands will follow
this idea.
While motu does mention linux on their site for these IFs, I suspect it is
a side effect of making it work easy with MacOS (which comes with AVB
built in) and being AVB compliant where things need to be controlable over
the net. Still, "works for me".
Interesting that your computer shows that you have 48channels all
together, but the spec says at 96k you should have 64 (32 each direction)
with 28 internal and the rest through AVB. I guess it is possible some of
these are mixer generated (the ice1712 does that). It appears that at 48k
this box will set your computer up for as many as 128channels (64/64 i/o).
I am not sure where they all come from though, other places talk about 3 8
channels streams at a time which is only an extra 24.
Ok reading the manual, the mixer is 24/24 i/o SO that is where the 24/24
comes from. It looks like the ultralite has 18 inputs and can only accept
one extra AVB stream of 8 more while having 18 outputs with the ability to
add two more AVB output streams for a total of 16 more. I don't see 64/64
from any of that.
With direct AVB to computer, they suggest the limits (depending on the
computer resources) as 256 channels total or 32 streams. The total network
load can be over 500.
Reality check: it is rare even now for me to use more than two inputs and
two outputs of my current 6/4 i/o... I have only 8 mic pre. So all of this
for me is just spec. I would probably throttle it to 8/8 for my use.
--
Len Ovens
www.ovenwerks.net