QLab 3 and Dante Virtual Soundcard

[Peter Eltringham]

Hi All,

I was wondering if anyone had any experience with using QLab 3 with Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVSC) and if anyone has tried creating a Main/Backup system with two mac's both on the dante network?

Ideally the setup would involve two mac's (both with DVSC) connected via a switch to MY16-AUD cards in an O2R. One mac would be the main, and the second would be a live backup. I will need to switch to the backup with minimal time and effort (akin to the changeover times with established AES or ADAT changeover systems.)

Is there a way to do this within the normal Dante infrastructure? Might it just involve a Patch Change on the mixing desk? Could it work using the Primary - Secondary system that Dante already features, so Main would go into Primary, and Backup would go into Secondary (I have a feeling this will not work).

Thanks in advance.

Peter

[Tom Quinn]

Hi Peter,
I use DVS for playback of things all the time with Qlab 3 (and Qlab 2)... though I've never tried setting up a backup system (yep, bad call, but don't have hardware for it)

I would set it up so each system has it's own set of channels in the console, then you can mute/unmute those channels to choose the system who's playback you hear... theoretically this could be 2 scenes on a console even... supporting multiple macs on the same dante network is super easy.

if you needed to use the same inputs towards the console, you can setup 'scenes' within the dante controller software that would switch the sources around. I'm not sure if qlab can trigger that though...

Thanks!

------------------------------------
Tom Quinn
T...@battle4heaven.com
877-793-5175
www.battle4heaven.com

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[Tyler]

I just did this. Yamaha CL5, and two mac minis with QLab 3. Backup was triggered via Qwidget controller, flawless. Setup a primary and backup set of channels as it was easiest

[Nigel Hogg]

Hi Peter,

I use such a setup successfully. I actually have a MY 16 - AUD card in an 01v96i desk. I use the USB interface for the main Mac mini and the DVS for the backup, giving me 16 channels each of main and backup. When I've needed less than 8 channels of main and backup I've just used the DVS. It's very straightforward to connect using a simple router and the Dante controller app. I then patch my main channels to layer one on the desk (channels 1-16) and the backup to the corresponding channels on layer 2. To switch between main and backup, I set up a mute group on the desk which mutes all the main channels and unmutes the backup - this results in an almost seamless changeover. To ensure that levels are constant on changeover I also grouped corresponding faders for main and backup so that any level changes in one are reflected in the other.

Nigel

[Jeremy Lee]

Can you tell us more about QWidget? Some google searching only finds some C+ code fragments.

Jeremy Lee

- A thumb is a terrible speller. Please forgive my trespasses.

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[Paul Gotch]

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 07:23:10AM -0400, Jeremy Lee wrote:
> Can you tell us more about QWidget? Some google searching only finds some C+ code fragments.

http://widgeteering.com/

-p
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Paul Gotch
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[Tyler Gothier]

http://widgeteering.com/

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[Jeremy Lee]

Ah- I misread the post apparently.  I thought that the QWidget was actually handling the Dante re-routing portion of the redundancy equation.  I see now that it's a go box with 2 USB ports that you can use for redundancy.

For a moment I was super excited that someone had made a hardware box to automate the Dante re-routing!  Someone, somewhere must be working on that…  Bueller?  Bueller?

-- 
Jeremy Lee
   Sound Designer - USA 829
       http://www.jjlee.com

[Tyler]

Eh I wouldn't trust anything other than Dante Controller for that. Dante routing is not instantaneous either, it can take a second or two or three for the routing to be confirmed and propagated through the network and is not something I want to rely on during a show. Once Controller is routed, I wouldn't touch it again until something needed to be changed. Having another set of channels for backup on the board. Never needed them but could turn them on as fast as I could could hit a button if I needed them

[Daniel Lundberg]

Hey Peter,

Yes, I'm working on a system now that uses main and backup QLab machines over VSC to a CL5. A couple things to watch out for:

-Dante VSC will only work on a primary Dante network. Both machines could be on the primary network and go into the desk, but if the network goes down for any reason you'd be out of luck. If you try assigning a VSC machine to the secondary network, Dante Controller will give you crosspatch error messages. In our system, each QLab machine has its own MY16-AUD card on which it uses the primary interface.

-Clocking issues. By default, Dante devices clock to the network. If you have one Dante network, you could set the desk's wordclock to that MY16-AUD card. If you have two Dante networks, or two or more cards, you need to make it so everything syncs to the same clock, which I would make the console's internal clock. You can do this by going to the "Clock Status" tab in Dante Controller on each network and checking "Enable Sync to External" for each MY16-AUD card.

How many inputs do you need? How many MY-16AUD cards do you have? You could do 32 channels from each QLab machine with four MY16-AUD cards, and you could set the ports to daisy chain to avoid the need for any network switches.

We're using console mute groups to switch between main and backup, and we're triggering both QLab machines with MIDI from the console through a MIDI Solutions T8.

There's a useful thread about this from last year as well: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/qlab/6vyPPf4-C0Y

Good luck!

-Daniel

[Andy Lang]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2014 at 12:58 PM, Jeremy Lee <jerem...@jjlee.com> wrote:
> For a moment I was super excited that someone had made a hardware box to
> automate the Dante re-routing! Someone, somewhere must be working on that…
> Bueller? Bueller?

It's a tricky thing to do, because it either needs to happen in
software, via the Dante API. Which you have to sign up with them to
develop for, and can get costly. Or you have to do it in hardware,
which again, you have to buy the Dante modules, although developing
this particular sort of device is less costly.

I've got it on the pencilled in roadmap for future Duck's Echo
products, but due to cost and complexity, it's well in the list after
other switcher models. A pre-production MADI switcher is going out on
an install this fall, and then once that's solidified, if there's
enough market interest I'm open to doing an ADAT version. It would
only be after that I'd look at the Dante version in seriousness,
because it's going to be significantly more expensive due to the Dante
modules.

-Andy

[Jeremy Lee]

I mostly agree with you.  The issue is that you don't always have another 8-24 channels of mixing desk just sitting unused.  An external switch is the way to go with this.

On Aug 6, 2014, at 3:18 PM, Tyler <tgot...@gmail.com> wrote:

Eh I wouldn't trust anything other than Dante Controller for that. Dante routing is not instantaneous either, it can take a second or two or three for the routing to be confirmed and propagated through the network and is not something I want to rely on during a show. Once Controller is routed, I wouldn't touch it again until something needed to be changed. Having another set of channels for backup on the board. Never needed them but could turn them on as fast as I could could hit a button if I needed them

On Wednesday, August 6, 2014 9:55:07 AM UTC-7, Jeremy Lee wrote:

Ah- I misread the post apparently.  I thought that the QWidget was actually handling the Dante re-routing portion of the redundancy equation.  I see now that it's a go box with 2 USB ports that you can use for redundancy.

For a moment I was super excited that someone had made a hardware box to automate the Dante re-routing!  Someone, somewhere must be working on that…  Bueller?  Bueller?

On Aug 6, 2014, at 8:02 AM, Paul Gotch <paulg...@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:

On Wed, Aug 06, 2014 at 07:23:10AM -0400, Jeremy Lee wrote:

Can you tell us more about QWidget? Some google searching only finds some C+ code fragments.

http://widgeteering.com/

[Tyler]

I would love to see something along the lines of a Dante SW8. I'm not sure if it would be possible to have it not change Dante routing directly, but rather have some software mechanism that instantly switches to backup input if tone channel is lost

[Lists]

And you have to have a console that will take on this functionality without hurting other automation - a mute group? a macro?  patch change?  all have their added complexity in a show with a deeply automated console...

The lectrosonics aspen matrix will act as a switch.  kinda overkill, but it does it. 

Charles Coes

cco...@gmail.com
www.charlescoes.com
"Why shouldn't truth be stranger than fiction?  Fiction after all has to make sense" - Mark Twain