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[Mac Kerr]

I realize that if the audio DOES mute then if I'm not using all 64 Dante lines, I can also have the redundant channels as part of the main patch and just change the channel input patch. It would be nice if audio would only mute if there's a change to the Dante patch.

I think you can do this without patch libraries if you use scene focus. If you eliminate input patch for your main and redundant playback inputs from all your scenes via focus, you can create 2 arbitrarily high numbered scenes where focus is input patch only, for those channels only, that have your 2 patch schemes. Use UDKs (or GPI) to directly recall those scenes to set the main or back up input patch. This of course assumes you have enough Dante ports into the console to have both main and BU patched.

Mac

[Chris Hindle]

I think you can do this without patch libraries if you use scene focus. If you eliminate input patch for your main and redundant playback inputs from all your scenes via focus, you can create 2 arbitrarily high numbered scenes where focus is input patch only, for those channels only, that have your 2 patch schemes. Use UDKs (or GPI) to directly recall those scenes to set the main or back up input patch. This of course assumes you have enough Dante ports into the console to have both main and BU patched.

Mac

I don't have a horse in this race. You theater folks are in a different world.
I think the best solution is the one Andrew was looking for at the start. A Dante box does the work, not the console-du-jour.  As long as you can take a Dante feed, the setup is console agnostic.
Chris.

[Mac Kerr]

I don't have a horse in this race. You theater folks are in a different world.
I think the best solution is the one Andrew was looking for at the start. A Dante box does the work, not the console-du-jour.  As long as you can take a Dante feed, the setup is console agnostic.
Chris.

Why would you prefer an external box if the console already does what you want? Extra expense, another point of failure, and added complexity to the setup. Any DSP that has Dante in and out can probably do the switch if it can handle enough channels. A properly configured Yamaha "Bento Box" could select from up to 64 inputs of any kind (MY card dependent) and route to the 64 included Dante channels, but for a number of channels that can fit in the CL's 112 (64+16+16+16) possible Dante ports, or the QL's 96 (64+16+16) switching within the console seems best to me.

This would be simpler with the patch libraries that used to be part of the Yamaha consoles, but are still doable.

With consoles where Dante is not native maybe MADI, AES, or analog would be easier to switch.

Mac

[Andrew Broughton]

A patch change shouldn't cause any audio interruption since audio is present at each of the Dante inputs all the time.

Have you tried this to confirm there's no audio dropout? I won't have a chance for a while.

[Mac Kerr]

Have you tried this to confirm there's no audio dropout? I won't have a chance for a while.

I have no idea. I don't use the Yamaha method of Dante patching because I find Dante Controller to be much easier and faster. I would expect that if it's doing actual Dante routing that at least the channels being switched will mute, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole system mutes. I would try to do the patching in the console rather than in Dante.

I think I'll be on a QL next week, I'll give it a try.

Mac

[Andrew Broughton]

I have no idea. I don't use the Yamaha method of Dante patching because I find Dante Controller to be much easier and faster. I would expect that if it's doing actual Dante routing that at least the channels being switched will mute, but I wouldn't be surprised if the whole system mutes. I would try to do the patching in the console rather than in Dante.

I think I'll be on a QL next week, I'll give it a try.

Mac

That would be great.
Not sure yet if I'll go that way, but because the libraries can be recalled by UDK and GPI and are not scene-dependent, it would be good to know. AFAIK, you can't remotely recall Dante Presets via DC can you?

[Mac Kerr]

That would be great.
Not sure yet if I'll go that way, but because the libraries can be recalled by UDK and GPI and are not scene-dependent, it would be good to know. AFAIK, you can't remotely recall Dante Presets via DC can you?

No, you have to load a new preset via the menus in DC, and loading a new preset in DC mutes the whole system, including Dante routing not involved with the console, for a few seconds.

By using focus recall you can make your patch recall independent of all your other scenes. Normal scene changes will not affect the patch, and the patch change scenes will not affect anything else.

Mac

[Andrew Broughton]

No, you have to load a new preset via the menus in DC, and loading a new preset in DC mutes the whole system, including Dante routing not involved with the console, for a few seconds.

Good to know. Never had to do a patch change except during setup.

By using focus recall you can make your patch recall independent of all your other scenes. Normal scene changes will not affect the patch, and the patch change scenes will not affect anything else.

Of course. I'm well aware. Not as convenient though for "backup" type patch switches since you have to jump to another scene and back again to where you were.
My software would be the better way should I decide to go the input patch change route.

[Josh Millward]

I have found this whole discussion very interesting. I understand what is wanted in this situation and the really funny thing is that CobraNet supports this need natively without requiring any interference.

Whereas Dante uses "flows" of audio through the network (up to four audio channels may be contained in a flow, flows are automatically configured by the system), CobraNet uses "bundles".

In CobraNet you have to configure the bundles manually. This has traditionally been one of the biggest complaints about setting up CobraNet. However, one very dandy little feature that CobraNet sports is a layer of bundle transmission redundancy that is available right in the network. How this works is that you configure two transmitting bundles identically and adjust different priorities for them. The bundle number with the higher priority will always take over for the one with the lower priority.

Applying this to the desired operation at hand: IF you had CobraNet cards in the computers, each could be set up to transmit with the same bundle number, same number of subchannels, same everything except priority. You set the priority for the backup unit to be something lower than the primary unit. The default value is 16, so you can just set the backup bundle priority to anything between 1 and 15. This way if something happens to the primary computer and it goes offline, the backup computer will be there and ready to go, changeover will typically happen in less than a second.

However, for this type of redundancy to work correctly, the primary bundle must actually go offline. If something else is hosed up in the computer, and the bundle remains connected but is not actually transmitting audio (something went sideways in the computer, but it continues to be powered up, online, and the CobraNet card continues to function but audio is not reaching it) then the automatic change over will not happen. You could always manually force it to happen by pulling the Ethernet cable on the CobraNet card on the primary unit, this will disconnect the bundle for sure. 

This is why I am a much bigger fan of going ahead and using two sets of channels to bring the audio into the console all the time. Mute the backup, run with the primary. If the primary fails in ANY way, you can simply mute its input channels and unmute the backup channels. It is the easiest solution and does not require relying on anything other than the operator. This is what I always do when I am running tandem computers. Yes, it does require twice the channels, but that also gives me confidence that the backup is actually working while I am using the primary.

[Justice C. Bigler]

So I spent the afternoon playing with this on our CL5. Here's what I figured out:

If you use Dante Controller to change patches, it actually doesn't mute the audio stream. There is a tiny audio blip, but it does not mute the whole console. This is different from the last time I tried it several years ago, so they must have done something to fix that issue in one of the updates. However, this requires mousing around in DC, opening a drop down menu, and selecting the proper saved Dante Controller file, then clicking again to confirm that you want to load the new patch. Kind of time consuming, even if the actual switch doesn't take more than a few milliseconds.

If you use the console to change the Dante Patch, you can assign the Dante Patch Library recall to a UDK, and then you just have to confirm that you are changing patches on the screen. However, for whatever reason, even if you save the Dante Patch Library on the console, it doesn't seem to recall in Dante Controller properly. And you have to go back into DC and manually repatch the channels that changed. It's probable that I was missing a step or two.


That was as far as I got before we had a string section rehearsal for the symphony on stage and I had to cease my incessant QLab sound effects playing. I'll work on it some more later this week.

[ProSoundWeb Community]