Focusrite REDNet

[dbrulhart]

Hi dbrulhart

 

As far as I know (and I have it first hand from Audinate) the AES67 support has already been available since January 2016 for Dante devices based on their Brooklyn II card, so there shouldn't (have to) be any issues on that front.

 

Cheers

 

Audinate indeed released the AES67 support for the Brooklyn II card (and has been successfully tested during last AES67 plugfest in Washington DC last year, however as this card is only the "Dante engine" for all products using it, it now down to the companies integrating it to release this update in their own products. This is on the way, but not "automatic" and has to follow every single companies agenda.

[mourip]

I am very glad to see some industry participants starting to drop in here. It is a very good sign, one that a number of us hope will usher in true audiophile products based upon IP technology.

 

Personally I feel that it might be helpful if you could provide us with a brief introduction since some of us might not be as familiar with your reputation or affiliations.

 

Thanks!

 

Paul

[dbrulhart]

I am very glad to see some industry participants starting to drop in here. It is a very good sign, one that a number of us hope will usher in true audiophile products based upon IP technology.

 

Personally I feel that it might be helpful if you could provide us with a brief introduction since some of us might not be as familiar with your reputation or affiliations.

 

Thanks!

 

Paul

 

Well, it was not the point here to make any advertisement for Merging, specially in a thread initially targeted to Focusrite/RedNet, but just clarifying some points about Ravenna/AES67, as they've been mentioned in the thread, as well as Merging point of view and status about both these protocols, as they are what we truly believe being the future of audio over IP, and particularly high resolution.

 

As per an introduction to Merging work and expertise, and again not to fall in easy advertisement, nor trying to offload myself to writing something at length here, I feel a pretty decent introduction to Merging history, philosophy and expertise in networking can be found here:

 

MERGING+NADAC | HISTORY

MERGING+NADAC | PHILOSOPHY

MERGING+NADAC | NETWORKING

Merging Technologies | Pyramix 10 | 3D - RAVENNA AoIP Connectivity Explained

[Superdad]

As per an introduction to Merging work and expertise, and again not to fall in easy advertisement, nor trying to offload myself to writing something at length here, I feel a pretty decent introduction to Merging history, philosophy and expertise in networking can be found here:

 

I think Mourip was just asking for you to disclose your personal affiliation (customarily done in a signature), which a Google search reveals is that you are the Product Manager for Merging's NADAC.

That's great, and we are glad you are here. (The original poster recently opened this thread for broader discussion of AOIP beyond just the Focusrite Dante/REDNet products.)

 

While it is great that Merging is now giving away their OS X Core Audio Ravenna VSC (built I assume by updating Steinberg ASIO to be OS X-compatible), the 44.1/48KHz sample rate limitation of the free version is not likely to attract other DAC manufacturers to join the Ravenna revolution.

 

I spoke at length up-thread about readily available (free or licensed), maintained, and cross-platform VSC being the key to broader adoption of AES67/Ravenna by other hardware manufacturers. Might Merging consider taking the lead and becoming the source for such? A modest license fee--either charged to the hardware OEM or to their end customers--could help offset development and support costs.

[The offered VSC could even be restricted to a few channels and even unicast--as long as all sample rate limitations were lifted.]

Such a move would certainly be welcome by all and would clearly cement Merging Technologies leadership position in the AES67/Ravenna marketplace.

 

I am sure that many here look forward to your comments on the above proposition. I do realize that you are likely restricted on disclosing your firms future plans. But Merging is presently the best hope that audiophiles have for seeing Ravenna take off in our marketplace (and not all of us can afford or want to purchase the fine NADAC. ).

 

Thanks and regards.

[mourip]

Well, it was not the point here to make any advertisement for Merging, specially in a thread initially targeted to Focusrite/RedNet, but just clarifying some points about Ravenna/AES67, as they've been mentioned in the thread, as well as Merging point of view and status about both these protocols, as they are what we truly believe being the future of audio over IP, and particularly high resolution.

 

I think Mourip was just asking for you to disclose your personal affiliation (customarily done in a signature), which a Google search reveals is that you are the Product Manager for Merging's NADAC.

That's great, and we are glad you are here. (The original poster recently opened this thread for broader discussion of AOIP beyond just the Focusrite Dante/REDNet products.)

 

Thanks. Yes. I am very interested in having industry participation here. I just think that introductions are useful especially from those with the ability to incorporate our feedback into new products. As SuperDad says it can be as simple as adding a line in your signature.

 

I did not feel at all that you were advertising but that you were adding knowledge based upon real experience, something that is "occasionally" lacking in other threads :-)

 

I was the OP but have no interest in curating or guiding the thread. I am happy to see it grow as others see fit and discuss audio over IP in a broad way. I started the thread because I recently bought a Focusrite Rednet D16 and have found it to be a revelation.

 

In the spirit of introductions I have been an audiophile for about 40 years and a Network Engineer for the last 20 so I am eating this stuff up!

 

..so Welcome!

[dbrulhart]

Thanks. Yes. I am very interested in having industry participation here. I just think that introductions are useful especially from those with the ability to incorporate our feedback into new products. As SuperDad says it can be as simple as adding a line in your signature.

 

I did not feel at all that you were advertising but that you were adding knowledge based upon real experience, something that is "occasionally" lacking in other threads :-)

 

I was the OP but have no interest in curating or guiding the thread. I am happy to see it grow as others see fit and discuss audio over IP in a broad way. I started the thread because I recently bought a Focusrite Rednet D16 and have found it to be a revelation.

 

In the spirit of introductions I have been an audiophile for about 40 years and a Network Engineer for the last 20 so I am eating this stuff up!

 

..so Welcome!

 

OK, got it, sorry for the confusion... and that'll be quicker ;-)

 

I'm Dominique Brulhart, co-founder of Merging Technologies some 25 years ago, my main position is Head of Software Engineering at Merging. I've initiated the step in the consumer market some years ago and taken the role of Product Manager for the consumer line, being NADAC at that point in time.

 

Very happy to hear that you're in the networking industry and that the RedNet has been a revelation for you. Networking has also been a revelation for Merging some 8-9 years ago when we stepped in this technology for our pro line, mainly for bandwidth and cabling consideration initially, but it's been very clear immediately that networked audio is much much more than plumbing.

 

The flexibility, quality, precision, easiness of deployment, redundancy, sharing of devices, etc, etc... of networking solutions changed the life of many/most of our users (and ourselves), clearly for the better, and while we perfectly acknowledge that professional and home usage involve pretty different requirements, we have absolutely no doubt that the home/consumer industry has all to benefit from AoIP. (And even more by using open protocols like Ravenna, in which for instance we could very easily add the support for DSD in the standard... typically adding the support for DSD512 (or higher) will be a question of days, mainly administrative days, the tougher though ;-))

 

The move to NADAC was not meant to make a statement or rule this world on any manner, it's been a careful decision, based on repeated requests from our mastering and recording engineers customers, and the choice of going with a no compromise Ravenna solution without USB was just an obvious and non-negotiable decision, thus its name NADAC.

 

There's been some youth issues on home networks, like the Unicast/Multicast or some interaction with specific equipment that we never find on professional dedicated networks, the kind of problems Chris Connaker mentioned in this thread, that is now solved and available to all NADAC users through a recent firmware and driver update. However these were not intrinsic problems of the Ravenna or AES67 protocol, but Merging implementation issues. I guess it's important to make this very clear.

 

We're already working on new products, both on the pro and the consumer side, and all of them will definitely be Ravenna/AES67 compatible, high resolution capable and targeted to expand an ecosystem making the link between both the pro and the consumer world and allowing producers to easily provide and listeners as easily enjoy master quality recordings at home.

 

Here's for the introduction ;-)

[dbrulhart]

While it is great that Merging is now giving away their OS X Core Audio Ravenna VSC (built I assume by updating Steinberg ASIO to be OS X-compatible), the 44.1/48KHz sample rate limitation of the free version is not likely to attract other DAC manufacturers to join the Ravenna revolution.

 

I spoke at length up-thread about readily available (free or licensed), maintained, and cross-platform VSC being the key to broader adoption of AES67/Ravenna by other hardware manufacturers. Might Merging consider taking the lead and becoming the source for such? A modest license fee--either charged to the hardware OEM or to their end customers--could help offset development and support costs.

[The offered VSC could even be restricted to a few channels and even unicast--as long as all sample rate limitations were lifted.]

Such a move would certainly be welcome by all and would clearly cement Merging Technologies leadership position in the AES67/Ravenna marketplace.

 

I am sure that many here look forward to your comments on the above proposition. I do realize that you are likely restricted on disclosing your firms future plans. But Merging is presently the best hope that audiophiles have for seeing Ravenna take off in our marketplace (and not all of us can afford or want to purchase the fine NADAC. ).

 

Thanks and regards.

 

It's perfectly clear that the so called "Merging RAVENNA/AES67 Virtual Audio Device - STANDARD Installer" has been released to allow anybody interested in trying AES67 to be able to do so for free and easily. We limited this version of the driver to the exact AES67 specifications, being 44.1/48kHz, 48 samples framesize, etc... purposely to fit this specification and NOT make it unusable in certain conditions or markets.

 

Same remark applies to your assumption that the OSX CoreAudio driver is an update of the Steinberg ASIO driver, unfortunately not... the CoreAudio has been a major rewriting as compared to ASIO, and while we're traditionally a Windows company, we have to confess that the OSX version, thanks to the CoreAudio platform, is more "powerful" than the ASIO version, and allowed for a "clean" release of the VSC without hardware required, and not the Windows/ASIO version for the time being, but will/may come in the future.

 

This free VSC is Merging contribution to the arising and deployment of an AoIP AES standard, that we were waiting for since years and are immensely grateful to all those persons involved in its publication.

 

Now we're fully aware that AES67 in its current form doesn't fit for certain applications, typically high resolution and consumer requirements, discovery, easy connections between devices, etc... but for this there is Ravenna, which perfectly covers all these aspects. We still definitely need Ravenna for our commercial products, being pro or consumer, and still deliver Ravenna drivers with all our products, however with slight differences, based on the specificity of their targeted usage, as described above in this thread.

 

However AES67 being a subset of Ravenna, all our drivers are then AES67 compatible by default.

 

Now to the question of knowing if Merging would be interested in providing Ravenna/AES67 Virtual Sound Cards, drivers or even hardware parts to other manufacturers, and help (if not necessarily lead) in the development and deployment of Ravenna based solutions for this market, the answer is clearly: Yes.

 

We are currently actively working on solutions that will be able to be integrated in other products (as well as ours ;-) and will be available in a reasonably near future.

 

As you say, disclosing firms future plans will only be done under NDA at this stage, however you can send us private messages immediately ;-)

 

Cheers,

[Superdad]

Now to the question of knowing if Merging would be interested in providing Ravenna/AES67 Virtual Sound Cards, drivers or even hardware parts to other manufacturers, and help (if not necessarily lead) in the development and deployment of Ravenna based solutions for this market, the answer is clearly: Yes.

 

We are currently actively working on solutions that will be able to be integrated in other products (as well as ours ;-) and will be available in a reasonably near future.

 

Dear Mr. Brulhart:

 

Thank you for both your full introduction post and for your above post clearly addressing each of my questions. That is excellent news for all audiophiles--and for DAC designers who wish to incorporate Ravenna into their products.

 

(Sorry for my error about Steinberg and ASIO: I got it mixed up in my mind with regards to OS X ASIO drivers that exaSound wrote for their USB DAC--a Steinberg logo appears with the credit window for those.)

 

It is not hard for me to imagine that your firm could soon offer NADACs at lower cost. I recently saw photos of the inside of your unit, and that giant Ethertube board from 5 years back seems to have many more functions than just being an AES67/Ravenna Ethernet>I2S end point renderer. Perhaps your next version will be about the size of a credit card…

 

[Serge_S]

It is not hard for me to imagine that your firm could soon offer NADACs at lower cost. I recently saw photos of the inside of your unit, and that giant Ethertube board from 5 years back seems to have many more functions than just being an AES67/Ravenna Ethernet>I2S end point renderer. Perhaps your next version will be about the size of a credit card...

 

The cost of NADAC includes research and development. Now Merging can bring considerable SQ improvements they were able to achieve with NADAC to HORUS and HAPI on the pro-audio side of their shop.

[tranz]

Dear Mr. Brulhart:

 

Thank you for both your full introduction post and for your above post clearly addressing each of my questions. That is excellent news for all audiophiles--and for DAC designers who wish to incorporate Ravenna into their products.

 

(Sorry for my error about Steinberg and ASIO: I got it mixed up in my mind with regards to OS X ASIO drivers that exaSound wrote for their USB DAC--a Steinberg logo appears with the credit window for those.)

 

It is not hard for me to imagine that your firm could soon offer NADACs at lower cost. I recently saw photos of the inside of your unit, and that giant Ethertube board from 5 years back seems to have many more functions than just being an AES67/Ravenna Ethernet>I2S end point renderer. Perhaps your next version will be about the size of a credit card…

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]27460[/ATTACH]

 

Is that an optical LAN cable inside the box?

 

Lots of space available to do some more shielding and multi rail power (or is that already in place? Of course having power in a separate would be even better. Having a naked chip near audio gives me rashes.

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

Why are we focusing on the DACs here? Isn't the challenge also to be able to stream to a network device from a variety of sources?

 

I would love to see a cheap multichannel USB to Ethernet device that can be recognized by Alsa as a soundcard. Dsp4you had such a device (av2usb) but it is no longer distributed (they are working on another device). As far as I can see, there are no other similar devices.

[Serge_S]

As far as I can see, there are no other similar devices.

 

Dante interface - Dante unDUSB | Attero Tech

[Qhwoeprktiyns]

That is only 2 channels, is usb1 and limited to 48khz. All that for 450$...

[Aleg]

It's perfectly clear that the so called "Merging RAVENNA/AES67 Virtual Audio Device - STANDARD Installer" has been released to allow anybody interested in trying AES67 to be able to do so for free and easily. We limited this version of the driver to the exact AES67 specifications, being 44.1/48kHz, 48 samples framesize, etc... purposely to fit this specification and NOT make it unusable in certain conditions or markets.

 

....

 

Hi Dominique

 

Thank you for your introduction and detailed explanation of the VSC.

 

I don't have access to the literal text of the AES67 standard, so maybe you could clarify a question that came up in my head.

 

Is the AES67 standard limited to the sample rate and frame size you mentioned (because that is the common denominator between all current protocols), or does it specify the minimum requirement that needs to be supported (but can be higher as well when both sides support those higher level specs)?

 

Just curious how it is meant to function.

 

Cheers

[Serge_S]

The cost of NADAC includes research and development. Now Merging can bring considerable SQ improvements they were able to achieve with NADAC to HORUS and HAPI on the pro-audio side of their shop.

 

I found a post about NADAC that is very similar to mine above. I haven’t seen it before I posted, but this is still embarrassing. I wish I could remove mine. The other post was made by king2070lplaya on gearslutz more than a year ago.

[jelt2359]

So I picked a Rednet 3 up to try with my Out of Your Head software, since that software requires a single sampling rate output. I'm hoping the Rednet adds sampling rate support as promised anyway.

 

I see that there is an AES connector (DB25) possible. Why are people choosing the D16 over the RN3 if this is the case?

[Aleg]

So I picked a Rednet 3 up to try with my Out of Your Head software, since that software requires a single sampling rate output. I'm hoping the Rednet adds sampling rate support as promised anyway.

 

I see that there is an AES connector (DB25) possible. Why are people choosing the D16 over the RN3 if this is the case?

 

Just my 2 cents:

- D16 is based on their later Brooklyn II board which supports the 176.4kHz sample rate and also is the (only) board by Dante which supports the AES67 interoperability protocol.

- D16 has two ethernet ports instead of only 1 with RN3. Two ports allow for easier setups in consumer environments if people want to avoid using (and configuring of managed) switches.

- D16 has a 1U height instead of the 2U height from RN3.

- RN3 has a lot of optical input but those are only ADAT capable and not SPDIF, so not of much use to the consumer user.

 

cheers

[jelt2359]

Just my 2 cents:

- D16 is based on their later Brooklyn II board which supports the 176.4kHz sample rate and also is the (only) board by Dante which supports the AES67 interoperability protocol.

- D16 has two ethernet ports instead of only 1 with RN3. Two ports allow for easier setups in consumer environments if people want to avoid using (and configuring of managed) switches.

- D16 has a 1U height instead of the 2U height from RN3.

- RN3 has a lot of optical input but those are only ADAT capable and not SPDIF, so not of much use to the consumer user.

 

cheers

 

Thanks. I understand RN3 also supports Dante? And would I need optical input if I'm using Ethernet in?

[Aleg]

Thanks. I understand RN3 also supports Dante? And would I need optical input if I'm using Ethernet in?

 

RN3 is Dante.

No you wouldn't, but some wanted to use optical output which didn't work fo them because it is ADAT and not SPDIF

[jelt2359]

RN3 is Dante.

No you wouldn't, but some wanted to use optical output which didn't work fo them because it is ADAT and not SPDIF

 

Thanks, I understand now.

 

Would AES67 confer any additional advantages over what's used in the RN3?

[Aleg]

Thanks, I understand now.

 

Would AES67 confer any additional advantages over what's used in the RN3?

 

Not in a direct setup like PC-->RN3-->DAC.

AES only comes into play when you get other non-Dante devices in your network that you would want to stream to your Dante device.

Not likely to happen very soon, but I like to keep my options open

[mourip]

Just my 2 cents:

- D16 is based on their later Brooklyn II board which supports the 176.4kHz sample rate and also is the (only) board by Dante which supports the AES67 interoperability protocol.

 

The RN3 and the D16 will go up to 192K

 

RN3 is Dante.

 

Different companies and different functions...

 

The Rednet 3 is hardware made by Focusrite. It takes ethernet input and outputs AES/SPDIF.

 

Dante is software made by Audinate.

 

Focusrite includes Audinate Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS) to allow audio output via an ethernet port to their hardware.

[Aleg]

The RN3 and the D16 will go up to 192K

 

Yes, but only D16 offers 176.4 kHz, not the RN3.

 

 

 

Different companies and different functions...

 

The Rednet 3 is hardware made by Focusrite. It takes ethernet input and outputs AES/SPDIF.

 

Dante is software made by Audinate.

 

Focusrite includes Audinate Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS) to allow audio output via an ethernet port to their hardware.

 

 

Yes, but every Rednet (and every other Dante capable device for that matter) contains a Brooklyn (I or II) board which are all made by Audinate. The main protocol supported by every Rednet device is Dante.

So when the OP asks if "RN3 supports Dante", I can state that RN3 more or less equates to Dante, because it doesn't support any other protocol (not seen the AES67 tab yet).

[mourip]

Yes, but only D16 offers 176.4 kHz, not the RN3.

 

Yes, but every Rednet (and every other Dante capable device for that matter) contains a Brooklyn (I or II) board which are all made by Audinate. The main protocol supported by every Rednet device is Dante.

So when the OP asks if "RN3 supports Dante", I can state that RN3 more or less equates to Dante, because it doesn't support any other protocol (not seen the AES67 tab yet).

 

Thanks for the clarification. True on both accounts.

[jelt2359]

Just joined this group with a RN3, wondering if anyone has fit an LPS to this?