Anyone here using Rednet?

[upscaps]

Anyone here using rednet/dante in a multiple room facility?

1. How many rednet units do you have to purchase per rig?
2. Does the audio really go thru Cat5 cables at all sample rates 44.1-96khz?
3. I saw that you can have up to 192 inputs on an HDX2. How is that possible?
4. Rednet states only an extra 1ms of latency using the system?

Thanks.

[albee1952]

I'll be watching for replies as well. I had given Rednet serious thought before going with HD/Native with HD IO boxes(I got a great deal). One thing that mattered to me was the latency figure ONLY applied if you use the Rednet card(which adds $1K to the system price). Now I'm not sure what happens if you connect the Rednet 5 via digilink(HDN or HDX card).

1. How many rednet units do you have to purchase per rig?Depends on your needs and what you have already for other hardware
2. Does the audio really go thru Cat5 cables at all sample rates 44.1-96khz? Yes
3. I saw that you can have up to 192 inputs on an HDX2. How is that possible? Not sure, I agree the math is fuzzy
4. Rednet states only an extra 1ms of latency using the system? Only with their network card as I mentioned

[upscaps]

thanks. The pricing on the rednet units are more than reasonable. easily beats the price of tons of long analog cable runs and splitters.

[paulo m]

Is it possible to buy PT 11HD, an HDX card and not buy one of AVID´s interfaces as an obligatory bundle?

I mean, I think Rednet is a great alternative to AVID´s converters, given the fact that provides Dante networking capability, but AFAI,K sometime ago AVID wouldn´t sell you an HDX card and PT 11 without one of their converters. Maybe I´m wrong. Anybody?

[Peter Baird]

Don't know about HDX card purchases without an I/O. I bought an HD I/O when I moved to HDX for my analog and AES interconnect needs on the strength of comments by people I trust that the AD/DA sections sounded good.

I have four Rednet 5s connected to two HDX cards for 128 channels of Dante I/O. I originally considered doing either Dante Virtual Soundcard or the Rednet PCIe card, but I needed the absolute fastest throughput I could get, so HDX was the choice.

As I understand it, DVS has a built-in latency of 6ms plus whatever the Dante network adds. The Rednet PCIe advertises 3ms in to out latency, not sure how they measure that (presumably the network latency is not part of that figure). The Rednet 5--HDX connection is supposed to be under 1ms.

Without getting too deep into Dante, a large, well-configured system will have a best-case latency of 1ms. (Yes, you can set the network lower than that, but if you have any Multicast flows the network will automatically set everything to 1ms.)

Not sure about 192 I/O on an HDX|2. As we all know the cards themselves are physically limited to 64 I/O, so going above 124 I/O has to involve some kind of sleight-of-hand.

Regarding Cat 5/6, just keep in mind that the switches on the network do not regenerate the clock signal, and long runs of copper can degrade it significantly. Think of it this way: if the device you have selected as clock master is on one end of a large network, and there are long distances of Cat5/6 between each of the switches, you will have clocking issues on the other end of the network. Fortunately the workaround is simple: use fiber for any runs longer than a few hundred feet. It's cheap (GBIC modules are relatively inexpensive and plug right in to enterprise-level switches), and the network sees a long fiber run as the equivalent of a few feet of copper.

If your application is real-time mixing of live sources (as mine was) you might want to take into account the fact that the present line of Rednet gear does not support the secondary network available with Dante that Yamaha implements as a fail-safe. I believe it's not unlikely we will see a slightly higher level range of boxes from Focusrite that implement this in future. The company is extremely sensitive to industry needs and values input from users.

Finally keep in mind that Dante (and AVB in general) is still maturing. We ran a large network on Arsenio with very few problems with the technology as it existed in Fall of 2013, but when we did the Dante firmware upgrades in Spring 2014 there were significant improvements in both latency and stability.

Hope this helps.

Peter

[Bill Denton]

Originally Posted by Peter Baird

Don't know about HDX card purchases without an I/O. I bought an HD I/O when I moved to HDX for my analog and AES interconnect needs on the strength of comments by people I trust that the AD/DA sections sounded good.

I have four Rednet 5s connected to two HDX cards for 128 channels of Dante I/O. I originally considered doing either Dante Virtual Soundcard or the Rednet PCIe card, but I needed the absolute fastest throughput I could get, so HDX was the choice.

As I understand it, DVS has a built-in latency of 6ms plus whatever the Dante network adds. The Rednet PCIe advertises 3ms in to out latency, not sure how they measure that (presumably the network latency is not part of that figure). The Rednet 5--HDX connection is supposed to be under 1ms.

Without getting too deep into Dante, a large, well-configured system will have a best-case latency of 1ms. (Yes, you can set the network lower than that, but if you have any Multicast flows the network will automatically set everything to 1ms.)

Not sure about 192 I/O on an HDX|2. As we all know the cards themselves are physically limited to 64 I/O, so going above 124 I/O has to involve some kind of sleight-of-hand.

Regarding Cat 5/6, just keep in mind that the switches on the network do not regenerate the clock signal, and long runs of copper can degrade it significantly. Think of it this way: if the device you have selected as clock master is on one end of a large network, and there are long distances of Cat5/6 between each of the switches, you will have clocking issues on the other end of the network. Fortunately the workaround is simple: use fiber for any runs longer than a few hundred feet. It's cheap (GBIC modules are relatively inexpensive and plug right in to enterprise-level switches), and the network sees a long fiber run as the equivalent of a few feet of copper.

If your application is real-time mixing of live sources (as mine was) you might want to take into account the fact that the present line of Rednet gear does not support the secondary network available with Dante that Yamaha implements as a fail-safe. I believe it's not unlikely we will see a slightly higher level range of boxes from Focusrite that implement this in future. The company is extremely sensitive to industry needs and values input from users.

Finally keep in mind that Dante (and AVB in general) is still maturing. We ran a large network on Arsenio with very few problems with the technology as it existed in Fall of 2013, but when we did the Dante firmware upgrades in Spring 2014 there were significant improvements in both latency and stability.

Hope this helps.

Peter

Good info...thanks for posting it.

I doubt Rednet is in the future of my basement, but the more you know...

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by paulo m

Is it possible to buy PT 11HD, an HDX card and not buy one of AVID´s interfaces as an obligatory bundle?

Not AFAIK. Either buy off the used market, or buy a bundle with an HD IO and sell the IO box(my 2 cents only, but I think you would have an easier time selling an 8x8x8 than an OMNI). A new and unregistered 8x8x8 would fetch $2k plus or minus

[JCBigler]

Peter, thanks for posting. I was hoping you would chime in. I had a couple of replies but scratched them because I didn't feel that I was adequately addressing the OPs questions.

I have been talking with a couple of retailers to spec an HD Native system for use in our theatre, using the Focusrite Rednet. Both of these retailers have quoted me a system with a pair of Rednet 5s. They did not require that I buy the HD I/O or HD Omni. So it pays to ask your retailer what their policy is.

Also, Focusrite is about to release a new line of 1U Rednet units, which include secondary Dante port for full redundancy. Haven't gotten a price for these yet though.

The thing about using Dante, is that it makes a lot of sense if you already have a digital audio network, like you would in a live sound system with a Yamaha CL5. All the analog audio is already converted to digital by the RIO units from Yamaha. If you are building from scratch, you still need the AD converters that will get the audio onto a Dante network, before you can send the Dante signal to Protocols using the Rednet 5 or Rednet HD32R.

[paulo m]

Originally Posted by JCBigler

Peter, thanks for posting. I was hoping you would chime in. I had a couple of replies but scratched them because I didn't feel that I was adequately addressing the OPs questions.

I have been talking with a couple of retailers to spec an HD Native system for use in our theatre, using the Focusrite Rednet. Both of these retailers have quoted me a system with a pair of Rednet 5s. They did not require that I buy the HD I/O or HD Omni. So it pays to ask your retailer what their policy is.

Well, it´s great to know that some dealers can do that, it makes more sense.
However and despite I´m a great fan of network technology for pro audio, I don´t like the idea of the need to buy a Rednet 5 just for the purpose of interfacing Protools and then having to buy another box for I/O conversion. That can make sense if you already have a Dante network, otherwise is money out of the window and more rack space taken.
It would make more sense to me, if Focusrite had made the provision for adding as an option, an 8 channel AD/DA card to the Rednet5 unit. Then you could build from there and buy other units in the range if more I/O would be needed. That´s what other manufacturers are doing, for instance DAD with their AX32 which also supports Dante and Merging with the Horus/Hapi range, in this case supporting Ravenna. Of course this comes at a diferent price tag, but nevertheless I think it makes sense from the user point of view. Even a simple PCIe card with a digilink port would make sense, now a 2U unit just for 2 Digilink ports, is a bit of an overkill IMHO.

[JCBigler]

Originally Posted by paulo m

now a 2U unit just for 2 Digilink ports, is a bit of an overkill IMHO.

the new HD32R is a single rack unit. Also they now have an 8 channel Dante unit called the MP8R. Both of these are supposed to ship in 2015 sometime.

I agree that Dante and Rednet make a lot of sense when you are sending the same set of inputs to multiple places at the same time, i.e. FOH, monitors, broadcast, and recording consoles. I'm not sure that it's quite as useful in a traditional recording studio where you are routing inputs and outputs to only one place. Maybe some really large multiroom facilities could use it, bit it's overkill for most I think.