2 Rooms with MTRX Studio - Dante Management

[originalscottyg]

Apologies in advance for my lack of Dante and networking knowledge.

We have just installed MTRX Studios in 2 adjacent rooms. Each room has a MTRX Studio + Focusrite AM2 for headphones and uses DVS for Mac audio playback into the monitor B-Chain (DADman). Both rooms are connected to the same LAN and subnet.

With a single MTRX Studio on the network, I understand that in Dante Controller, the MTRX Studio should be set to Internal Clock in DADman and set to Preferred Leader in both DADman and Dante Controller.

With both rooms on the same network, how should the 2 MTRX Studios be clocked in Dante Controller? Since we are all currently working hybrid, these rooms get powered down at night and either studio could be powered up first, depending on who shows up and in what order.

Right now we have both MTRX Studios set to Preferred Leader in DADman and Dante Controller. The only thing we are noticing is that when one of the rooms gets powered on after the other room is running, the AM2 in the room that's running freaks out and loses the right channel. Toggling the clock settings in Dante Controller back and forth clears up the issue.

Additionally, we occasionally will run sessions at 96kHz. I understand the process to change the DVS sample rate to match the MTRX Studio, when there is only one on the network. But how do we best manage when one room wants to work at 48k and another at 96k? Should we be setting up separate VLANS for the 2 rooms? If so, then how do we connect the 2 rooms via Dante if, for example, we want to be using both rooms for a tracking session, or to monitor a mix in either room for QC? Patching the 2 rooms together, of course, would only happen when they are both running at the same sample rate.

[creativecontrol]

Greetings,

Here's what I would do.

Distribute common (base rate) word clock to all rooms. This will work for 48 kHz or 96kHz workflows.

If you are only typically monitoring system sounds in Stereo - think about perhaps an AVIO Adapter (USB) instead of DVS:
https://www.audinate.com/products/de...dante-avio#USB

You will still have to align sample rates but it's much less finicky about adapters, clock and streaming.

If you can't distribute common word, choose one unit to be the Leader Clock master and set the other room to lock to PTP. Distributed Word is still best.

Leave the systems on. Avoid power on and off each rig each day.

If you absolutely need SRC - MTRX with Dante-128 is a better option. There are some external devices that offer SRC capabilities but they are not inexpensive.


best,


Jeff

[originalscottyg]

Jeff, thank you so much for the reply, and apologies for the late response.

I am curious about your suggestion for distributing word clock to all the rooms. Would this be via coax/bnc, i.e. traditional word clock? Or is this something that would be done over Dante? Due to building issues, pulling new coax lines between the rooms isn't really an option right now, and these 2 rooms don't share a common machine room. We do monitor both stereo and multichannel from the Mac system sound, so AVIOs probably aren't an option at the moment.

Unfortunately, since we are all still working hybrid in-person/remote, we can't leave all the rooms powered up all the time until we are all back in person full time and the computers aren't being moved back and forth. Although I suppose we could leave just the MTRX Studios powered up all the time. Would plugin our Sonnet chassis into powered down computers then powering the computers up, all while the MTRX Studios are powered on create any issues?

We have noticed some strangeness with our facility-wide LAN, so we are consulting with an IT vendor to potentially rebuild our LAN and redo a good bit of the wiring, which is long overdue. So, maybe once that stuff is straightened out, things will improve.

Thanks again for the info!

[creativecontrol]

Word distribution was simply the best possible practice - especially if all devices happen to live in a machine room. If that's not possible - you can certainly have one system (say primary MTRX for example) be the Leader Clock master - and have each other remote room lock to PTP by choosing SYNC SOURCE = Dante IP in DADman for those rigs.

best,


Jeff

[flavor32]

Originally Posted by creativecontrol

Greetings,

Here's what I would do.

Distribute common (base rate) word clock to all rooms. This will work for 48 kHz or 96kHz workflows.

If you are only typically monitoring system sounds in Stereo - think about perhaps an AVIO Adapter (USB) instead of DVS:
https://www.audinate.com/products/de...dante-avio#USB

You will still have to align sample rates but it's much less finicky about adapters, clock and streaming.

If you can't distribute common word, choose one unit to be the Leader Clock master and set the other room to lock to PTP. Distributed Word is still best.

Leave the systems on. Avoid power on and off each rig each day.

If you absolutely need SRC - MTRX with Dante-128 is a better option. There are some external devices that offer SRC capabilities but they are not inexpensive.


best,


Jeff

I am curious about this Audinate adapter recommendation. All of the Audinate adapters I have looked at say they only do 48k, unfortunately, so I have not bought any. I need devices to work at my usual 96k rate. Am I missing some info about the various Audinate adapters working at 96k? Or, were you suggesting that a dedicated SRC box be put inline. I'm curious because I have been wanting some various adapters but only see 48k listed for the Audinate hardware adapters.

[creativecontrol]

Greetings,

Depending on the Audinate AVIO adapters you are referring to, they vary:

48k: Bluetooth, USB A or C,
96k: AES3, AD, DA

Check back here as I build out additional solutions and suggestions at the MTRX Family devices landing page:

Start Here!

best,


Jeff

[briansin]

Originally Posted by originalscottyg

Apologies in advance for my lack of Dante and networking knowledge.

With a single MTRX Studio on the network, I understand that in Dante Controller, the MTRX Studio should be set to Internal Clock in DADman and set to Preferred Leader in both DADman and Dante Controller.

Hello! Where did you read that this was preferred vs setting the clock to Dante even while having the MTRX Studio being the preferred master? Why is Internal better than Dante in this case? Thanks!