MTRX Studio with other converters: Dante or HD?

[mahler007]

A little while ago, I got a good deal on a 24-channel Aurora(n) converter. It came with a Dante card. "No problem," I thought. I bought a compatible ethernet switch, DVS, and configured my whole setup, including some outboard digital gear, to all work over Dante and my M1 Mac Studio Ultra.

It has generally worked well. My main gripe is that wi-fi glitches seem to occasionally disrupt the ethernet comms, causing errors, converter dropouts, and other issues, especially when working with large, CPU-intensive sessions. These require a buffer reset at best, or a total system restart at worst. I could turn the wifi off, but I like using the Avid Control app to control DADMan and other Pro Tools functions, and it requires wifi to be on.

I have all the hardware required to convert my setup over to full HDX, including an HD card for the Aurora(n). Going HD would also allow me to use my old HD Omni, and an older Aurora 16 I have lying around. I could use the extra i/o.

I guess my question is if going HD might be more stable and seamless, with lower latency, more system responsiveness, and better CPU performance. Any thoughts in terms of advantages/disadvantages between these 2 setups?

[thebeatless]

Get a USBC or Thunderbolt ethernet adapter. Connect the Lynx to that in order to keep it off of the main network. It will work much more reliably. Or... Swap to a Thunderbolt card in the lynx if you don't really need all of the possibilities Dante offers. You'd get lower latency, less fussing around, and it will follow the sample rate of any session you open.

I'm selling my basically brand new MTRX studio and Focusrite D16r (AES only) to stick with a thunderbolt lynx. I have zero need, and after trying it, I also lost the desire to use Dante for my mix room. It only adds unnecessary complication and it doesn't handle frequent sample rate changes very well. Plus it's just overkill for simply getting audio from the computer to the speakers. I don't have a need for all of the features.

[mahler007]

Thanks for your reply, but I'm not really interested in these options.

I'm keeping my MTRX Studio. I do a lot of immersive audio work and need its monitor functionality, among other things. I also need 64 channels of i/o for interfacing with a console, analog hardware, and an Aviom system for tracking.

It's Dante or HD for me — curious to know which of these 2 options will provide the most stable and CPU efficient experience, or if the differences will ultimately be negligible.

[thebeatless]

Getting Dante off of your main network is your only reliable option.

[Darryl Ramm]

It's not clear what your setup exactly is.

You have a MTRX Studio? And the Aurora(n) Dante is connected to that via Dante? And you do all routing via DADman and the MTRX is the interface to the computer?

The Matrix Studio does or does not have a Thunderbolt card? Are you using DVS to connect to the MTRX Studio and/or Aurora(n)?? I would not be relying on DVS for anything.

[mahler007]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

It's not clear what your setup exactly is.
You have a MTRX Studio? And the Aurora(n) Dante is connected to that via Dante? And you do all routing via DADman and the MTRX is the interface to the computer?

Sorry. Yes, what you describe here is exactly what I am using. To top it all off, I connect both ports of the MTRX to an HDX card for 64 channels of i/o via Digilink.

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

The Matrix Studio does or does not have a Thunderbolt card? Are you using DVS to connect to the MTRX Studio and/or Aurora(n)?? I would not be relying on DVS for anything.

My MTRX Studio does *not* have the T-bolt card. I *am* indeed using DVS to connect the MTRX and Aurora(n). Is there another way? Yes, I am not all that psyched about DVS, yet another reason why I am considering going another route.

This is what I am thinking of switching to, as I have all the hardware required to implement this setup:

Channels 1-32
HDX Digilink 1 --> MTRX Studio Primary; MTRX Studio Expansion --> Lynx Aurora 16 with LT-HD card

Channels 33-64
HDX Digilink 2 --> HD Omni Primary; HD Omni Expansion --> Lynx Aurora(n) 24-channel with LT-HD2

After reading Thebeatles posts, I expect this move will avoid the Dante-related ethernet/wifi issues, but I'm also curious to know if going full on HD might give me better CPU efficiency, more system stability, and overall better performance. Would the T-bolt 3 option card for MTRX help in any way help in this configuration?

[Darryl Ramm]

I would never want to use DVS. I would have grabbed that Thunderbolt card for the MTRX Studio the day it was released.

Going HDX means more faffing around, HDX Cards, expansion chassis for the Mac Studio etc. Maybe some concern about long term support for the HD Driver on macOS, etc. You already understand HDX and own multiple HDX cards and thunderbolt expansion chassis etc and they are just sitting around unused? it's a different story if you are thinking about buying those. (Personally if it was me I'd likely be selling those HDX cards ASAP, but that's just accounting for my needs/workflow).

HDX may not have significantly (and you have not defined what significant is to you) lower latency, it depends on what you are trying to do, the plugins and plugin chains used when tracking. The smallest H/W buffer size you can run at on MTRX Studio Thunderbolt, etc. But stuff here is not making sense: if latency is important to you you would not be on DVS *at all*. And the absolute hard reasons for going HDX is either the wish for HDX/DSP plugins for monitoring or need for Sync-X style frame locking. "Getting a system stable" for most users/uses should not require HDX, but to have that conversation intelligently needs you to be clearer on what you are doing, what latency you need etc.

I don't follow the original question about "CPU performance" -- what exact problem are you trying to solve? You don't go HDX to offload CPU processing from the host. The problem with your system likely starts with dependence on DVS, you may benefit from optimize networking and other stuff as well.

If on HDX you may be running hybrid. I'm not sure the risks of somewhat increased exposure to bugs there is worth it unless you really need to be on HDX/hybrid.

MTRX Studio Thunderbolt have limit of 64 I/O. If you need more than that you need a MTRX II Thunderbolt or a HDX system with the separate boxes on DigiLink.

[mahler007]

Thanks again for your reply, and your patience. I now realize I've been inadvertently providing some misinformation. I set this up months ago and haven't given it a second thought since; consequently, I'm a little rusty on my own understanding and didn't explain things clearly. Anyway, here's what I hope is a much better explanation of my circumstances and questions.

I am using a single HDX card for 64 channels of Digilink i/o. 16 of those channels are used by the MTRX itself. My Aurora(n)'s 24-channels of i/o come in over Dante/ethernet via a switch, and are assigned in DADman to Digilink 33-56. The other Digilink i/o channels are used for a Bricasti (also connected via Ethernet), various hardware inserts, Atmos monitor fold downs, etc.

A little user context might be helpful. I mix in stereo and Atmos at the same time. On the "Atmos side" of my template, I use various 7.0.2 busses which all feed a 7.1.4 "object bed," controlled by a 7.1.4 Master bus fader. These busses all have plugins on them. Add in a couple immersive reverbs, some upmixing, and a few other interesting spatial/immersive plugins, and it eats up CPU quite quickly. I can easily start redlining my M1 Mac Ultra.

I have found that a great way of alleviating some of the CPU stress on my Mac is by using AAX DSP plugins (via the Hybrid Engine) on the master busses of both the stereo and Atmos sides of my sessions. Offloading this processing to my HDX card lessens the strain on my CPU, and makes the session run more smoothly. It also pretty much uses up the entire DSP capabilities of the card! Latency is not really a big deal to me, since I use an analog front end for tracking.

Nonetheless, I would still like to have a bit more breathing room on my System Usage meter. As mentioned earlier, I 'm also getting glitches with audio over ethernet because of wifi traffic, which I don't want to turn off because I like using Avid Control. These glitches introduce buffer errors, distortion, and audio dropouts on my Aurora(n).

There are other reasons I am considering moving away from Dante towards HD. They are:

1) I can change sample rates from session to session and everything will sync correctly.

2) I can take advantage of Pro Tools' ADC for hardware inserts. I currently have to type a delay value in the HW Insert tab of the i/o Setup menu when using my Aurora(n) over Dante.

3) I would be able to use my old HD Omni and Aurora 16 for a full 64x64 analog I/O setup, which would be great (well, 60x64 given HD Omni's 4-channel input limitation)

4) Overall, I'm hoping that HD might provide a better overall Pro Tools work environment, with less sluggish metering, a more responsive transport, more efficient CPU usage, etc.

5) I only heard about the Thunderbolt 3 card option for MTRX today. Would there be any advantage to going this route rather than HD? I would think not, since it would mean giving up the extra horsepower I currently enjoy via my HDX card...

[creativecontrol]

Avid Control doesn't require wifi to be turned on for the host computer. Either use a hub/dock (usb-c for a modern iPad) or add a simple router which has wired and wireless connections and connect the iPad to that.

best,


Jeff

Originally Posted by mahler007

.... I could turn the wifi off, but I like using the Avid Control app to control DADMan and other Pro Tools functions, and it requires wifi to be on.

[Darryl Ramm]

You are outlining a lot of different reasons to use DigiLink/HDX. So just try stuff... Nobody here can tell you what choice is best for you. You've outlined the choices/reasons and seen some additional points.

Going all HDX/DigiLink of course loses you DADman routing outside of the MTRX Studio. Personally I'd like to keep stuff in DADman... like I do in TotalMix on RME systems.

Yes you'll get sample accurate H/W inserts on the DigiLink Aurora(n) (and very close if using H/W inserts on the MTRX Studio). I'm not sure what the offsets are on Dante, but once you know that and can correct it I'm not sure it's a huge pain.

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On the other hand, how really well have you got stuff set up/optimized and what troubleshooting have you have done??

If you are monitoring off an analog console then you should be running at a large playback buffer size... max that out. Dynamic plugin processing should be enabled (but try without). Ignore errors should generally *not* be checked unless you really have to (you want errors to be thrown/be obvious). Have you really troubleshot plugin issues?

What AAE errors do you get? Don't make the frequent mistake of fixating on what CPU meters are doing.

Can you use freeze/commit to reduce problems?

Jeff made a great point about you don't need WiFi enabled on the host. But you having that problem also makes me curious that you might not have stuff well set up and optimized. Is all the networking really well set up? what switches, what cables/lengths, is there NAS traffic on the Dante or Control networks? (those are rhetorical questions, I'm not after answers more that you ask yourself that).

You sure don't need and should not be using DVS, and it sounds like you are not. You should be be using Dante Control to at least configure the Aurora(n).

Sounds like you don't need any HDX plugins at all, if all your monitoring front-end is analog console (great!). HDX has very low processing power, it's not so much that it offloads CPU load from the host more that it's hopefully less fragile when things are on the edge. That may be another sign of setup or optimization problems.

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5) I only heard about the Thunderbolt 3 card option for MTRX today. Would there be any advantage to going this route rather than HD? I would think not, since it would mean giving up the extra horsepower I currently enjoy via my HDX card...

*Personally* for what you are doing I'd start with Thunderbolt to the MTRX Studio and hung the Aurora(n) off the MTRX Studio with the Lynx AES/EBU/ADAT I/O option. To me HDX is extra complexity/stuff where you should not need it (again if you really wanted to monitor with HDX plugins a different matter). But where I'd start with this for me does not mean you should change to that. (And in reality I'm a MADI fan-boi so the MTRX II connected to Thunderbolt and fan-out to MADI would be more what I'd really want to do-and the same Thunderbolt expansion card on the MTRX II gets you 128x128 I/O not 64x64 I/O on the MTRX Studio).

If you were able to optimize your current setup and get it stable then you could try the MTRX Studio Thunderbolt option, but the main reason for doing that (to me) would be to get rid of the HDX Card, Thunderbolt expansion chassis, Omni, Lynx DigiLink card. But what does that really get you? Spend that money on another Aurora(n)? Only you can work out if that is even slightly interesting to you, and would the the time spent doing stuff and risks be worth it.