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Post by wiz on Feb 10, 2015 17:18:28 GMT -6
wiz now you have an excuse to do the 5th Time Lucky actually made me LOL nice one 8) cheers Wiz
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 10, 2015 17:23:09 GMT -6
wiz now you have an excuse to do the 5th Time Lucky actually made me LOL nice one 8) cheers Wiz dude, your latest stuff is a how to man, hopefully this new rig will give you a bunch of inspiration to create more, and it will just sound that much better the next time round 8)
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Post by Deleted on Feb 10, 2015 20:06:27 GMT -6
Thanks alot for the detailed report. Makes me feel alot better, thinking about ordering the 24Ao. It's time to upgrade and going out of the box again. (And find a reason for restoring and servicing our dusty cheap consoles again....)
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Post by keymod on Feb 11, 2015 5:40:21 GMT -6
Can anyone address the AVB protocol that MOTU is using in these products? How does it compare to Thunderbolt and USB, which are the other two options for these to communicate with the computer?
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 8:48:55 GMT -6
mrmiller is a forum member and a MOTU software developer for the AVB product line, I am pretty sure he can explain it much better than me! But i can elaborate a bit about it. AVB is a prioritized ethernet open standard. AFAIK you can run networks of devices with up to 512 channels with AVB-capable routers in star configurations, configured from every computer device in the network (which can be many that have access to the whole bunch of device configuration and streams at the same time!). You aren't limited to MOTU devices, there are other routers, even an AVB ethernet soundcard (Echo) for Windows. Modern TBolt-capable Macs have AVB audio support inbuilt thru the OSx drivers! It's a very interesting concept. Especially since ethernet was not intended for realtime streaming of hundreds of high-res AV-streams! Obviously it is VERY cool you can use CAT5e/CAT6 computer network cables that can run hundreds of meters with your realtime streams, even more if you use glass fibre computer network! And still maintaining the low level compatibility of ethernet, i.e. devices have IPs, they run as little webservers that can be configured thru any webbrowser in the the network. Fascinating. (I can feel how my spock ears grow...)
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 11:04:23 GMT -6
mrmiller is a forum member and a MOTU software developer for the AVB product line, I am pretty sure he can explain it much better than me! But i can elaborate a bit about it. AVB is a prioritized ethernet open standard. AFAIK you can run networks of devices with up to 512 channels with AVB-capable routers in star configurations, configured from every computer device in the network (which can be many that have access to the whole bunch of device configuration and streams at the same time!). You aren't limited to MOTU devices, there are other routers, even an AVB ethernet soundcard (Echo) for Windows. Modern TBolt-capable Macs have AVB audio support inbuilt thru the OSx drivers! It's a very interesting concept. Especially since ethernet was not intended for realtime streaming of hundreds of high-res AV-streams! Obviously it is VERY cool you can use CAT5e/CAT6 computer network cables that can run hundreds of meters with your realtime streams, even more if you use glass fibre computer network! And still maintaining the low level compatibility of ethernet, i.e. devices have IPs, they run as little webservers that can be configured thru any webbrowser in the the network. Fascinating. (I can feel how my spock ears grow...) Yup, that pretty much covers it! I think the important take-home point is that this is an IEEE standard. Unlike previous attempts at ethernet-based audio (Dante/RedNet, CobraNet, Ravenna, etc.), the standard is open so that anyone can implement it without having to license it from a single company. PreSonus just announced AVB consoles at NAMM. Avid announced them last year or so. We'll all be able to interoperate and participate in an AVB network (well, pending testing with newcomers to iron out bugs on either end). We're trying to put out a pretty comprehensive set of boxes. The dream is definitely not a closed system with only MOTU gear, though, hence why I think AVB being an open standard is so important. Latency in the standard is guaranteed sub 2ms across up to 7 hops, connected by up to 100m cable runs. Our guarantees are slightly stricter at .625ms. The guarantees are part of the standard which require implementations to support packet prioritization (so your YouTube watching doesn't stop your realtime audio); bandwidth reservation; and high precision time stamping and clock synchronization. Unfortunately, that means you do need networking hardware that supports the AVB standards. Hopefully it will become more widespread, but it's not available in consumer network gear as of now. We make a 5 port switch that's probably the cheapest on the market. Otherwise, there are switches from Extreme Networks and Netgear available. AVB opens up a lot of really cool possibilities and simplifies a lot of configurations. And it will only get better as more companies adopt it.
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Post by tonycamphd on Feb 11, 2015 11:33:14 GMT -6
this is a great idea Mr. Miller, and congrats on an apparently very good product! the open platform thing is refreshing, i'm surprised Avid will take part in anything that doesn't include corralling their customer base? but i believe it's too little too late for them, i honestly hope you guys do very well with this approach, avid is just now starting to pay the price for their imperial ways, perhaps your co will be the beneficiary of their impending demise?
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Post by keymod on Feb 11, 2015 11:59:28 GMT -6
Thanks Mr. Miller. So can AVB be used all by itself or does the Thunderbolt or USB connection need to be used at the same time?
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 12:24:59 GMT -6
Thanks Mr. Miller. So can AVB be used all by itself or does the Thunderbolt or USB connection need to be used at the same time? You can use AVB directly on any Mac with an AVB-capable ethernet card running OS X 10.10+. Any Mac with a Thunderbolt port is modern enough and the Apple Thunderbolt-to-ethernet adapter works (not sure about third party ones). Since this is very new technology for OS X, there are currently a couple of downsides. Core Audio acquires the AVB device for exclusive use. That means it can't participate in a larger AVB network at the same time. As well, the driver is higher latency than both Thunderbolt and USB. We're working with Apple to improve the Core Audio AVB driver, though, so it should only get better with newer releases.
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Post by RicFoxx on Feb 11, 2015 12:49:56 GMT -6
mrmiller can I just simply plug this into my mac mini via thunderbolt and not worry about anything else (avb or internet access?)
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 12:56:42 GMT -6
mrmiller can I just simply plug this into my mac mini via thunderbolt and not worry about anything else (avb or internet access?) Yup! Aside from all the AVB stuff, it's still an audio interface. The control software is accessed through any modern browser via a server running on the interface itself. We tunnel that web traffic over Thunderbolt and USB, though. That means you don't need to connect the interface to your router or anything unless you want to access it from other computers or a mobile device. In short, in the most basic configuration (connected via USB or Thunderbolt), you don't need to worry about any of the networking stuff.
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Post by mulmany on Feb 11, 2015 14:38:20 GMT -6
mrmiller can I just simply plug this into my mac mini via thunderbolt and not worry about anything else (avb or internet access?) Yup! Aside from all the AVB stuff, it's still an audio interface. The control software is accessed through any modern browser via a server running on the interface itself. We tunnel that web traffic over Thunderbolt and USB, though. That means you don't need to connect the interface to your router or anything unless you want to access it from other computers or a mobile device. In short, in the most basic configuration (connected via USB or Thunderbolt), you don't need to worry about any of the networking stuff. So I understand, I could purchase the Intel® Ethernet Server Adapter I210, install it in my HP Z800 and have access and audio to all Avb units on the network? Does Protools recognize the AVB protocol as a device? This would really let you have remote I/O all over cat5 and reduce cabling cost.
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 14:52:23 GMT -6
Yup! Aside from all the AVB stuff, it's still an audio interface. The control software is accessed through any modern browser via a server running on the interface itself. We tunnel that web traffic over Thunderbolt and USB, though. That means you don't need to connect the interface to your router or anything unless you want to access it from other computers or a mobile device. In short, in the most basic configuration (connected via USB or Thunderbolt), you don't need to worry about any of the networking stuff. So I understand, I could purchase the Intel® Ethernet Server Adapter I210, install it in my HP Z800 and have access and audio to all Avb units on the network? Does Protools recognize the AVB protocol as a device? This would really let you have remote I/O all over cat5 and reduce cabling cost. That won't work, unfortunately. In addition to the hardware, you would need an AVB audio driver for Windows. On Mac, Apple built an AVB audio driver for Core Audio. We haven't built an AVB audio driver for other platform. That said, the interface itself is a connection to the AVB network. Any computer you want on the network would have to be connected to an interface. From there, each interface can freely route audio between to and from any other interface on the network and the computer. You would have to do the same on Mac given the "exclusive acquire" limitation of the driver currently. From the computer's perspective, only the interface that's connected via USB or Thunderbolt appears. There's no Thunderbolt driver for Windows currently, but USB gives you 24+24 channels of I/O to/from the computer. Those can be routed however you please, whether to physical I/O, digital I/O, or network I/O. If you wanted to have a snake, for instance, you'd have two interfaces, one at the computer and one on stage. You'd patch the computer outs to the network outs and on the remote box, patch the network ins to the analog outs. Or something similar.
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Post by keymod on Feb 11, 2015 15:49:15 GMT -6
So MOTU are not supporting Thunderbolt over Windows at this time? What are your plans for this moving forward?
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Post by wiz on Feb 11, 2015 16:33:51 GMT -6
mrmillerI am really happy with the interface. Also, if MOTU has something like employee of the month, I would like to nominate Travis Hagan . He is the support person I spoke to I talked about earlier. Great customer service, from him, and from you here. Cheers Wiz
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 16:49:35 GMT -6
mrmillerI am really happy with the interface. Also, if MOTU has something like employee of the month, I would like to nominate Travis Hagan . He is the support person I spoke to I talked about earlier. Great customer service, from him, and from you here. Cheers Wiz Glad to hear it! And as always, let me know if you have any issues. I've been passing on your praise to the support team and it's made their day. People don't often take the time to express satisfaction (unlike dissatisfaction). It means a lot to us to get your positive feedback, so thank you!!
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Post by wiz on Feb 11, 2015 16:52:01 GMT -6
mrmillerI am really happy with the interface. Also, if MOTU has something like employee of the month, I would like to nominate Travis Hagan . He is the support person I spoke to I talked about earlier. Great customer service, from him, and from you here. Cheers Wiz Glad to hear it! And as always, let me know if you have any issues. I've been passing on your praise to the support team and it's made their day. People don't often take the time to express satisfaction (unlike dissatisfaction). It means a lot to us to get your positive feedback, so thank you!! You are most welcome cheers Wiz
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 16:57:48 GMT -6
So MOTU are not supporting Thunderbolt over Windows at this time? What are your plans for this moving forward? Correct, as of now, we do not have a Windows Thunderbolt driver. Our current work in progress is to bump the channel counts with USB from 24+24 to 32+32. Thunderbolt options on Windows are VERY limited and we want to make sure we can provide the best product to the most people. As a Windows guy myself, I'm somewhat dismayed by the lack of Thunderbolt support in the community. Very few off the shelf PC or supporting motherboards exist. And it's not as simple as adding a PCIe card, sadly, because the motherboard has to have support, which means they have to have a rather new PC for it to work anyways. I'm hoping we see more Thunderbolt on PCs in the near future. Given the general lack of Thunderbolt support on PC, we're examining our options and trying to think outside the box for good solutions. That may end up being a Thunderbolt driver but it's too soon to tell in the process.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 19:25:05 GMT -6
Did you already have the chance to test the Echo Audio Streamware NIC-1 with your products, which seems to be the first AVB capable network card WITH windows audio drivers, mrmiller? Well it is not cheap at all, but i guess, the cost of the driver development reflects as long as there is no competitor with a working product on the market....
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Post by mrmiller on Feb 11, 2015 19:45:04 GMT -6
Did you already have the chance to test the Echo Audio Streamware NIC-1 with your products, which seems to be the first AVB capable network card WITH windows audio drivers, mrmiller? Well it is not cheap at all, but i guess, the cost of the driver development reflects as long as there is no competitor with a working product on the market.... We haven't and I haven't heard from anyone who has, unfortunately. In theory, it should work. We're working on solutions for higher channel counts on Windows. That should certainly help the situation. On Mac, Thunderbolt allows 128x128 to/from the computer, so that platform's all set. The price for that card is rather alarming, though, at least the 64x64 version. A full-blown interface like the 24Ao can do the same thing and practically costs the same... Heck, depending on your configuration, it would make more sense to buy a Mac Mini for a fraction of the cost of that card.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 20:26:57 GMT -6
I thought the same... Thunderbolt on Windows would be cool. Our newest Windows machine's mainboard has it already onboard. But a working Network card audio driver like for the mentioned Intel chipset one for Windows would be a really great thing and make your products very interesting for a larger usergroup that might hesitate right now. This would be very versatile.
MOTU had not the best reputation for drivers in Windows world *in the past* and people tend to remember this on the long term. But so did USB audio for Windows as well, and now, many Audio interfaces work flawlessly. USB Class compliant devices with stable (or at least much better) natíve driver support on multiple OSes changed the game very much. Now we need higher channel count interface drivers like e.g. USB3 audio, or....AVB network card audio drivers. Which would for sure attract alot of potential customer attention in Windows world. Combined with the interest of more and more semi-professionals running Windows machines in affordable high quality recording and mixing solutions, this could become easily a growing market. The argument, that your AVB products also can be flexibly scaled to full blown pro studio and/or mobile and/or live installation tasks, when needed, without having to learn everything from scratch or buying completely new hardware while having to retire/sell the one you already have, is a strong one, e.g. for beginning engineers, small studios, home studio users or ambitious musicians.
Yes, the Echo Card is a network card with the pricing that is basically the cost for a software driver. I doubt it will find much buyers, many would wait for other network cards providing a driver for much less money, or go with one of your MOTU products and get actual audio conversion and processing power on top with a much better price/performance ratio first. And hope for higher channel count solutions you already mentioned. (It is actually very encouraging you are aware of the need and already work on this!)
Thanks for your time giving us insights on this interesting product line here at this forum, much appreciated!
Best regards, Martin
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Post by Deleted on Feb 11, 2015 20:49:02 GMT -6
32x32 instead of 24x24 channels on the windows USB port would be awesome, too, btw. Tricky stuff i guess. Utilizing USB 3.0?
That would be enough to feed or record from small to medium size consoles and might e.g. bring the possibility to utilize the ADAT ports on the 24Ao more flexible.
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Post by keymod on Feb 12, 2015 6:08:28 GMT -6
My studio centers around a 32x8x2 console, so 32 i/o would be ideal for me. Btw, my studio PC is a custom-built by ADK Win7, 64bit with two onboard Thunderbolt ports.
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Post by Guitar on Feb 12, 2015 10:43:11 GMT -6
32x32 instead of 24x24 channels on the windows USB port would be awesome, too, btw. Tricky stuff i guess. Utilizing USB 3.0? That would be enough to feed or record from small to medium size consoles and might e.g. bring the possibility to utilize the ADAT ports on the 24Ao more flexible. Antelope Orion has already achieved this right? 32x32 at 192K sample rate on USB 2.0. I personally like USB because it's so ubiquitous, and seems a bit future proof, as things like firewire, thunderbolt, seem to come and go or not quite ever be fully realized. Although I'm certainly attracted to low latency performance as much as the next guy.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 12, 2015 12:17:24 GMT -6
32x32 instead of 24x24 channels on the windows USB port would be awesome, too, btw. Tricky stuff i guess. Utilizing USB 3.0? That would be enough to feed or record from small to medium size consoles and might e.g. bring the possibility to utilize the ADAT ports on the 24Ao more flexible. Antelope Orion has already achieved this right? 32x32 at 192K sample rate on USB 2.0. I personally like USB because it's so ubiquitous, and seems a bit future proof, as things like firewire, thunderbolt, seem to come and go or not quite ever be fully realized. Although I'm certainly attracted to low latency performance as much as the next guy. Ah, i see, i wasn't aware of the Orion beeing USB interfaced. Also, obviously i am not up to date about USB 2.0/3.0 speeds and spec's as of the standards anymore, so if USB 2.0 can do it, it's a safe bet. Solid standard now and very widely used. Had/heard alot of unfortunate/avoidable trouble when USB 3.0 came up in hardware (missing/bad drivers and slightly buggy or unfortunate BIOSes/EFIs up to simple stuff like that silly new motherboard connector) and just lately got a few external hd's utilizing it... I am very curious what MOTU comes up with, the 32x32 solution for Windows would be great stuff.
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