Dante, ReWire

Ahoy,

In thinking about how Touch might work with Audio data…Can anyone tell me about the current or future potentials about using TD with either Dante, or Rewire, Or both?

Dante:
audinate.com/solutions/dante-overview
audinate.com/products/dante-enabled
youtube.com/watch?v=VV59Il6Uu7I

From What I can tell, Dante takes many many channels of high quality audio over LAN into either physical or software based sound cards that windows can recognize.

Can touch designer receive this data presently?? If I bought a dante enabled digital mixer(see dante enabled products link), and a Dante sound card or software, would touch designer be able to recognise the dante soundcard and thus receive many channels of audio directly from a live mixer?? Im thinking it would be an audio in chop with as many channels as sends from your mixer. this would be excellent.

ReWire:

ReWire is a piece of software that can seamlessly sync digital audio workstations. it can send Audio and midi, as well as sync together tempos, timelines etc. I think I’ve seen it mentioned on the forums. It would be a natural fit for touch.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReWire_(software_protocol

What would it take for derivative to implement this?

Getting many tracks of audio to flow into touch would be awesome. I think implementing either or both of these would be a “take my money” moment for many customers…

Dante options would be nice, but we never do audio in TouchDesigner anymore, as we find Max is more stable for that. You should check to see if it’s ASIO compatible, if it is then it should work with the existing operators. Worth looking into on their site and forums.

Sorry for the bump bwanajh, did you manage to get dante’s audio into Touchdesigner or did you chose not to use this option? I have a project where my client would be using a Dante audio card and was wondering if Touchdesigner recognizes it.

Thanks a lot!

We work with dante a bit in a traditional sense as digital multi-cores. This is my opinion:

-Strengths-

Lower cabling requirements, therefore lower cabling time.
Digital transmission, but analogue is great anyway.
Distribution is software defined, therefore very flexible.
Makes pre-amps(or “head-amps” in yamaha speak) modular, for discerning instrument/concert/recording requirements.
No requirement for a hardware audio output device

-Weaknesses-

Cabling requirements are just transformed into network requirements, both network cable and network infrastructure need to be carefully chosen.
It just turns one dude running a cable for an hour into two guys huddled around a laptop for a half-hour.
For a small number of audio channels(1-16or so) it’s slower to set up.

There’d be lots of great uses for it, but most seem isolated to requirements with massively high numbers of audio channels in a complex dante network. Otherwise copper/analogue/more cables/audio interfaces etc seem like currently the best option, IMO.

:laughing:

I was only at the research stage, and never got much further on the Dante thing. I’m still quite interested, and would like to see it used with Touch.

One thing Ive just discovered, it that TouchDesigner ASIO output, requires 32 bits/sample in the Dante Virtual Soundcard setting.
Changing this setting to 32 in the Dante control panel (or other ASIO device control panels), may fix your issue in current builds, but note, internally TouchDesigner is still processing at 16 bits/sample, so it won’t be full 24 or 32 bit quality when using ASIO.
This will be addressed in an upcoming build.

:smiley: That is hilarious, but - I’m more concerned about that case with two guys spending 4 hours chasing down hum from a ground loop.

A slick Dante system saves a lot of time and heartache. I’m seeing full systems now, dante all the way to speakers, and troubleshooting time has vaporized.

Bruce

Dante Via is a good software option to route audio from other another software source into Touchdesigner without having to use the entire stereo mix from your soundcard.

Via also allows you to grab audio from Touchdesigner, and send it to any software or speaker.


However

I’m noticing that Dante Via is only receiving stereo (2 channels) From Touchdesigner, even if I have multitrack selected in both programs, and my CHOP has many channels. My guess is that Touchdesigner’s method of doing multitrack is different than Dante’s, but there is also the option that I’m doing it wrong.

Also when I stack multiple channels of audio into the Via send, Touchdesigner only grabs Chan1 and Chan2, but Dante is sending Multitrack. Currently I can only seem to grab the audio from a single external software source (or 2 if use 088 & 099 and do some more sending between)

So chalk this up for an RFE for better Dante Via integration. It would be really amazing to route all of my different windows apps, programs, YouTube tabs, etc. to the separate channels within a multitrack Audio device in Chop, to be split apart later.

No more limitation of stereo mix!

Dante VIA is only used to generate a clock source for Dante Virtual SoundCard applications running on other computers. You will still need 2 more computers both running Dante Virtual SoundCard so that these two computers can send audio between each-other.

The Dante Controller software should be used to make the channel routings from one computer to the other. The ASIO driver for Dante has been well tested here up to 32x32 channels at 48Khz.

As well make sure the audio sample rate in the sending application matches the sample rate on the receiving AudioDevice in. If they don’t match then the TouchDesigner ASIO driver will not connect and the Audio Device in CHOP will be empty.

I have Virtual Soundcard and Via on the same computer, and it prompts you to close Virtual soundcard to run Via, they are seperate entities. One of the features in Via not found in Virtual Soundcard is the ability to route isolated software audio,(ie from a video game) on a single computer.

Via may generate a clock for Dante Controller, but it does more than this. I can already use it to route stereo audio from a single program, that is great.

Re the next image: Dante Via is sending 4 channels (internet explorer 099) but 088 is only snagging internet explorer as chan1 and chan2 not a a mixdown, and not multitrack to include what is coming in from 099.

It would also be cool to not have to use 088 and 099, but be able to use via with multiple instances of 099.


From Dante:
Dante Via is easy-to-use software that delivers unprecedented multi-channel routing of computer-based audio, allowing a wide range of applications and devices to be networked and interconnected, easily and inexpensively

audinate.com/products/software/dante-via