Dropouts in playback

[mattclarkmixer]

I am going to state the obvious here, if something is working fine for a while and then suddenly it isn't then something had to change some where. Finding what changed is the tricky part. Did the MacBook update the firmware on itself. That can cause all sorts of problems. Did a piece of equipment go bad. Did a cable develop a problem. Is there a way that you can check each part of this setup individually to see where the failure might be.

Right, I am going to go through tomorrow, cable by cable etc. - The laptop I use for that is dedicated to just using with the X32 and never goes onto the internet. All of this gear has just been sitting in my rehearsal room which makes it even more strange. I plan to get on the phone with a Sweetwater tech as well and see what they think.

[mattclarkmixer]

Just a little update. I was able to get audio going again using the different MacBook. I'm now getting duplicate audio though that goes to Ch. 31 (where it's supposed to be) coming through channel 1 as well which has it's input set to channel 1 XLR, so shouldn't be receiving Dante. I'll investigate further and may need to post my scene I'm guessing. I'm still getting input from the XLR, I didn't realize it was possible to have two sources (Dante and XLR) both come up on one channel.

[mattclarkmixer]

Just a little update. I was able to get audio going again using the different MacBook. I'm now getting duplicate audio though that goes to Ch. 31 (where it's supposed to be) coming through channel 1 as well which has it's input set to channel 1 XLR, so shouldn't be receiving Dante. I'll investigate further and may need to post my scene I'm guessing. I'm still getting input from the XLR, I didn't realize it was possible to have two sources (Dante and XLR) both come up on one channel.

Now I've got the original laptop working as well. The solution was turning the audio output choice in preferences on and off several times. Very odd.

I will try saving my scene, etc. on the old laptop and load it on the new one. Hypothetically, I'd figure that would solve the ch 31 coming up on two channel issue.

[mattclarkmixer]

I got it figured out. I had created a good old fashioned analog feedback loop. Thanks for your help guys!

[mattclarkmixer]

I'm having issues again. Sometimes Live is playing through Dante and sometimes it isn't. In Controller I can see that most of time nothing is being transmitted from the Mac to the X32 Dante. I do see that I'm getting a red light on the Errors box. It's showing my X32 Dante being elevated to the Primary leader. Any ideas?

[GaryH]

@mattclarkmixer I was not following this for a bit and looked back to see that there is no mention of a switch? A router was mentioned. Is there no switch? Can you list what all devices are used here in your system? X32, Mac and what else? Can you also post a pic of your DC "Clock Status" page when everything is up and connected? What is the sync for the X32 set to? internal or Exp card?

[mattclarkmixer]

@mattclarkmixer I was not following this for a bit and looked back to see that there is no mention of a switch? A router was mentioned. Is there no switch? Can you list what all devices are used here in your system? X32, Mac and what else? Can you also post a pic of your DC "Clock Status" page when everything is up and connected? What is the sync for the X32 set to? internal or Exp card?

When dropout are happening Controller show Multicast Audio Bandwidth updating. When that finishes audio comes back on and MAB shows 0bps.

I’ve got a Netgear RAX20 router which has a switch built in. Just to make that’s not the problem I connected a switch. I’ve got a s8 stage box and P16 both of which I’ve got turned off while I troubleshoot. One iPhone that connects to the network for IEM mix. Also not using that while troubleshooting.

X32 is set to EXP Card for clock source.

Here’s pic of Clock Status. I’m also posting pic from the devices my router shows connected. The X32 is set to 192.168.1.10 but I see it also shows another address. Is that normal?

[GaryH]

@mattclarkmixer The first thing to try is change the sync source to internal and not exp. I didn’t see DVS but assume that’s the mac listing. I couldn’t see the “preferred leader” column but check off the M-Dante as preferred leader and make sure “sync to external” is not checked. In my system I had nothing but trouble using exp as sync for my X-Dante card. As soon as it was not, all went fine. I know the manual says to use it but don’t. Hope that does it.


EDIT: Related to your switch/router. It should be a managed switch so you can enable dante optimal parameters. At the very least disable EEE or "green" ethernet, some unmanaged switches can still do that and others not. It is an energy saving setting that allows ports to "sleep" to save energy. If that port going to sleep is part of your Dante network it can cause issues.

One last thought, you said Multicast updating. In such a small network, I don't think you should need any multicast flows? I would check thru your device info and get rid of them (if they exist) unicast should be ok here.