I’ve searched the forums for ‘Dante’ and only found three threads, one of which is over a possible conflict
Is anyone out there using the Bome Box and/or Bome Network over a network that is also employing Dante?
Plans for my rig include using Dante and Bome Network on a LAN including several BomeBoxes.
At this point, I have planned to purchase networking product that does NOT support VLANs, but I am unsure whether or not this will do the trick… and also concerned over whether conflicts will occur regardless.
My goals include using a single network cable from the core switch to each player location, over which bidirectional audio (Guitar/Bass/Vocal Inputs; Personal Monitor Mix Multitrack Audio) MIDI (V-Drum and Keyboard performance streams, foot controller events and song-based foot controller layout dumps, MIDI Clock), and OSC control would be passed.
Can anyone guide me as to whether I’m headed for disaster and how to avoid it? Will I require network gear with VLAN? Trunking abilities? Are there any consistent issues or best practices to be aware of when converging a network for Dante/BomeNet/OSC, etc?
Hi Chris,
I’m not sure about Dante yet. I never heard back from the user whether he figured a way to resolve his issue.
With that said, it is probably good practice to put your MIDI/OSC traffic on a different network than your audio traffic. Audio traffic is generally much more demanding than MIDI or OSC.
BomeBox does not process OSC or Dante traffic directly but will act like a standard MIDI router to all network traffic it receives.
Steve Caldwell
Bome Customer Care
Also available for paid consulting services: bome@sniz.biz
Hi, just to emphasize that there is no reason why the BomeBox could interfere with Dante network traffic. Except for the MIDI functionality, it is a standard Ethernet+WiFi router, providing two switched Cat-5 ports. And all MIDI traffic uses standard IP packets, so it does not interfere with anything else on the network.
Good point, @florian. There is no reason why it shouldn’t work unless the user set up something incorrect on the network. I reached out to the other user to figure out if he resolved his issue.
I suspect duplicate IP addresses were the culprit but this is not confirmed.
Hi @celoranta,
from my experience, the Midi and OSC traffic won’t be an issue. Regarding managed switches and QoS: it basically comes down to the available network bandwidth, the number of Dante audio streams and the network latency settings you are intending to use with Dante.
Last year I used a setup with several PCs, digital mixer, running Dante, OSC, Ableton Link, Bome Network and RTP Midi – all on the same non-QoS network without any issues.
However, after some time and to not risk anything I moved to a managed switch in the end. Not so much because of high network traffic but to have QoS for the Precision Time Protocol (PTP) Dante’s time synchronization relies on.
The bandwidth consumed by Dante was only about 60Mbps (10 Unicast Dante flows if I remember correctly). So there was plenty left for Midi and OSC data. And for Dante I used comparably high network latency settings (4ms) to be on the safe side, having several PCs with Dante Virtual Sound Card involved.
I’m not concerned about any kind of signal conflict… I know everything is packetized and works together under the ethernet specifications.
My concern has more to do with whether Dante and BomeNetwork protocols prefer or require conflicting settings on the shared switch stack, and whether the low-latency priority of the Dante packets are likely to cause delays/jitter/dropouts in the MIDI streams.
For example, DANTE and AVB fight each other on converged networks if not carefully handled… but of course AVB is not fully compliant and requires selection from a list of pre-approved switches.
I’d expect the MIDI transport to be much MUCH lighter over a network than either AVB or DANTE.
To be clear, I do not anticipate any issues… just putting feelers out before I spend any more hours fawning over DANTE gear on Sweetwater.
Well, I don’t know. I am quite sure I’ve heard reports of BomeBox users using with Dante devices on the same Ethernet network, but I could not find any hard evidence.
The BomeBox MIDI traffic is very light compared to Dante, but timing could be affected if Dante is reaching Ethernet limits. Also note that the BomeBox is Fast Ethernet (100MBit/s), so if you require Gigabit Ethernet for Dante, don’t use the BomeBox as a switch, just as an endpoint.