I play keys regularly at my church. They have a Dante enabled mixer (Yamaha) and have plenty of CAT plugs built into our very cool, new stage. For $30 I can buy a virtual soundcard from Dante (https://www.audinate.com/products/software/dante-virtual-soundcard). I could then, theoretically, hook my computer into the network and bypass analog all together. I’m using Cantabile with various plug-ins and MIDI controllers. Any idea if this would work before I give it a go?
For $30 I think it’s worth a shot. I’d get with the sound guy and go up to the church during the week and try it. Chances are if you buy the soundcard from somebody reputable like Sweetwater, you can send it back if it doesn’t work.
This “soundcard” is just a piece of software - difficult to send it back… Essentially, with Dante, you just plug a network cable into your laptop/PC, and the virtual soundcard presents you with a new audio port that you can use with your audio software.
Since the virtual soundcard provides ASIO drivers, there is no reason why this shouldn’t work - provided you get the routing right between your laptop and the mixer - Dante configurations can be a bit fiddly…
But you can get a 14 day trial license from audinate, so why not get the trial, sit down with the sound guy as @RackedBrain suggested and see if things work out? If the sound guy knows his stuff, he should be able to help you with the Dante routing.
Cheers,
Torsten
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I trialled Dante Virtual Soundcard on one computer and Dante Via on another in a master/slave setup and it worked well but I settled on Vienna Ensemble Pro in the end.
If you’ve already got a Dante enabled mixing board it should work brilliantly.
I talked to two of our sound guys last night and they said it is worth a shot. They already have a Mac hooked into the system using Ableton for our clicks and tracks – and I think they use it for our LiveMix monitoring system. I’ll probably wait until after Easter (busy time of year for churches!) to try it out. I’ll report back. Thanks!
I use Cantabile with Dante all the time. It works great. Definitely recommend!
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We tested out Dante with Cantabile during Wednesday rehearsal and used it yesterday during 2 performances. There weren’t any problems, so it’s a firm “yes, it works fine.” There are 2 minor things to iron out for me, however.
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Gain using the Dante virtual sound card. On Wednesday one of our sound guys said I was way too hot coming in - and I guess the sound board doesn’t have a gain pad for Dante channels. I had to crank the main output of Cantabile down from 0 to -24dB to make him happy. Come Sunday I was way barely in the mix. I turned it up to -16dB. I need to work that out.
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Mono using Dante. There isn’t an option for Mono (that I could find), so they just grabbed one of my stereo sends. The problem with that is that I usually sum my stereo feed into mono for all of those sounds that ping-pong or have other stereo attributes. The way they are doing it, they’re only getting half of the sound I usually send. Is there a way to sum the main output in Cantabile?
Other than those two things, I’m thrilled to be sending a digital signal.
Hi Tim,
I can’t help on the gain problem as I don’t have Dante but on the mono port question you do this
Go to Tools>Options >Audio Ports and add a new mono audio port that is routed to a single output channel …
… then when you want to sum to mono just route your stereo route to it. C3 does the summing automatically.
Dave
Cool! Thanks much. I knew it had to be easy.