Variations in dB output and CPU resources

I play aux keys (everything except piano) in a full band at my church every week. For home practice and warm-up in the church greenroom, I just use the computer headphone out. For the actual performance, I connect to a Yamaha m7cl sound board through Dante (audio over Ethernet). When using the computer headphone output, my master output in Cantabile is at or around 0 dB. On Dante, I’ve had to crank it down to -30 bB, and even then it’s still too hot at the board. Our sound engineer has to crank it down another 10 dB just to get it from clipping. As cool as it is to be sending a digital to digital signal, I’m about ready to give up on Dante just so that my signal level is normal.

If I did switch to an analog adapter, would that also ease my CPU load? I have a Dell G5 i7 and rarely have a problem, but occasionally I overload it. If using an external audio adapter had the extra benefit of some more CPU headroom, it would make it more attractive. Finally, which audio boxes in the $300 range are recommended? Inputs don’t matter and I only need one output.

With that much attenuation required I’m wondering if you’re plugging a line output into a microphone input? If so, then a simple solution to this would be a DI box.

Dante is all digital – audio over Ethernet. So no DI boxes, no analog cables. Just a CAT 6 cable. We use it for a bunch of stuff. The dB levels are only off with my rig.

Oh – since it’s digital and because of the way the Yamaha board and Dante work, there’s no way to pad down the input. Seems like a feature they should include…

Ah, I hadn’t taken that in. Odd!

I don’t get it. Digital audio goes from all zeros (silence) to all ones (max digital volume) and that is retained all along the digital pathway through the Ethernet cable. So, there should be no need to pad anything down. Somewhere the signal is being boosted by something - massively! Check if your out has a compressor or EQ that could be adding gain to the output signal.

Terry

I posted my problem on a FB group and apparently it has more to do with that the Yamaha M7 can’t pad digital signals. We’re going to try again with the attenuater in the EQ section of the board, but I think it’s at the wrong gain stage. Dante doesn’t handle gain within its network software. I think it’s an issue of older equipment (the M7 and older Dante add-in cards) and not really designed for how we’ve set it up. That’s just a guess. I have no idea why the signal is so hot.

I’m starting to lean toward a Scarlet 2i4 or similar.