Yamaha CL5 opinions/problems

[ljstevens]

Hi folks

 

Just looking for some opinions/experiences/problems with 2x Yamaha CL5 (FOH & Mons) running Dante with Rio racks!!

[valooz]

Hi folks

 

Just looking for some opinions/experiences/problems with 2x Yamaha CL5 (FOH & Mons) running Dante with Rio racks!!

 

 

As far as my experience tells, all good. No specific problems, albeit if you're running 2 CL5s in the same network with Rio racks, you must make sure that at least one of the two, or both, have the wordclock locked to DANTE.

 

Mark Payne and Techywizz (Matt Sales) fron SFL are the guys on here that'' have a lot more to say I reckon.

[Electrolytic]

we had two on hire. you have to use the correct rack with the correct board.Probably due to the wordclock Lock mentioned above^.

Its a more conveniently sized M7, there nice to use.

[RichM]

Great desks, nice and easy to use with some lovely sounding FX and dynamics processors.

 

The only negative for me is only one cue bus, which limits it a bit for monitors if you're running a mix of wedges and IEM's.

[mr_towers]

Ours has been great (had it since April in a theatre environment), noticeable difference compared to M7/LS9 territory. Setup's a breeze (compared to ethersound), gain sharing works, couple of wee niggles (mainly related to point scenes and VCA recall safes) but it's very stable. A good understanding of Dante is good for doing slightly more complicated things (we've also got an 01v, LS9, some ULX-D gear and a couple of computers running Dante Virtual Soundcard on our network), but we're very happy overall.

[techywhizz]

Hi folks

 

Just looking for some opinions/experiences/problems with 2x Yamaha CL5 (FOH & Mons) running Dante with Rio racks!!

 

 

As far as my experience tells, all good. No specific problems, albeit if you're running 2 CL5s in the same network with Rio racks, you must make sure that at least one of the two, or both, have the wordclock locked to DANTE.

 

Mark Payne and Techywizz (Matt Sales) fron SFL are the guys on here that'' have a lot more to say I reckon.

 

Hey Thanks Valooz..

 

Yes we have been working with the CL series since they were first launched in the UK. They are fantatsic desks.

 

Its easy to get 2 consoles happily talking to 2 rios. The importnt things to consider are the network switches and the brand/ type which is used..

 

If you wanna chat more about it feel free to drop me an email or give me a call.

 

M

[shuggs]

I had a bit of a weird problem on one last week. The problem was quite basic the desks secondary port was set to daisy chain but we only had one Rio and that was set to reduntant.

So Dante was expecting another Rio but was seeing the CL.

The problem was it sync'ed fine when turned on and passed audio in and out. So I'd plugged playback locally for system checks etc and when we did our channel check with a mic quickly going into every channel onstage everything seemed fine.

 

Then the headline band turned up (late!!) and started soundcheck. What happened then was weird, it only passed audio for about 20sec then muted for a few seconds then passed audio again.

After some head scratching I double checked Dante, Rio setup etc and discovered the daisy chain/ redundant issue and sorted it.

 

It's worrying that nothing showed any sync or system errors at all, the result of the setup mistake was that audio dropped out randomly!!??

 

That is one thing I like about Midas Pro series if you do, or try to do anything incorrect or backwards you get a big warning message and error explenation.

[adamski1010]

I had a bit of a weird problem on one last week. The problem was quite basic the desks secondary port was set to daisy chain but we only had one Rio and that was set to reduntant.

So Dante was expecting another Rio but was seeing the CL.

The problem was it sync'ed fine when turned on and passed audio in and out. So I'd plugged playback locally for system checks etc and when we did our channel check with a mic quickly going into every channel onstage everything seemed fine.

 

Then the headline band turned up (late!!) and started soundcheck. What happened then was weird, it only passed audio for about 20sec then muted for a few seconds then passed audio again.

After some head scratching I double checked Dante, Rio setup etc and discovered the daisy chain/ redundant issue and sorted it.

 

It's worrying that nothing showed any sync or system errors at all, the result of the setup mistake was that audio dropped out randomly!!??

 

That is one thing I like about Midas Pro series if you do, or try to do anything incorrect or backwards you get a big warning message and error explenation.

 

 

 

Hello All,

Hopefully I can answer a few questions in regards to the setup of Dante based audio networks.

 

The first thing to mention, that Matt highlighted above, is that Dante is very picky in regards to networking hardware and infrastructure. Yamaha recommend the use of the Cisco SG300 range switches for Dante usage and the impression I got during my last meeting with them is that they do not officially support any other switch type. I have noticed a number of issues using other types of switches (in my case, un-managed HP units) that caused sync and clocking errors. It is worth noting that whilst these clocking and sync errors were clearly audible, none of the consoles on the network or the Dante Controller displayed any errors at the time. In terms of switch configuration, Yamaha recommend that a number of adjustments are made to off the shelf switches such as disabling EEE (energy efficient Ethernet) functions and prioritizing clock sync in the switch QOS.

 

As Hugh mentioned above, the desk will not necessarily tell you that a network setup error is present, even when it causes loss of sync so one must be extra careful to ensure that all elements of your network are correctly configured. I personally have never had audio drop out during a show due to sync errors however I have had clock noise and clicking become apparent over an extended period of time due to the aforementioned issues.

 

The other thing worth mentioning is firmware. Each Yamaha Dante device features two levels of firmware, the Yamaha product firmware and the Dante firmware. These must be compatible versions across your system (for instance if you have a CL5 with Dante v1.1.3 your RIO boxes must be on Dante v1.1.0. If they are on 1.0.8 or earlier you can expect clocking and network errors to occur). It is absolutely essential that both levels of firmware are completely up to date on all the devices on your network.

 

I have found that Dante is a fantastic resource for advanced audio networking. We are in the middle of adopting a complete Dante Lines System for one of our rigs, including a Lake driven returns package. The system allows a great degree of flexibility and when correctly configured is very stable, however it requires a lot of attention and care to ensure the network is correctly deployed and the topology chosen is correct for the application to ensure stability. Unlike AES50 or MADI, I wouldn't suggest Dante is an easy plug'n'play solution.

 

Hope This Helps,

 

Adam

[mr_towers]

Whilst not officially supported (by the sounds of things) I'd add that we run off a Zyxel Golf Sierra Ten Twenty Four (possibly getting IT related?) which is a 1gb 24 port 1u switch. It's lovely, and our network runs pretty well considering what we try and do with it.

 

It took a while to get to this stable stage, mainly due to issues getting our various Macs/PCs/ULXDs etc. to work with Dante happily. Reading the manuals/spec sheets is a must for the Dante system.

 

Whilst it's always plug 'n' play with Dante, I'd still say it's much easier than trying to get Ethersound to play ball!

[adamski1010]

 

Whilst it's always plug 'n' play with Dante, I'd still say it's much easier than trying to get Ethersound to play ball!

 

Amen. Getting Ethersound to work was like pulling teeth.

 

Ta,

A

 

 

 

[Audinate EU Tech]

Happy New Year

Thanks for the nice votes of confidence. In further explanation of the perceived "pickiness" of Dante with infrastructure...

 

Network switches are amongst some of the most complex pieces of electrical equipment around.

 

If you pull the datasheet on any particular switch you will see (often hundreds) of pages of numbers and standards... that the particular device will implement in its own special way.

It follows that inevitably bugs will be found in these complex software environments, and feature updates can and will change the day-to-day functioning of these devices.

 

As a general rule... unlike "back in the day" unmanaged switch no longer = dumb switch (it may have done once upon a time).

 

A managed switch will inevitably "benefit" from updates etc... making today's firmware a challenge from yesterdays to support.

 

Please do not take this as a "black art" comment. Rather - this is by some small way of explanation for what you see out there in the real world.

 

We are constantly asked which switches "Dante" supports. The answer is- ones that don't hold the traffic up. To be honest- the simpler the better... If you consider that the object of the exercise is to send data with as low a latency as possible down a network - then putting a virtual "police checkpoint" in the middle of the home straight of your racetrack is... well... going to cause issues.

 

The example of EEE is a really good one. It is true that a lot of energy is wasted world wide with spurious network traffic. EEE is a good idea in the world of data networks... It works by powering down network ports, until such a time as there is enough data to "burst" along the cable. Naturally this is catastrophic for any real time activity (like low latency, uncompressed audio). Ironically... you can check if you are suffering from this by seeing if increasing the amount of bandwidth used begins to clear up the problem- sounds totally counterintuitive... but if you "hold the pipe open" by forcing more data down...

 

Environmental pressures do have a great bearing on all electronics manufacturing. Couple this with the surprisingly small number of silicon manufacturers who actually make switch chips - and I am sure that you will begin to appreciate why it would appear that vast swathes of devices are "fussy" (boils down to very similar pieces of electronics in different clothing!)

 

Managed switches have the wonderful ability to allow the user to turn "off" helpful features. In my opinion managed switches that come with all helpful features turned off, and rely upon the user turning "on" features are the most easy to use (but that is a personal preference, based on doing this for a few years).

 

So how do you guys get support? its easy to point at what is imperfect after all. Some of our partners, in particular Yamaha have taken great pains to qualify switches for use with Dante. I cannot give a list of switches that "work", all I can say is that I am yet to have an issue with a switch selected based upon these four simple factors:

 

1. It needs to be a "non-blocking" switch (the backplane bandwidth must be at least 2x the number of ports x the maximum speed of the ports) so for example a 10 port gigabit switch must have a backplane bandwidth of at least 20gbps (this is the ONLY REQUIREMENT)

 

2. It is helpful to have IGMP snooping and filtering functions on a switch (this helps manage large amounts of multicast, and more importantly can make integrating a wireless controller a lot easier) A common myth is that Dante audio gets broken by wireless connections... its more likely the other way around- multicast audio is likely to render a wireless network pretty useless. A note of caution- like any application dependant function (IGMP querying filtering and snooping are applications that run on an embedded device in the switch) the speed of the processor can cause a "drag" factor to your data... sometimes IGMP activity can make network traffic less reliable (hardware dependant... oh by the way- SG300 has reasonably good performance in this regard ;) )

 

3. DSCP QoS can be helpful either on very large networks, or on mixed traffic networks. Another popular myth is that Dante absolutely requires DSCP style QoS, and then that it is complex to configure... you have to be getting into very large networks, or networks with a lot of multicast audio before this becomes a significant factor. DSCP QoS has been seen to mask poor engineering in networks- fundamentally getting the wiring nice first allows a good base to build upon. A minimum of 4 strict priority queues are desirable for using this feature of Dante.

4. As mentioned EEE or any other kind of traffic shaping that you cannot control (turn off)

From a practical standpoint- we find it challenging to give a list of "supported" switches for the reasons outlined above... this actually means, that I would be more than happy to rather than spend time looking at static points in time:

1. Discuss the switches I have experience with/work with on a daily basis.

2. Discuss to the extent available under any given set of circumstances anyone else's experiences.

BTW the switch on my desk is a Cisco SG300 ;)

But I have done some very large projects that use Zyxel, Cisco Catalyst, HP Procurve, Brocade and Juniper switches too (as well as smaller things with some no-brand boxes).

hope this is useful, and happy to talk.

[mackerr]

From a practical standpoint- we find it challenging to give a list of "supported" switches for the reasons outlined above... this actually means, that I would be more than happy to rather than spend time looking at static points in time:

1. Discuss the switches I have experience with/work with on a daily basis.

2. Discuss to the extent available under any given set of circumstances anyone else's experiences.

BTW the switch on my desk is a Cisco SG300 ;)

But I have done some very large projects that use Zyxel, Cisco Catalyst, HP Procurve, Brocade and Juniper switches too (as well as smaller things with some no-brand boxes).

hope this is useful, and happy to talk.

 

A switch I have used for a mixed data environment is the Pathport VIA 12 which has 10 copper ports on the front, and 2 copper ports plus 2 GBIC ports on the back. It has QoS and each of the 14 ports is easily configurable from the front panel LCD to make VLANs, limit individual port speed, and some other constraints. In a system with 10 of these switches, 2 Yamaha CL-5s, and 11 Rio and Ro I/O devices, as well as allowing the video department to push HD video files from our central control to 5 remote locations where we also had audio I/O we had no network issues at all. The HD vieo was not streaming, but was just file transfer, so it would give way to the higher QoS priority of the Dante audio.

 

You can read more about it HERE.

 

Mac

[richard_cooper]

From a practical standpoint- we find it challenging to give a list of "supported" switches for the reasons outlined above... this actually means, that I would be more than happy to rather than spend time looking at static points in time:

1. Discuss the switches I have experience with/work with on a daily basis.

2. Discuss to the extent available under any given set of circumstances anyone else's experiences.

 

This may all be swaying into a generic discussion of switch hardware and away from the merits of the CL system but...

 

I've used these DGS 1210-24 that I picked up a while back from I think CPC for not very much. They're fanless (except the 48 port version) which was a main requirement, and seemed to support all the features that appeared to be required for Dante 18 months or so ago. I've never had any kind of problem with them, set up as suggested above with nearly everything clever disabled, but with the QOS set up as suggested.

 

Smaller system than Mac's usage, but probably more in the ballpark of how a lot of CLs will be used. We have maybe 24 channels from DVS into an iLive, along with 16 channels both ways to a Yamaha card, with up to 64 channels to a couple of recording machines, and the network also supports several screen sharing sessions, and file transfers of audio and video, along with various control like things (iLive editor, QLab remote etc.). I've only ever had one problem, which was DVS playing up on one machine, which went away but was never resolved.

 

Richard

[Audinate EU Tech]

From a practical standpoint- we find it challenging to give a list of "supported" switches for the reasons outlined above... this actually means, that I would be more than happy to rather than spend time looking at static points in time:

1. Discuss the switches I have experience with/work with on a daily basis.

2. Discuss to the extent available under any given set of circumstances anyone else's experiences.

 

This may all be swaying into a generic discussion of switch hardware and away from the merits of the CL system but...

 

I've used these DGS 1210-24 that I picked up a while back from I think CPC for not very much. They're fanless (except the 48 port version) which was a main requirement, and seemed to support all the features that appeared to be required for Dante 18 months or so ago. I've never had any kind of problem with them, set up as suggested above with nearly everything clever disabled, but with the QOS set up as suggested.

 

Smaller system than Mac's usage, but probably more in the ballpark of how a lot of CLs will be used. We have maybe 24 channels from DVS into an iLive, along with 16 channels both ways to a Yamaha card, with up to 64 channels to a couple of recording machines, and the network also supports several screen sharing sessions, and file transfers of audio and video, along with various control like things (iLive editor, QLab remote etc.). I've only ever had one problem, which was DVS playing up on one machine, which went away but was never resolved.

 

Richard

 

 

Thanks Richard...

 

I would be happy to answer questions in another thread if it were deemed appropriate to move the subject. I personally don't think it appropriate to start my own as I would rather try to help than be seen as advertising.... so if someone else thought that appropriate- then by all means do so, and point me at it.

 

Great to hear the positive messages about switch platforms BTW, and we are always interested in hearing peoples use cases.

 

 

 

 

[Stee_cri1]

Hi all

 

having huge issues today with a CL3 and QL3 and 2 rio racks - correct network switch

 

issue is that our DJ and Keys keep dropping in volume and it is only though our main PA and not the monitor

 

Any Idea's?

 

kindregards