audio over lan

[mikemotu]

Hello MOTU masters,
This issue may of already been addressed but I just had a baby and my free time is a little sparce so I thought i'd just ask the friendly folks at motunation. Sorry if it's a repeat.

With the new baby I have little time to use my studio in the basement. But I can remote access into my DAW and use my TV & stereo to mix. Is there a way to send audio from the MOTU over my lan so I don't have to run RCA cables from my DAW to my stereo?

The desired signal chain is:
MOTU > lan > laptop (remote desktop) > HDMI to tv (external monitor & stereo)

Thanks in advance! You guys rock.
Mike

[mikemotu]

Found a solution. Pretty easy. Kind of posting to myself here but in case anyone else wants to try something similar I'll drop the knowledge.Or if someone has a simpler solution please reply!

Found the Wormhole2 VST plugin on the internets and it seems to be working. The only problem now is the lag makes it useless. Both computers are wireless with the DAW having a particularly bad connection so I imagine some CAT5 cable will fix that. Guess I'll post again if that fixes it to the point of awesomeness.

But yeah... Mixing on my studio computer from the comfort of the living room is pretty cool. In theory anyway...

[bayswater]

Have you tried these? (Wormhole does not seem to be supported or developed any more)

From http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2005/05/19/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

AUNetSend & AUNetReceive

AUNetSend and AUNetReceive operate in a pair, with NetSend transmitting audio to NetReceive. You can use them over the network, or just between two applications on the same computer. NetSend advertises itself with Bonjour (formerly known as Rendezvous), which NetReceive then looks for, so they are completely painless to set up.

Here on the left, is GarageBand running on my PowerMac, sending the the audio for a track out with AUNetSend. On the right, is my PowerBook receiving that audio with AUNetReceive:

AUNetSend can send the audio in a variety of formats: uncompressed, Apple Lossless, compressed AIFF, and AAC. If you have a fast network, or are sending audio between two applications, you’ll probably want to use Apple Lossless. Otherwise you can drop down to a high-bitate AAC to save on bandwidth (but with a CPU hit).

AUNetReceive (but not AuNetSend) is also a Generator, so not all AudioUnit hosts will support it currently. See below for more about Generator plugins.

[mikemotu]

Thanks Bayswater. I checked it out. Seems to be for Mac and I'm on a PC so I wasn't able to try it out but it does look simpler than what I'm doing. I have to open another host for wormhole on the laptop so it's a little clunky. So Mac - 1 PC - 0 (if you start counting right... now!)

Wormhole is open source now (or dead?) and you can find it for free with the googles. There's no support but it seems to be working so I'll call it a win. I ran some cable to my router and tweaked the buffer & sample settings and now it's running pretty smooth. Still some pops here and there but it gets the job done. I can probably tweak it further if I need to but right now I'm happy.

So there you have it!
Finicky external soundcard + remote desktop + wormhole2 = awesome

[bayswater]

Good that you got wormhole working. I haven't been able to get the mac version to work reliably.

[mikemotu]

The VST is kind of finicky. Adjusting the sample and buffer settings seem to cure most of the ills but it's still not flawless. It'll get me through 90% of what I need to do though so I'm not really motivated to keep tweaking it. I'll still end up doing the final mixing and mastering in the studio.

It seems like a cool way to use your laptop to run plugins like an external rack unit if you're low on processing power but I bet the latency + buffer + sample settings are a lot of variables to try and balance to get it to work smoothly. Are you still trying to get it to work or are the other plugins you showed me getting the job done?

[bayswater]

Are you still trying to get it to work or are the other plugins you showed me getting the job done?

Had it working between a G4 and G5 a couple of years ago, but haven't tried it on the current set up. I'll need to get this working to keep access to my UAD-1 after upgrading the Mac to one that can't use it.

But my first approach is to use bussing/aux channels with those plugs, and if that doesn't work, separate interfaces on each Mac with with an ADAT connection between them. (Maybe MOTU will do me a favour and get DP working with nodes).

[planktone]

you have LUCI LIVE 2 on pc
http://luci.eu/livetwo.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
a nice ( not free ) AoIP codec
you find a 1 month working demo code at
http://www.luci.eu/blogLive2/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
i used it or a 6 hours live broadcast on austrian radio with no problems over my home DSL connection.
sounds realy great with low latency ( +/- 200 ms )

w.