In this video, we’ll show you how to use
one of the most exciting things in the Dante toolbox: Dante Virtual Soundcard.
Dante Virtual Soundcard is software that allows you to record or playout up to 64 channels of pristine
network audio directly from your Mac or PC with no additional hardware attached. Dante Virtual Soundcard is software that turns
any Mac or Windows PC into a Dante audio device, instantly. You can use any of your favorite audio applications with Dante Virtual Soundcard - DAWs like Logic,
Pro Tools and Cubase, performance tools like Reason, and consumer apps such as iTunes.
Dante Virtual Soundcard packs the full power of a 64-channel soundcard into a laptop, allowing
you to obtain professional results wherever you need it to be. The Dante Virtual Soundcard application is
really a control panel for the drivers that connect audio to the Dante network.
You can Start and Stop these drivers by clicking Start or Stop in the Dante Virtual Soundcard
application. Note that once Dante Virtual Soundcard is started, you can close the application
itself - the drivers continue to be available, even between reboots, until you open Dante
Virtual Soundcard again and stop them. Once Dante Virtual Soundcard is started, we
can select it as an audio device in our applications. Once running, Dante Virtual Soundcard appears in Dante Controller just like any other Dante device, ready to send and receive audio. If we stop Dante Virtual Soundcard it disappears from Dante Controller, and no longer appears
as an audio device on our computer. A special note for Windows users: On Windows
computers, Dante Virtual Soundcard allows you to choose between two different types
of drivers. ASIO drivers are the type most often used
by professional level, multichannel audio applications. ASIO audio channels do not appear
in the Windows Sound Control Panel, but are selected within supported applications.
WDM drivers are the type commonly associated with Windows audio devices, and are used by
consumer audio applications. Dante Virtual Soundcard WDM channels appear as stereo pairs in the Windows Sound Control Panel. When ASIO drivers are selected, WDM drivers will appear greyed out in the Windows Sound Control Panel. In general, use ASIO for high performance, low latency recording with multi-channel applications such as Nuendo or ProTools.
Use WDM to capture audio from consumer applications such as iTunes, VLC or Windows Media Player. Dante Virtual Soundcard allows you to set
parameters to suit your needs. To make adjustments to Dante Virtual Soundcard, you must first stop it from being active by clicking the Stop button.
We can set the number of channels that Dante Virtual Soundcard uses with the Audio Channels dropdown, from 2x2 up to 64x64. Choose the lowest number that fits your project, in order to conserve your computer’s resources. We can adjust latency to be 4, 6 or 10 milliseconds. This is the delay between signal transmission on the network and reception by an application on your computer. Lower values of latency place a greater load upon your computer’s
CPU, so choose the highest value you can use in order to decrease the chances of clicks and pops. Low latency is only required at times when one is listening to playout simultaneously with other sources, such as overdubbing or using in-ear monitors. If you are only capturing audio, use the highest value of 10 milliseconds
for consistently good results. The Network Interface dropdown allows you
to select among available physical network connections on your computer; because most
modern computers have both Ethernet and Wifi, multiple interfaces appear. Choose the one
that corresponds to the wired Ethernet jack you wish to use.
Finally, Dante Virtual Soundcard supports multiple sample rates. These are accessed in the Device View of Dante Controller, exactly as with Dante hardware interfaces. Let’s illustrate this by doing some simple
recording. For a source, we’ve setup an 8 channel multitrack recording coming from this Yamaha LS-9 mixing console. All 8 channels are assigned to Dante transmit channels on the LS-9. We’ve got the Dante MY16 card in the LS-9 connected to this network switch, as is the Ethernet port on this MacBook.
Let’s check Dante Virtual Soundcard and make sure we have enough channels exposed. We do, and so let’s Start Dante Virtual Soundcard. In Dante Controller, we’ll assign all 8 channels of our mixer to Dante Virtual Soundcard. Now we open Logic with a new project. In Audio Preferences, we see that Dante Virtual Soundcard
is available as both a source and destination. We’ll choose these channels as our source
and assign them to tracks, just as we would with any other audio interface we might use. Now let’s start playback of our music source into the LS-9, and verify that there is signal there. We go back to Logic and hit “record” - and
there is our audio coming in on all tracks. Let’s allow it to record for a few seconds.
OK. Now we’ll stop the original audio source, and playout the tracks we just recorded. To do this, we’ll use Dante Virtual Soundcard again, this time sending a 2-channel mix to our speakers. So I subscribe the 2 receiving channels of
this speaker to transmit channels 1 & 2 of Dante Virtual Soundcard
In Logic, we assign channels 1 & 2 of Dante Virtual Soundcard to our stereo output.
Hit play, and - there we are. We can adjust levels and verify that it all really works. We hope you’ve found this video about Dante Virtual Soundcard helpful. Be sure to watch all the videos in this series, and you’ll be a Dante expert in no time.
