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[eve]

My lovely roommate bought me an Ultralite AVB a couple nights ago. I had been looking at something in MOTUs range for a while and despite the drawbacks of AVB vs Dante or straight up AES67, the price was right and the converters are apparently excellent. Turns out my roommate knew way more about this stuff than I expected (probably thanks to listening to my rambling about the trials and tribulations of ultra high quality multichannel D/A that doesn't break the bank) and was tired of me complaining about Firewire and the praising the converters in my rapidly aging D/A unit sounding 'better than the other guys'. Well it showed up on Reverb and they bought it. I wasn't really planning on getting my hands on one of these any time soon as my conversations with MOTU Engineers and some dealers have all ended with "We might get stock at some point in the next 6 months but don't count on it" This is a super nice surprise!

So AVB isn't really compatible with Windows, but thankfully the Ultralite provides a USB interface for legacy connectivity. I'm incredibly excited to get in my i210 and play around with proper audio over IP on a linux machine.

Has anyone else been messing around with AVB or these current gen MOTU interfaces?

I gotta say, the thing I'm most excited for is small. Currently, I have to control master volume with a physical knob. I mean sure, I can place it anywhere since it's just using CAT5 as a transport for serial control (that yes, I'm too lazy to figure out) but it's darn annoying when everything else is automated. The MOTU stuff allows full network control of all parameters so I can finally control my volume from a tablet or zigbee based rotary encoder again!

[mattkhan]

I don't recall any functional issue using avb under Windows except that it means you can't use network control unless you also buy the avb switch (i.e. without a switch, the extra device has to use the network port on the master device). I don't think avb is relevant unless you have multiple devices is it?

[eve]

I don't recall any functional issue using avb under Windows except that it means you can't use network control unless you also buy the avb switch (i.e. without a switch, the extra device has to use the network port on the master device). I don't think avb is relevant unless you have multiple devices is it?

AVB doesn't really exist on windows IIRC. Hono had a virtual ASIO device that utilized an RTX operating system + i210 nic to talk to AVB networks but that's about it. They don't sell it anymore either which raises questions about it's current compatibility if I were to say, find a license or figure it out.

Obviously you can just use the USB ASIO drivers with an AVB Ultralite, and get audio out of a windows PC into an AVB network but you can't do 'no usb' IP only AVB, which is extremely compelling.

Also yeah, the switches sold by MOTU are way overpriced. Turns out Netgear GS724Tv3+ switches have great AVB support if you buy an EAV license. The switch + license comes out cheaper than the other options out there.

AVB, and IP audio along the lines of AES67 is pretty rad because of it's flexibility and expandability. MUCH less hassle changing or expanding setups, and since the main target, at least for me is higher channel count scenarios, cutting down on massive snakes and allowing D/A gear to live closer to amplification, without having computers nearby is obviously ideal.
Furthermore, jitter and other possible digital problems like 'incorrect' usb frames, don't impact proper IP audio, unlike USB Async communication.
USB Async might 'know' a frame / sample is wrong but it can't do anything about it beyond making a decision about what to send the D/A chip.
 With IP audio? Say a packet doesn't look right, well the receiving device can actually ask for it again, and because of the way the timestamping works, it can actually take the re-sent, 'correct' packet, and slot it in the buffer where it should be BEFORE it has to send it to the D/A chip.

[mattkhan]

as far as I'm aware, motu basically expects you to connect the host computer via usb or tb (on mac), direct connection via ethernet is not supported on windows at all as you say and is somewhat limited on macos (https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/direct-avb-limitations) which means AVB is arguably basically a fancier ADAT in a home setup.

[eve]

as far as I'm aware, motu basically expects you to connect the host computer via usb or tb (on mac), direct connection via ethernet is not supported on windows at all as you say and is somewhat limited on macos (https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/direct-avb-limitations) which means AVB is arguably basically a fancier ADAT in a home setup.

Its sort of like ADAT  I guess, without the possibility of jitter (frankly, mostly a boogeyman for ill informed audiophiles but still something to be mindful of).
However, it provides interesting routing options, and none of the technical limitations apply to me really.
44.1kHz support not existing is meh but I typically use conservative oversampling on redbook audio anyways, and video is almost always 48kHz.

Yeah I mean, it's sort of supported on windows, at some point in time, the Hono virtual AVB drivers definitely did work, I just can't really find much info on it (I'm still waiting for an email back from them). The main draw is, main PC hooked up via USB, being able to 'switch' the internal mixer to AVB input, and stream audio over IP from other endpoints (either straight up physical computers or VM hosts with an i210 passed through) to the same monitoring rig with all the same D/A.

All my sources are computers, I don't really mess with hardware media players. I *used* to have a big stack of consoles but with COVID, I ended up flipping all the devkits and random units I had sitting here.

Anyways, he got here today. Time to see if it trumps the aging Studio Konnekt 48 whose D/A I adore.

[eve]

Some aspects of the D/A are a little nicer but I *really* dislike it as it gets into HF territory. Cymbals and such are pretty annoying sounding. I'll have to play around with levels and see if anything fixes it. I have a call with MOTUs engineers tomorrow about these issues and to determine if there's a simpler way to do all channel volume attenuation (right now, I'm just sending a command to each output channel, one at a time, to control volume, would be great if I could group them). It's not a big problem or anything but obviously, I try to keep the automation / control infrastructure that I have implemented, as simple as possible.

If not, I've ordered a Dm7 which is about the closest thing to an Okto8 that you can actually get your hands on. DSD support will be cool, and if the measurements are anything to go by, it really blows competitors out of the water. Obviously, you're not going to hit the fidelity you can get with something that uses an 8ch D/A chip for stereo (currently the most ideal way to get a 'perfect' balanced signal) but for 8ch, it's one of the better measuring D/A units out there. Guess I'll find out in a couple weeks if the Dm7 is the interface killer I've been looking for. No IP / Serial control but it has IR so it's trivial to automate the master attenuation.

Great software though, like I'm debating even returning it because it's a pleasure to interact with.