Using Dante Virtual Soundcard With The Logitek JET67 and NET67

Using Dante Virtual Soundcard With The Logitek JET67 and NET67

Here are the steps for using Dante Virtual Soundcard with the Logitek JET67 Audio Engine and NET67 card for JetStream Plus.
On the JET67 Audio Engine, the optional J67-DANTE module must be installed.
On the NET67 card for JetStream Plus, a Dante module is already included.

Install the driver and Dante Controller

1. Download Dante Virtual Soundcard and Dante Controller from the Audinate website.

2. Install both Dante Virtual Soundcard and Dante Controller to the computer on your audio LAN. You will need a license key from Audinate to install DVS.

3. Launch Dante Virtual Soundcard. You will see a screen like this:

Choose your audio channel count (the driver supports anywhere from 2 x 2 to 64 x 64; the number of streams you will be able to use depends largely upon your computer's hardware).

If you are running Windows, there will be a drop-down to choose WDM or ASIO depending upon the needs of the software you are interfacing to. Merging Technologies Ovation users and Broadcast Electronics AudioVault users should choose ASIO.

For Dante Latency, the default 10 ms setting should be fine.

Choose the Network Interface that is connected to the Audio LAN. The IP address that the driver is able to resolve from that interface will be displayed below.


What Is My Audio LAN?
- On the JET67, this is the network that the JET67 is connected to. All devices connected to the back of a JET67 are in the same network and need to be on the same subnet. There is an internal network switch on the JET67 that connects the audio discovery processor and the Dante card to all 4 ports on the back of the JET67. It doesn't matter which port you connect to, but it does matter that everything is in the same subnet. The default out of the box is that the audio discovery processor and Dante card receive an IP address via DHCP. To change this to static, you will change the 0.0.0.0 entry in Audio Net 1 and blank entry in Audio Net 2 in JetStream Server to static addresses in the same subnet; Audio Net 1 is discovery and Audio Net 2 is Dante.
- On the JetStream Plus, there is an embedded computer built into the frame that is separate from the audio network (this is labeled Admin Net on the frame). This PC is not part of the Audio LAN, so you will not be running Dante Controller here. On the DSP card, there are two ports labeled Audio Net 1 and Audio Net 2. These are connected to an internal Ethernet switch. As with the JET67, there is one processor doing audio discovery behind this switch in addition to the Dante card, each has their own IP address and needs to be in the same subnet. The default out of the box is that the audio discovery processor and Dante card receive  n IP address via DHCP. To change this to static, you will change the 0.0.0.0 entry in Audio Net 1 and blank entry in Audio Net 2 in JetStream Server to static addresses in the same subnet; Audio Net 1 is discovery and Audio Net 2 is Dante.
- If you're new to Dante, here's some things to know:
  1. Dante devices, Dante Virtual Soundcard, and Dante Controller need to be in the same subnet
  2. Dante devices assume that everyone uses DHCP. While you can change them to static addresses, It's not uncommon for Dante cards to fight you to switch to static. It's much easier to just use DHCP.

When everything is running as you like it, click Start. You can now close the Dante Virtual Soundcard GUI and the program will continue to run as a service.

Generally speaking, Dante Virtual Soundcard will restart itself after a reboot without having to go in and click Start. The exception to that rule is if you update the Dante Virtual Soundcard software. If this is a machine that will be mostly unattended and you enable auto updates in Dante Controller, this might give you an unexpected surprise. If at any time you find that your driver has gone missing from the network, the first troubleshooting step should be to launch DVS and see if it's waiting to be started.

Name The Sources

4. Now, launch Dante Controller. Choose the proper network interface to get on the audio network.


Click on the Device Info tab.


Now, double-click on the line for your computer. (Tip: the device name will be the computer name) Then click on the Transmit tab.

Here you will name the streams. The name that you enter here will be immediately transmitted to the Logitek Audio Engine and a new device created over there.  Dante sends each channel individually, where 2 channels equal one stereo pair. Logitek treats a stereo pair as one device, therefore we will create what is called a "flow" in Dante to ask for two channels at once. Ultimately, when the left channel is routed, the right will accompany it.

We will get to creating the flow in a further step. What you need to know now: Assign the Channel Label of the first stream (left channel) the name you want to see on the console. Assign the second stream that label along with a R at the end. The Logitek engine accepts 16 characters and will automatically divide them into 2 fields of 8.

Example: We want to assign 2 channels on a computer to Pro Tools and two different channels to Adobe Audition. So:
Channel 1: Pro Tools
Channel 2: Pro Tools R
Channel 3: Adobe
Channel 4: Adobe R

Now, go to JetStream Server, JetStream State Page. Pop out the list of available source devices. You should see the new channels down at the bottom.
If you don't see them right away, perform a Hardware Reset on the engine to restart the Dante card.


Group Channels Into Stereo Flows As Necessary

5. Now that the sources exist in JetStream Server, if you want to create the flow to get a stereo source, follow this procedure:
- Open the web browser to get into JetSet (default login is user with no password)

- Click on Network IO and then select the Inputs From Network tab.

If this web page was open while you were creating the sources in Dante Controller, you'll need to refresh the web page to see the updated list.
Now, click on the line for the left channel of one of the new Dante sources. This will open an editor.

In the field for UDP Control/Stop String enter chan=2
- MUST be lower case
- no spaces
- make sure that there are no spaces before the c of chan (tap backspace before you start typing)

Click Upload to JetStream. You will see dots appear in the upload box while the web page is transmitting the information.

After clicking Upload to JetStream, return to JetStream Server. Go to the JetStream Log page.

On the right side of the screen is the Refresh button. Click it. The audio engine will refresh its settings.

Repeat the process for each Dante flow you wish to create.

6. Check your work by reloading the JetSet web page and going back to Network IO, Inputs from Network tab.

You will now see that the number of channels are set to 2 for the left channel of the pair.

Now you can go to Surface Settings. Assign tick marks for the left channel of the source and upload it to the engine. Then when the engine goes to route the left channel to the console fader it will ask Dante to send both left and right at the same time while displaying the surface label for the left side.

You will notice that in JetSet the IP addresses of the Dante sources are bogus. If you have any AES-67 streams, those will have proper multicast IP addresses. This is because we're combining three stream discovery systems that are completely different into one interface. When we stream AES-67 streams from Livewire or Ravenna, we ask for the multicast IP address, but when we ask for a Dante stream, we ask the Dante card for its stream by name (a combination of surface label and device name) and by its stream number on the device. So on the Dante sources, the first octet is the number of the device in the table and the last octet is the number of the stream. Since we handle all of this automatically, you don't really need to know how this part works, but if you're scratching your head asking why do we do that... this is why:  As sources come and go in your system, you'll notice that sometimes the left and right channels won't come immediately after each other in the list of Logitek sources, as the system will drop new sources into open stream handles. Don't worry, we will find the correct stream for the right channel in a stereo flow. Using the combination of device and stream numbers stored in that illegal IP address that's in the column, we'll know which streams belong in the pair and always get left and right paired correctly.

One rule that Dante devices always follow is that if you rename a source, all routes made with that source are immediately broken, because Dante assumes that it's now becoming something different. When you rename a source in Dante Controller, we will pass that information through to the engine and update the label automatically, although you'll sometimes need to hit Refresh in JetStream Server to pick up the change. But since the default action of a Dante card is to destroy the route when the label changes, it's a good habit to re-route any sources you rename across your system.

Assign The Channels To Your Software

Here's where you'll need to know your software and we won't be able to help you much. But if you're using channels 1 and 2 to play back to the console, you'll have to go into your computer application and tell it to play out of channels 1 and 2.

Set Up Recording

1. Refer to the documentation for the JET67 or NET67 (depending upon which device you have) to send a mix bus out to the network via Dante.
2. Open Dante Controller and click on Routing.

Expand the view of your computer driver in the Receiver column. Expand the view of the NET67 card in the Transmitter Section along the top. Click the box where it intersects between the left and right channel of the mix bus (or other network source) and the virtual sound card inputs. When you see the green checkmark, the route is complete.

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