Presonus 32R

[Peter Korsten]

Op 28-8-2021 om 20:50 schreef Joost Schuttelaar:
>> On 27 Aug 2021, at 00:46, Joost Schuttelaar <joost at joostschuttelaar.nl> wrote:
>>
>> Ahhh, first snag. I remember Micke warned me for this. AVB does not work over Ethernet → USB-C. On the MBP 2016+ you need to use a Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt 2 converter, and stick a Thunderbolt → Ethernet adapter in it. OMG.

That's the one thing that I don't like about AVB. But it should be 
supported on (modern) Macs, no? On Windows, you're out of luck 
altogether. No idea about Linux, but I doubt it.

I've got a nice little 24 port Gigabit switch from HP, but I doubt this 
can be used for AVB. So I'm not taking that into consideration when 
purchasing an audio interface, or it would have to be to connect two 
MOTUs together.

Dante doesn't have this problem, but it's a proprietary standard, and 
the licensing costs add to the price of the interfaces.

Practically everybody uses Dante, and AVB has a very small market share. 
Which is totally irrelevant if you're building your own studio, unless 
you're going to have independent power circuits for the dual power 
supplies, or get a full size mixing console.

There's a new standard on its way –forgot the name, AES67 or something 
like that– and it should handle both Dante and AVB and whatever other 
audio-over-Ethernet protocol. Considering that they've been mucking 
about with AVB for like a decade and the standard is still not 
finalised, I wouldn't hold my breath.

> Update, works fine on the old MacBook with the Thunderbolt 2 → 
> Ethernet adapter. However, I have to plug directly (or via the patch 
> bay), when I put either a dumb gigabit switch in between, or run it 
> over my Unifi network (Switch 16 Lite), no connection is made. 

MOTU will happily sell you a 5+1 AVB switch for an eye-watering €350 or 
thereabouts. It looks like any other cheap six port switch, except that 
it says MOTU. It doesn't even look like the rest of the MOTU gear, and 
can't be racked.

> Reading up on the VLAN/QOS stuff of AVB/TSN, in theory this should work… but for now everything is all set.

I've read that you need hardware, or at the very least, firmware support 
to do AVB. It happens at some layer of the Ethernet protocol that your 
average switch doesn't handle. Something about reserving bandwidth.

- Peter