CL5 and Nuendo Live

Geri O'Neil

Sophomore
Jan 11, 2011
168
0
0
US
We've had our first opportunity to use Nuendo Live and one of our CL5s in a live recording situation. The show is being recorded live for later production into a TV show.

Getting Dante Virtual Soundcard and Nuendo Live up and running was a fairly straightforward process, considering the last time I dealt with recording, it was with a good ol' Studer 2-inch 24-track machine, so there's how old I am! It took some head-scratching on my part, but it came together pretty easily. The one thing that was really odd is that it seemed to take quite a while for DVS to show up in the device list of the CL5. I watched, rebooted both Macbook and CL5, and at ome point, left it to get lunch and when I came back, it was mounted and working. And every time thereafter I shut down and powered back up several times, the DVS showed up quickly, just like the RIO boxes show connected (DVS showed as device #3). I played with a couple of iTunes tracks for the rest of the afternoon, recording and playing back and generally getting familiar with the process as I would have to get the visiting engineer's recording rig up and running as I did mine (and this guy had a really serious computer with Glyph Firewire drives and massive memory and processing. He wasn't new at this at all, he just hadn't used this set-up before).

Yesterday was set-up day for this event. We went about setting up his machine for the recording. Again, it went fine, except for the same thing...DVS took about a half-hour to show up as a device in the CL5. We started and a few minutes in, I said "let's just let it sit for a bit and see what happens". A little later, there it is, mounted and ready to go. And again, upon re-boot of his computer, it showed up quickly. He played some pre-recorded tracks that he had imported into Nuendo Live and all appears to be working fine. We did a line check with the band input lines (backline is arriving this morning, in fact, I need to finish this as I'm due at the venue in about 90 minutes!) and everything is showing up in Nuendo.

I know most of you guys probably do this a lot and it's no big deal, but I gave up on working in recording in the early 90s. So this is A Big Deal to me, pretty exiting stuff. I was curious if anyone else had some experience the CLs and recording with Nuendo.

Thanx, everyone be careful with the heat!
Geri O
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

Did you use static or dynamic IP addresses on your network?
IME DVS can take some time to appear if you use dynamic IP addresses and no DHCP on a network, AKA only gigabit switches. I started using a DHCP client on my computer to solve this and other network issues a while back.
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

Did you use static or dynamic IP addresses on your network?
IME DVS can take some time to appear if you use dynamic IP addresses and no DHCP on a network, AKA only gigabit switches. I started using a DHCP client on my computer to solve this and other network issues a while back.
I suspect that you really mean that you started using a DHCP server on your computer...

I'm not really a fan of the whole attitude of "just let everything auto-IP" that is promoted by Audinate. As far as I am concerned, everything should have its own fixed IP address and that IP address should be marked on the equipment with any relevant log in credentials that are required to set up the device. That way I can change it if I need to, but I should not need to if everything is set up correctly.
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

I suspect that you really mean that you started using a DHCP server on your computer...

I'm not really a fan of the whole attitude of "just let everything auto-IP" that is promoted by Audinate. As far as I am concerned, everything should have its own fixed IP address and that IP address should be marked on the equipment with any relevant log in credentials that are required to set up the device. That way I can change it if I need to, but I should not need to if everything is set up correctly.

I wonder why large corporate networks all use DHCP? Because it's better. If you really need a consistent IP for an device, give it a reservation based on MAC. You can look up devices based on name, IP, and MAC in your router (if you have a decent one). With static IPs, you have very limited flexibility to run different systems without mass reconfiguration. Adding ancillary gear like extra laptops becomes a chore. With DHCP everything is automatic and easy. You can even run a couple VLANs (with a layer 3 switch) if you really want segmentation between devices.
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

I wonder why large corporate networks all use DHCP? Because it's better.
If you mean it is better in that environment, then you are right. A corporate network is a constantly changing environment. Your audio system probably isn't. I know I like to test things before I toss them into my system, so I'll use that opportunity to work it into the IP addressing scheme.

If you really need a consistent IP for an device, give it a reservation based on MAC. You can look up devices based on name, IP, and MAC in your router (if you have a decent one).
Right, so this is one more piece of gear I have to have in the system AND I have to make sure it is up and online before I power anything else up. Oh, and what if I have more than one WiFi router with DHCP turned on in the system? Oops, some things can't talk to other things because their DHCP delivered IP addresses are probably in different subnets, or because you are running two DHCP servers, you are handing out duplicate IP addresses and everything on the network is getting confused because the two DHCP servers are not working together.

With static IPs, you have very limited flexibility to run different systems without mass reconfiguration. Adding ancillary gear like extra laptops becomes a chore.
I'm calling bullshit on this one. If you put some rudimentary thought into your IP address scheme before hand, everything from your small rigs to big rigs can work together with no effort. You can just plug the gear up and have it work. You may well need a router between your system and a different system, but that is an easy thing to add after the fact if you plan for it up front. It should be an easy and well understood mechanism to change the IP address of any laptop.

With DHCP everything is automatic and easy. You can even run a couple VLANs (with a layer 3 switch) if you really want segmentation between devices.
You can easily run multiple subnets on a plain dumb network switch without having to rely on DHCP by just understanding how to correctly implement IP addressing. Then, if you want VLANs, you can also do that by simply using a Layer 2 network switch, without having to implement a Layer 3 network switch (which is essentially a router anyway).

My point is, IF you take the time to come up with an IP addressing scheme for your system up front, you will not need to waste time with that kind of thing at the gig. You can just roll your gear in, switch it on, and be confident that it will work correctly EVERY SINGLE TIME. There are no variables and every piece of gear has a dedicated IP address. In short, there is less stuff to go wrong.

Thank goodness, however, that we can all do our own rigs our own way. You can keep on with your DHCP server and I'll keep on with my fixed IP addressing and we can agree to disagree with one another, because really, neither one of us is right. I just want to know, up front, what everything's IP addresses are... if you don't care, you don't need to care and it doesn't matter to you. Good for you.
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

Update on the results from the recording guy on this project:

They are extremely pleased with the results. Initially, the fellow recording was a little disappointed with Nuendo Live, said it was a little light on features he'd like to have for recording live (he didn't expound and I didn't ask). Nonetheless, later, he told that if it kept giving him the results similar to what he got on this project, he'd be happy to keep using it.

Geri O
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

If you mean it is better in that environment, then you are right. A corporate network is a constantly changing environment. Your audio system probably isn't. I know I like to test things before I toss them into my system, so I'll use that opportunity to work it into the IP addressing scheme.


Right, so this is one more piece of gear I have to have in the system AND I have to make sure it is up and online before I power anything else up. Oh, and what if I have more than one WiFi router with DHCP turned on in the system? Oops, some things can't talk to other things because their DHCP delivered IP addresses are probably in different subnets, or because you are running two DHCP servers, you are handing out duplicate IP addresses and everything on the network is getting confused because the two DHCP servers are not working together.


I'm calling bullshit on this one. If you put some rudimentary thought into your IP address scheme before hand, everything from your small rigs to big rigs can work together with no effort. You can just plug the gear up and have it work. You may well need a router between your system and a different system, but that is an easy thing to add after the fact if you plan for it up front. It should be an easy and well understood mechanism to change the IP address of any laptop.


You can easily run multiple subnets on a plain dumb network switch without having to rely on DHCP by just understanding how to correctly implement IP addressing. Then, if you want VLANs, you can also do that by simply using a Layer 2 network switch, without having to implement a Layer 3 network switch (which is essentially a router anyway).

My point is, IF you take the time to come up with an IP addressing scheme for your system up front, you will not need to waste time with that kind of thing at the gig. You can just roll your gear in, switch it on, and be confident that it will work correctly EVERY SINGLE TIME. There are no variables and every piece of gear has a dedicated IP address. In short, there is less stuff to go wrong.

Thank goodness, however, that we can all do our own rigs our own way. You can keep on with your DHCP server and I'll keep on with my fixed IP addressing and we can agree to disagree with one another, because really, neither one of us is right. I just want to know, up front, what everything's IP addresses are... if you don't care, you don't need to care and it doesn't matter to you. Good for you.

This. Or perhaps better is setting static IPs for all the production equipment and running a DHCP server for your laptop (perhaps on whatever WAP you're using).

Far more frustrating than having to manually set the IP address on your laptop (you know that you can set a fall-back static IP for Windows to use if no DHCP server is found, right?) is having to use Nmap or Wireshark to find a headless server that got it's DHCP reservation hosed (was *supposed* to have a reservation, but...).

Another problem with forcing DHCP in a production environment is that you need a single DHCP server in every system. So now you have a "one of these things is different" problem in your inventory and can't use your network until the DHCP server is on the network (and this probably also means you can't just plug directly into a rack for troubleshooting).
 
Re: CL5 and Nuendo Live

Update on the results from the recording guy on this project:

They are extremely pleased with the results. Initially, the fellow recording was a little disappointed with Nuendo Live, said it was a little light on features he'd like to have for recording live (he didn't expound and I didn't ask). Nonetheless, later, he told that if it kept giving him the results similar to what he got on this project, he'd be happy to keep using it.

Geri O
Sounds cool Geri!

You may also want to look at tracking with REAPER. The cost is definitely right and I know it works just fine with the Dante Virtual Soundcard ASIO drivers.