Mackie DL32R oddities

Michael John

Michael John

Junior
Jun 25, 2011
352
9
18
Sydney, Australia
eclipseaudio.com
Hi,

Has anyone successfully mixed the Mackie control network with one of the Dante networks?

As background....

I'm setting up a DL32R as remote head amps for some Yamaha consoles. I have dual (redundant) Dante networks set up and have Lake control running on the same network as primary Dante. I have a wireless access point (WAP) connected to the primary network for the Lake control and I'd like to combine the Mackie control on the same network (so that I don't have to use a 2nd WAP for the Mackie).

Lake and Dante coexist nicely on the same network. However when I connect the Mackie control port to the primary network, something goes wrong with the WAP and WAP drops any connected Wifi devices.

In all the Mackie documentation, they never show DL32R Dante and Mackie control ports connected to the same network. However I've verified that the Dante and Mackie control ports have different IP addresses, so in theory they shouldn't clash.

Does anyone know what is special about the Mackie control traffic?

FWIW, Mackie show multiple DL32R setups where a WAP is connected to the control port of the 1st DL32R, the second DL32R is connected to the first via their primary Dante ports, and control info for the second DL32R is passed through the first DL32R and over the primary Dante network. This suggests Mackie control traffic is either tunnelled through Dante traffic, or duplicated on the Dante network ports.

Cheers,
Michael
 
Hey Michael,
Indeed the control port data is sent to both Dante ports. The card has a 5 port switch on it. Internally 2 ports go to the Brooklyn and to our own control processor. Externally you have the 3 ports. Dante Audio only goes to the Brooklyn internally and the two external Dante Ports. Our control data goes to ALL three external ports and our internal control processor. The point of the 3rd control point is therefore to allow users with simple setups to not need to have an external switch configured to block Dante going to the WiFi router.

So for your setup if I am understanding correctly, you are making a loop on the primary which is causing problems. Since you already have your WAP setup on the primary, you shouldn't need to connect anything to the DL32R control port. Simply connect the primary Dante port on the DL32R to the Dante network switch and the Mater Fader iPad app should be able to see and control the DL32R via your already existing WAP.

Ben Olswang
Mackie Product Manager
 
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Thanks very much Weogo. There are two updater ZIP files there now and I don't recall them being there when I last looked. I'd heard that there was a Dante 3.10 update in testing, and it looks like it's now been released.

Best,
 
Last edited:
Hi Ben,

The WAP setup is now working fine. Thanks.

I have a feature change request. The channel HPF on/off state isn't recallable with the EQ preset, however the HPF frequency is. I flagged this as a bug, but Loud tech support said it's by design, which makes NO sense at all. Whenever I recall a EQ preset, I have to manually turn on the HPF.

(If the HPF's were analog and prior to the A/D, I could understand them being independent of the EQ preset.)

Best,
Michael
 
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