SoundGrid

showstack / protocols / soundgrid

Waves' networked audio and processing protocol, carrying audio between interfaces, consoles and a dedicated DSP server over standard gigabit Ethernet at low latency.

Audio transportProprietaryReported

Media Large, continuous, on time and in order

Continuous streams that are large enough to be sized properly, and that must arrive in order and on time.

What kills it. Anything that starves the link — usually a management transfer nobody scheduled — and jitter that outruns the receive buffer.

The four flows, and why the model is worth having →

What it carries

Sample rates: 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 96 kHz

Audio: Channel capacity halves as the rate doubles: an interface rated 128 channels at 48 kHz carries 64 at 96 kHz. Bandwidth is also counted per receiving device, so 64 channels sent to four destinations spends 256 channels of it. Bit depth is a property of the interface rather than the transport, and several console cards are held to their host console's rates, so check both ends.

What goes wrong

SoundGrid wants its own dedicated network interface and its own switch. Sharing the NIC with a show network or the internet is the standard cause of dropouts.

It is a layer 2 protocol on ordinary gigabit hardware, which makes the switch choice matter more than people expect: energy-saving features and cheap switches both cause problems.

What speaks SoundGrid (2)

Product	Direction	Notes
Allen & Heath Avantis Allen & Heath	bidirectional	Via option card.
DirectOut PRODIGY.MP DirectOut	bidirectional	Via module.

Typical use

Running plug-in racks on a live console
Multitrack recording and virtual soundcheck
Offloading processing from a mixing surface

Sources

Waves Live — common questions answered — Waves Audio primary
Waves SoundGrid — Waves Audio primary

Understand the mechanism

Show networks Numbers that stand for signals

Something wrong, or missing?

Known gaps on this entry: default_ports, first_published, implementations. If you can source one of them, that is a ten minute pull request.

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