Wireless - And now things get interesting... Dante from the device

[Chris15]

Shure Americas | Coming Soon | ULX-D™ Dual & Quad Digital Wireless
RF receivers that transmit audio out natively on Dante...

We enter a brave new world my friends...

[Edrick]

Those are some sexy looking rack receivers.

[Eboy87]

Interesting. I'd love to get my hands on one to try out

[Footer]

Really amazed that Dante is taking hold like it. Now I really don't feel bad spending cash to get a card put into the new console at my last gig. It is the first audio networking protocol to me that really uses robust networking hardware.

I wonder how they deal with pre-amps... I guess there are not any beyond gain on the pack.

Chris, I have not looked at the Dante stuff in about a year and a half. Have they integrated remote pre-amp control and all that fun stuff?

[Chris15]

I also see that BSS have added Dante options to the Soundweb London suite with the BLU-806.
Dante really is gaining critical mass now.

The preamp control is a tricky one for a simple reason... There are no standards for control data...
If the Open Control Architecture Alliance (OCA Alliance Home) or the like gain traction that could help things along, but for now it boils down to no one talking the same language as to why it doesn't work...

[museav]

I do not know all the details but I think part of the growth of Dante may be that Dante is apparently "AVB ready" and will be AVB compliant as the AVB standards are ratified.

[HSSBO94]

I wonder how they deal with pre-amps... I guess there are not any beyond gain on the pack.

The video on the Shure website at the link from the OP showed an ability to adjust gain at the receiver. So that would allow gain to be adjusted at the pack and at the receiver unless I misunderstand you.

Personally, I'd prefer gain were only adjustable at one of those two places, and then again at my board. Whenever I load in for our school's musical, one of the first things I have to do each year is go through our wireless packs and receivers and make sure nobody put any of the gains at ridiculous levels.



Does anybody have any experience with the "high density" RF mode? It looks really cool- if it performs as well as Shure says it does.

[Chris15]

Given that these aren't yet shipping and the High Density mode will only be available to the 1 channel receivers after a firmware upgrade, I'd suggest that real world usage of High Density is limited to a few test events...

To quote the "features" from the ULX-D single channel;

Proprietary Shure Gain Ranging optimizes the system’s dynamic range for any input source, eliminating the need for transmitter gain adjustments
Up to 60 dB of adjustable system gain is easily accessible from the receiver front panel

So basically what that says to me is that there's enough bit depth to be able to dispense with user adjustment of the transmitter preamp and just digitally scale it at the receiver end...

[Footer]

Given that these aren't yet shipping and the High Density mode will only be available to the 1 channel receivers after a firmware upgrade, I'd suggest that real world usage of High Density is limited to a few test events...

To quote the "features" from the ULX-D single channel;


So basically what that says to me is that there's enough bit depth to be able to dispense with user adjustment of the transmitter preamp and just digitally scale it at the receiver end...

Guess am I just waiting then for the ethercon jack on the 58, 57, 81, 91, 52, and 98. It is totally doable with power over ethernet.

[Chris15]

On the other hand fitting a Dante module into a 58 body could be a little more challenging...
Especially to bring out both the primary and secondary networks - a funky looking mic end to say the least...

What's more likely is that AES42 digital mics come into play and plug into a stage box or the like to go ethernet.
Basically your drop boxes start running back to patch with Cat5 not multicore...

[adonkle]

Thought these were really interesting to see at Infocomm.

Not sure what Shure has to pay to use Dante, but I feel like the price on these is higher than it really should be. Especially considering that there would be one point of failure for 4 wireless channels in one box...

[tk2k]

I can't really decide if I like this or not. On one hand it makes complete sense, balanced AES is expensive, requires propriety cabling, and only transports one audio signal. On that level Dante makes sense. The digital delay will become more of an issue as more things move in that direction. I know Dante is upwards compatibile with 10G base, however I am confident that Shure, and even yamaha CL, is not cat6a, 10g, compliant.

What I find very interesting is how Shure is very careful to separate their analogue and digital products. ULX-D is becoming a major player (first non top of the line to have native rackmount) however Axient is not 'digital' and obviously UHF-R is not. Wonder what the downside is? There's got to be one, or else this would have been Axient

[chausman]

What I find very interesting is how Shure is very careful to separate their analogue and digital products. ULX-D is becoming a major player (first non top of the line to have native rackmount) however Axient is not 'digital' and obviously UHF-R is not. Wonder what the downside is? There's got to be one, or else this would have been Axient

Marketshare? Didn't want their top-of-the-line (and probably highest profit margin) product to be something that is foreign, or unappealing?

[tk2k]

Marketshare? Didn't want their top-of-the-line (and probably highest profit margin) product to be something that is foreign, or unappealing?

I would think that's not the case. The receivers and transmitters have built-in wifi, which is scary enough. I think if they made a pitch for digital receivers, and did it well, there'd be little to no trouble with adoption. The fact that they're putting it in a rackmount unit means they're making a serious professional push with it. Maybe this is the start of two teirs of Shure wireless gear....

Yup and I'm right, the digital system adds 2.9ms of delay, whereas the analogue is basically zero since it's just basic compression.
ULX vs ULX-D

[Chris15]

To be honest, I think they are aiming the two product lines at totally different markets...

Axient remains their flagship product. It's targeted at live broadcast, production etc.
ULX-D I can see being more geared towards markets like corporate and education facilities.
Picture somewhere like a university campus in a busy city and you are always running up against interference "fun" especially with ever decreasing bandwidth.

The digital process is inherently latent. 2.9ms is utterly unaccpetable for any application using IEM. You only have 6ms before things become noticable and to take half of that before you get to the console is bad news.
But in a lecture theatre it doesn't matter.

Corporate will like the digital stuff because it can be encrypted and up until now, Lectrosonics was the only player offering encrypted transmission in the UHF TV bands to my knowledge.

Axient does NOT use WiFi. It uses a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol that has much better distance coverage than any WiFi.
And loss of the 2.4G link does not affect the audio.
So think of Axient as digitally controlled analogue audio. The ShowLink communications is only about frequency changes, gain changes and that sort of control. I don't know if the battery level info etc has now been migrated onto ShowLink or whether it remains as a sidetone transmission like UHF-R.

So the way I see it - Axient is just UHF-R with advanced frequency management and real time interference response and channel changes.
ULX-D is a whole new platform that's exciting but still not quite there for live production use...

[zmb]

Axient does NOT use WiFi. It uses a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol that has much better distance coverage than any WiFi.

Just out of curiosity, how does Axient achieve better range than WiFi if it is in the same 2.4 ghz band and it also shares the band with Bluetooth and other license-free systems?

[tk2k]

To be honest, I think they are aiming the two product lines at totally different markets...

Axient remains their flagship product. It's targeted at live broadcast, production etc.
ULX-D I can see being more geared towards markets like corporate and education facilities.
Picture somewhere like a university campus in a busy city and you are always running up against interference "fun" especially with ever decreasing bandwidth.

The digital process is inherently latent. 2.9ms is utterly unaccpetable for any application using IEM. You only have 6ms before things become noticable and to take half of that before you get to the console is bad news.
But in a lecture theatre it doesn't matter.

Corporate will like the digital stuff because it can be encrypted and up until now, Lectrosonics was the only player offering encrypted transmission in the UHF TV bands to my knowledge.

Axient does NOT use WiFi. It uses a proprietary 2.4GHz protocol that has much better distance coverage than any WiFi.
And loss of the 2.4G link does not affect the audio.
So think of Axient as digitally controlled analogue audio. The ShowLink communications is only about frequency changes, gain changes and that sort of control. I don't know if the battery level info etc has now been migrated onto ShowLink or whether it remains as a sidetone transmission like UHF-R.

So the way I see it - Axient is just UHF-R with advanced frequency management and real time interference response and channel changes.
ULX-D is a whole new platform that's exciting but still not quite there for live production use...

I agree with you on this, just a side note the 2.4ghz protocol IS TCP/IP and does use wifi to communicate with the devices. (much the same way Dante uses a proprietary protocol over tcp/ip). obviously the loss of 2.4ghz does not effect audio or encryption. I guess the 'keynote' corporate market does make some sense for them to push out into more. The problem is the advertising of the ULX-D looks identical to the SLX sort of advertising. But with that delay you couldn't even use it in a church situation (lots of them have IEMs now).

[Chris15]

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. It's not WiFi. It's physical layer is 802.15.4, the underlying protocol behind Zigbee and such M2M communication standards.

As to how you get better range - step one is to slow the data rate down. For telemetry like this, you only need a few kbits per second, you don't need the megabits per second of WiFi.
I won't get into the theory but yeah basically the slower you can run a wireless link, the more solid it will be and the greater the distance you can cover (because of that solid link)

Hence Shure spec 100m range in typical conditions and 500m line of sight outdoors (no doubt in the middle of nowhere). WiFi keeps improving, but to get that sort of range consisently would mean 802.11n and that'd KILL batteries in zero time flat.
(As an aside, one of the biggest issues with Voice over WiFi is battery life - more dedicated standards like DECT win hands down on battery life which matter for commercial and institutional applications of these sorts of technologies...)

[tk2k]

I'm sorry, but you are wrong. It's not WiFi. It's physical layer is 802.15.4, the underlying protocol behind Zigbee and such M2M communication

good to know