Focusrite RedNet (AOIP Nervosa)

White girl in a Starbucks guide to making Rednet 3 work on Macbook Pro (via direct Ethernet connection, not via a hub)

1. Check out 3X0's guide here: https://superbestaudiofriends.org/i...te-rednet-aoip-nervosa.2994/page-4#post-86514

Additional comments:
- Any USB-C / Thunderbolt to ethernet adapter works. Let the Macbook and Rednet negotiate on the IP directly. No action needed.
- Open and "start" Dante Virtual Soundcard (DVS). Make sure an IP address is shown. If not, the whole thing won't work.
- Go into Rednet Control. You should see the Rednet in the sidebar. Pull Rednet onto the grid
- Go into Dante Control to map channels 1 and 2 of the Rednet to channels 1 and 2 of the DVS. It's like a spreadsheet, just click into the cells and a checkmark will appear twice.
- Set OSX Audio Output to Dante Virtual Soundcard
- Play music and if done right Rednet Control will light up Outputs 1 and 2

2. Buy the right cable (e.g. https://www.thomann.de/gb/avid_db25_xlr_mf_aes_ebu_4.htm). For the Rednet 3's Sub-D 25-pin output, make sure to get a cable that deliberately says "AES / EBU". Don't get the analog cable (meaning NOT this one for example https://www.thomann.de/gb/avid_db25_xlrm_digisnake_4.htm) like I did and wonder why things don't work.

Thanks to @famish99 for the support and spotting my cable mistake.

PS: This is a great way to compare different DACs. You can have Rednet output the same digital signal to, say, 2 different DACs that take AES/EBU. Just need to add channels 3 and 4 (or more) to DVS channels 1 and 2 in Dante Controller. The cable usually has at least 4 XLR outs.

 

And the gentleman wins the Rock of Gibraltar and 900 gallons of genuine Niagara Falls. (Looney Tunes reference)

This is precisely why Rednet is so useful in my acoustic lab. May it serve you well too.

For what it's worth, I've standardized on 88KHz for listening comparison but will drop to 44KHz for measurements, lowest common denominator and all.

 

If having to choose between using a 5m ethernet cable from laptop to rednet or a 5m XLR cable from rednet to DAC, any reason to choose one over the other?

 

I'd want to keep the "worse" option farther upstream from the dac. It might not matter, but either they will be the same or the longer ethernet cable will be better so might as well go with the longer ethernet cable. Probably cheaper that way too.

 

My experience with Dante has been that unlike AES, it doesn’t “care” whether the Ethernet cable is 7’ or 70’. That’s one of Dante’s big selling points for Pro use. I use 7’ Ethernet and 18” AES, but slotting in a long Ethernet doesn’t change a thing that I can discern.

 

Longer ethernet cable, for sure.

 

Step 0. Stop using Spotify as your playback software.

You have a Stellaris, Yggdrasil and now a RedNet...but you still use Spotify for your playback? That's a total headscratcher to me.

I'd get Jriver Media Center or Roon. Seriously you will be surprised just how much better those players are than any streaming service. I made a few tweaks to Jriver to optimize it for RedNet and it's definitely better than Qobuz which is better than Tidal.

Like Tidal sucks compared to the precision of Jriver ASIO RedNet; it's much more hazy, muted, bloomy. I have Spotify too, but it's no good outside of artist discovery as its leagues better than Tidal/Qobuz (and has a bigger library). I hear more grain and blur using Qobuz compared to Jriver.

Jriver, while it feels more heavyweight compared to other players I have (foobar2k, Winyl), kicks ass in SQ and gives you plenty of options to fine tune it.

 

No, the reason I said your dummies guide thread turned into a shitshow is because folks were making things waaaaaay too complicated. If I take your posts outta that thread and read all the responses I was like "f**k this shit." RedNet seemed much simpler in comparison, and it probably is.

I also had some concerns with Raspberry Pi that dissuaded me from further pursuing the Pi2AES route. No disrespect to Michael Kelly, looks like he has a fantastic product, but I'm extremely happy with RedNet.

 

I've been banned for about a month and trying to catch up on some posts folks replied to. I wanted reply to saint.panda as he was on my mind after I wrote up a a Unison impressions post. Then I saw your post and I wanted to clarify why I said it was a shitshow.

 

I'm also having difficulty replying or editing due to pages loading extremely slow and sometimes trying to redirect me to pornhub and get 404. I get this is a prank by the admins as its happened to a few other user before they got banned.