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Studio Over Internet?


GrooveChild

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Hi All,

I have two DAW's Logic Pro X and Cubase 8.5 Pro as i work mainly with clients that prefer to use Cubase as it has VST Connect feature which enables me to produce with other users practally anywhere around the world with an internet connection.

My question is this: Does Logic X have a similar feature and how do i access it?

 

Thanks in advance.  

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I can do this in Logic by using the LoopBack feature of my Focusrite SaffirePro14 soundcard.  I simply assign which inputs upon which the 'other' sound comes from, and I can then set the channel strip Input to those, and voila.  

 

So, I can route audio played on my Mac outside of Logic (YouTube, Absynth application if used instead of as a plug-in, iTuenes, Spotify, alternate DAW etc), to those specific inputs on my soundcard and thus they appear on an audio track within Logic.

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You can manually input a host/port in the AUNetReceive plugin, so all it would take is for the AUNetSend end to do a port forward on their NAT router.

 

I've used these plugins with great success on LAN but I wonder how they would work over the internet. There's some speculation out there but it doesn't seem that anyone's tried it. Anyone want to set up an experiment so we can post some solid "scientific" results?

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David mentions that you need to be on the same Bonjour network - Now, as far as i'm aware Bonjour is local networking only.

 

So, to do as you've suggested would require some kind of VPN to ensure you're on the same 'local' network at the very least, AUNetReceive/Send certainly won't be optimised for that kind of scenario either, would it?! 

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You only need to be on the same Bonjour network (AKA broadcast domain) for the automatic service discovery to work. The actual audio is carried over a TCP stream and "will" work fine over the internet as-is.

 

As for being workable, I'm sure it's quite horrible at all but the lowest bitrates. But there is only one way to find out!

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I'll leave an AUNetSend plugin running for the next few hours at fastfourier.duckdns.org port 52800. You can add it manually from the AUNetReceive interface by clicking the plus sign underneath the directory. "Display Name" doesn't matter. 

 

Stream format is 16bit stereo PCM. Steely Dan on loop. Let's see what happens!

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Toronto here (but ex-UKer). Assuming the send/receive plugins have fixed length buffers and the stream doesn't glitch at all, you could conceivably measure the round-trip delay and introduce it into Logic with the Voxengo Latency Delay plugin.

 

I'll leave the stream up until the end of the day and see if we get any reports from further flung locales....

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AuNetSend is very robust.

I've used this many times to host remote mixing sessions with uncompressed audio.

May I enquire how you set it up?

 

Specifically:

 

1. Must the remote client use a DAW with AuNetReceive activated?

Is there an easy way for non-techies to set it up without a DAW?

 

2. How do you set up two-way talkback?

 

Thank you

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It's very simple.

 

--Sending--

You put the AuNetSend on the output channel/strip that you want to broadcast (As a plugin), set the port etc.  Or you can just run it within AU Lab of course, if you don't want to run it through a DAW.

 

Then in your router/firewall port forward the port number to the internal IP of your machine that is broadcasting (i.e. 192.168.0.5***), that way any remote listeners will be routed through your router/firewall to the plugin correctly.

 

***(In OSX/MacOS) - Settings > Network - then highlight the interface you're using currently (wifi/ethernet etc.) and the IP your machine is using will be displayed on there.

 

You then provide the remote listener your external facing ip address (whatismyip.com if you're not sure), semicolon, then the port you used.  Note: This IP is not the one that your computer uses on the internal network, the external IP is global for your internet connection, and what websites etc. see.

 

Example:-

IP = 123.456.789.10  &  Port = 5000

You provide the following:-  123.456.789.10:5000

 

--Receive--

On the other side of things, AuNetReceive runs as a software instrument (Not audio track) - simply put add the plugin into Logic (Or AU lab if you're using that) enter the details provided, and you will connect.

 

Note: You only need to port forward when you're transmitting, as you are giving the listening an IP and Port number, your router is responsible for sending that specific port to the correct IP address in your local network.

 

Also, make sure you don't route in a way that may force a feedback loop (i.e. you don't want to transmit the audio stream coming in directly back to your colleagues, and it back to you again).

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  • 3 years later...

It really does? It would be super cool if one or both of you could provide some details, if possible?

e.g. procedure, setup, exact OS versions of Send and Receive, respectively?

 

My attempt was to connect two Macs on an internal network to hopefully stream extra channels over ethernet.

The AUNetSend is on a 10.11.6 machine (soon to be updated to 10.13)

I only managed to make AUNetReceive work on a Hackintosh running 10.11.6 and a Mac Mini server running 10.10.

The 10.12.6 Macs I actually want to make work do see the AUNetSend host, they can connect, there's the green dot, but then nothing happens, no signal.

A sole 10.13 client doesn’t even get to see the AUNetSend instance on the network.

So could it be that it started to work again at some point, but then, which one? And/or it's also dependent on the OS of the sender?

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I'm using a MBP mid 2015 and a 3900X based hackintosh. Both on 10.14.6 with Logic 10.5.0. The plugin version is 1.6.0 on both.

 

Procedure:

 

Open empty project on MBP. Create a software instrument channel with Test Oscillator instrument. Insert AUNetSend plugin using all default settings. Click "Connect" in plugin.

Open empty project on hackintosh. Create a software instrument channel with AUNetReceive generator. Open plugin interface, click source in the list, click "Connect".

 

aunetsend/receive has two underlying systems: bonjour/mDNS for service discovery, and a plain old TCP socket to actually transport the audio. It sounds like you are having problems with both. I'm assuming here that both machines are on the same subnet.

 

On the bonjour side, I would be inclined to just bypass it completely and manually input IPs into the aunetreceive plugin (or at the least a "computername.local" hostname). I have had issues in the past when a computer has multiple IP addresses over different networks. Sometimes the wrong IP gets advertised for a service. You can check this with the "Discovery" app (formerly "bonjour browser").

 

On the TCP side, there are a few things I can think of:

1. A firewall is running on the listening (aunetsend) machine

2. Something is preventing aunetreceive from connecting (application firewall? Little snitch or similar?)

3. There is a protocol version incompatibility between aunetsend and aunetreceive (looking at the "handshake" in wireshark, mine says 0.95)

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OK, first of all major or even augmented thanks for your quick and detailed reply, I will search into this in various configurations!

The coreaudio plugin says 1.14 on Sierra

I just hope one doesn't have to necessarily go into Mojave or above, because that would bring a lot of incompatibilities.

Also the Mac Pro(s) would need a new graphics card for MetaI AFAIK.

 

I just tried again at home, where there is a Mac Pro with either 10.8.5 (yes, really) or 10.11.6

and a MacBook Pro with 10.12.6, with connection over Wi-Fi

This time I tried to connect the Mountain Lion OS (because already open) with the Sierra MBP.

• 10.8.5 with Logic 9.1.8 recognizes and gets the audio from 10.12 at first try, no problems

• The other way round, 10.12.6 with Logic 10.3.3: no show, although seeing the AUNetSend and accepting connection

 

I also checked with the Discovery.app

IP and port shown correctly. Hands Off rules are de-activated, although Logic was not protected/locked in any way…

Could be a Sierra thing.

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No worries!

When aunetreceive connects, aunetsend returns a version number. This is a different version number from what you see in the plugin manager in Logic - I'm guessing this is the protocol version rather than the plugin version.

 

I'm guessing that aunetreceive will only accept audio aunetsend if its protocol version is equal or greater.

 

If you want to look into this further, you can download Wireshark and use tcp.port==52800 as a display filter. The protocol version is the very first piece of data sent once aunetreceive connects.

 

Unfortunately the "listening/connected" status only shows that a TCP connection has been established. It doesn't say anything about the state of the link between the two machines.

 

I don't know if there's any chance of updating the coreaudio component (/System/Library/Components) on the old machine? If you really don't want to reinstall, you could try copying that over from the new machine to the old one. WARNING. This is a silly hack and may well break the OS (at least audio-wise) so make a backup first!

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Thank you again; I will look into all of this as soon I get spare (night-)time at the studio.

This equal or greater protocol version sounds great to me, it's just that 10.12.6 couldn't see 10.12.6 in another test (10.11 again, could), so maybe it has to be just higher or it's a Sierra thing unto itself [even additionally]!?

I'll also have to update some computer to 10.13 so we have two of them to pair…

This will take 1-2 days to check out, also including experiments with coreaudio.component (backing up before obviously)

But there seems to be hope, so thanks alone for that for now!

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A little intermediate follow-up, but not fully conclusive: I now configured a High Sierra machine as the AUSend, and again, two El Capitan machines (one a Hackintosh) connected with no problems, and the Sierra machine remained apathetic (sees, selects, connects OK, and then no sound)

Next step is connecting two High Sierras, as soon as a second one is ready

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Thanks again for the extra pointers, very very useful

Interestingly, when I check nc localhost, it always says ausend 0.95, on 10.11, 10.12 and 10.13 machines alike, so the protocol apparently stays the same.

Now, I actually could make it work in a 10.13 to 10.13 configuration!

Ish...

(I have to make an additional confession here, i. e. what I ultimately try to achieve is a stream into ProTools and for this the AUNet combo has to be made available to something like BlueCat Patchwork.)

So I copied the core audio.component from System/Library/Components into Library/Audio/Components, which seems to work, basically.

However, when setting up the AUSend that way, it first stays at Listening. Then, when typing the nc localhost 52800 command it switches to Connecting but stays there.

 

But, if one instantiates AUSend in something like Hosting AU, which I guess works with the original core audio.component location, it goes straight to Connected and then does deliver to AUNetReceive. Unfortunately with occasional Underflow messages, and drop-outs, more so when AUNetReceive is in BlueCat Patchwork instead of Hosting AU, so that copied coreaudio.component (or the host application) apparently is a bit dodgy, at least in 10.13

It will remain to be seen how this performs when I'll try to set up a couple of Logic tracks to send, as soon as that machine is up and running with 10.13 (with a couple of hundred plugins updated and validated etc.)

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