User Manual

User's Guide Digiface Dante © RME
67
The Digiface Dante also supports USB 2, where the number of record and playback channels
are halfed due to the limited bandwidth (up to 48 kHz: 64 channels, up to 96 kHz: 32 channels,
up to 192 kHz: 16 channels). The number of channels accessible via TotalMix FX, the network
ins and outs and MADI I/O, stays identical to USB 3 operation. Good performance and click-free
operation even at low buffer sizes are indeed possible on current computers. However, using
older computers a simple stereo playback might cause a CPU load of more than 30%.
Best USB 2 performance is achieved by connecting the Digiface Dante to its own bus, which
should be no big problem as most USB 2.0 interfaces are a double bus design. A check in the
Device Manager can be done as follows:
Connect the Digiface Dante to a USB 2 port
¾ Start the Device Manager, View set to Devices by Connection
¾ Select ACPI x86-based PC, Microsoft ACPI-Compliant System, expand PCI Bus
This branch normally includes two entries of a USB2 Enhanced Host Controller. A USB Root
Hub can be seen, which then connects all USB devices, including the Digiface Dante. By re-
connecting to a different port this view shows at which of the two controllers the Digiface Dante
is connected. With multiple devices it can be checked if they are connected to the same control-
ler.
Furthermore this information can be used to operate an external USB drive without disturbing
the Digiface Dante, by simply connecting the drive to the other controller.
It can also be used to check where and in what combination USB 3 is used. In fact many mod-
ern motherboards have an additional chip to the mostly found Intel chipset, adding further USB
3 ports. But documentation is often unclear about which port/socket is connected to which chip.
By connecting the Digiface Dante and using the procedure above one can easily see the cur-
rent connection, ensuring the Digiface Dante is really connected to the Intel chipset and not to
some other flaky one.
Especially with notebooks it can happen that all internal devices and all the sockets/ports are
connected to the same controller, with the second controller not used at all. In that case all de-
vices have to use the same bus and will interfere with each other.
A computer blocked for a short time – no matter if ASIO or WDM – will lose one or more data
packets. Such problems can only be solved by increasing the buffer size (latency).