5. Software User Guide
This must be done every time you start, or restart, the computer. Go to Virus & Threat protection and under Virus & Threat protection settings click Manage settings and turn off Real-time protection. Then go to Firewall & network protection and make sure that everything is turned off. This is to ensure that nothing in the computer is blocking the data being transmitted over the network.
The toolbar shortcut to firewall and anti-virus settings.
GIF showing how to check that the firewall and anti-virus is off.
The computer should never be connected to the Internet without consulting certified personnel first. Additional software shall be installed by certified personnel only.
As a general guideline audio sampling rate should normally be 48k and sample buffer size 32 or 64 in Hammerfall DSP. If the connection suffers from clicking in audio and drops, adjusting the buffer size to larger values might improve performance. Mind that this increases latency. Latency tolerance may differ between different musical genres. Ambient music with slow movement is generally not as vulnerable to latency as rhythmic music.
When connecting the systems through LoLa using video and audio, both computers need to be tuned to the network. Firstly this means experimenting with different settings on the video and audio buffer in the LoLa interface. Audio and video buffers must be tuned every time the NMP kits are connected to a network. To tune you make a connection between the NMP kits and monitor the network activity. Then try different settings on the buffers to see how low you can go without getting a significant amount of package and audio drops.
Notice how video is half of audio buffer tuning.
LoLa's Network Monitoring
In the network monitor Audio Dropped packets and Audio Realigned buffers should be as low as possible. Low values should also be prioritized when it comes to the Remote Buffers Tuning
If adjusting the buffers does not improve the quality of the connection, try different settings in the LoLa options window (ctrl + O). Video takes up a lot of bandwidth and is often the reason why audio is clicking. By trying different video settings like frame rate and compression quality and camera settings (different sizes of BW or RGB).
LoLa video settings.
The second thing to adjust is the period buffer size. This is done in Hammerfall DSP.
Hammerfall DSP settings.
Try different values and monitor the network data while listening to a test signal or some streamed audio from the connection point. Restart LoLa every time buffer size has been changed.
Always reset the LoLa settings back to default if they have been modified during the session.
Totalmix controls the routing of audio on the RME interface and the ADAT converter connected to it. In general it is not necessary to do any adjustments in Totalmix when using the NMP-kits. The task carried out in Totalmix is routing incoming network audio to the hardware outputs 1-2 and 3-4 on the ADAT converter, as well as fetching the audio sent from AUX 1-2.
Image of TotalMix window.