Ramses, I think that OP speaks about stage wireless mics. No WiFi. They may use analog or digital transfer. And the receivers could be somewhere at backstage or close to stage. Audio interface as well. And then raw audio signal has to be transferred to "controll room" for processing and mixing....

It seems to me, the question was about how to accoplish transfer of 50+ channels from "near by stage" to distant "controll room" the best way.

The transfer from mic to receiver is another task not RME related... It is task for Sennheiser and others. Here one should be aware that governments remove bite by bite frequencies available.... In favour of internet, digital radio and TV... So it is crucial to choose  frequency range that will be usable for at least 10-15 years as transfer for one mic may cost 1000 EUR and more... So, 50 wireless mic transfers would cost obout 50 000 EUR minimum, probably the double for higher grade equipment and whole solution including additional antenas and so....

Thank you both. Good feedback. I’m currently looking for a consultant or advisor. I have more confidence in each actors’ head mic and receiver than I do in the best way to get 50 channels from the stage to the control room while being able to set compression and expander to each mic channel before I start routing. I don’t know if this is a job for 2 M32AD’s or 5 12MicD’s. But with headset mics, levels are tricky, so having the ability to tune compression and even a limiter on each mic channel will be important.

Also, what’s easier to use these days. Madi or Dante for connecting the stage to the control room?

Jeffrey P

@waedi: as nice as autoset is ... if somebody creates a loud plop and the guy in the machine room does not recognize it, then this one channel will stay at a possibly very low level for the whole recording. Not so nice. AUTOSET is well suited to find initial good gain settings, but after that better disable it.

Hi Jeffry,

Transport of more than 50 channels is absolutely no problem, no matter whether you use
- a USB- or PCIe-based solution "between" PC and recording interface or
- a MADI-, AVB- or Dante-based solution between recording interface in the control room and the devices close to the stage.

For my personal taste, MADI has still several advantages over AVB and Dante.
- dedicated cabling for connecting devices (preamps, AD/DA converter, …)
- when using optical fiber cables, then you have automatically galvanic isolation between devices
- optical cables are based on standard OM3 (or OM4) multimode fiber cables, easy to purchase
- multiple devices can be chained on the MADI bus in the old days up to, e.g., 8 Octamic XTC with up to 64 channels
- Dante devices are pricier, because of royalties for the Dante chip.

You can either use patch cable which are in shops usually available up to 30, sometimes even 50m. The better alternative is to provide (or re-use, if already present) structured in-house cabling based on either OM3 or OM4 multimode cabling.
The maximum cable length between the devices in such a chain is 2 km which should allow for enough flexibility.

What's possible by chaining devices on one MADI bus:

PC
|
| USB3
|
UFX III----2 km---12Mic#1---2 km---12Mic#2---2 km---12Mic#3---2 km---12Mic#4---2 km----12Mic#5---2km---+
|                                                                                                                                                                        |
+-------------------------------------------OM3 or OM4 multimode fiber cable------------------------------------------------+

If you take a HDSPe MADI FX card, it has 3 MADI busses

PC---USB---ARC USB (useful control for TotalMix FX mixer)
|
| PCIe
|
HDSPe MADI FX
   + AES------------ADI-2 Pro FS R BE-----1/2 active monitors           control room
                                                    \------3/4 headphones
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
   +--MADI Bus #1------up to 5x 12Mic chained as above----+        stage
        |                                                                                   |
       +------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +--MADI Bus #2------up to 5x 12Mic chained as above----+
        |                                                                                   |
       +------------------------------------------------------------------+
   +--MADI Bus #3------up to 5x 12Mic chained as above----+
       |                                                                                   |
       +------------------------------------------------------------------+

Your decision whether you want to connect / chain the devices using patch cables which are usually available in shops up to 50 m length. Or whether you would like to provide structured in-house cabling and then use shorter patch panels to connect/chain the devices.

It is even possible to get RME devices on special order to become equipped with single mode (laser based) optics. Then the cabling can even be based on single mode cable and distances between devices may be up to 10 km (not 2 km). But this I wouldn't propose in your case, where already 2 km will be more than ever needed.

When using structured in-house cabling you need to ensure not to mix cabling standard. Use either OM3 or OM4 but not a mix of it because this would increase dampening.

Now to the other network-based solutions AVB and Dante.

You can do it if there is a certain need, but you should consider / take care of the following points:

- AVB needs special switches which are compliant to AVB standards, this is crucial for the clock distribution and other things
- Even the simplest AVB switch costs up to €800 and then you have nothing special
- Dante does not need AVB switches, but I am pretty sure, that you should plan your VLANs wisely
- I would use a dedicated VLAN for audio, and you should take care to configure QoS properly for Dante, so that audio traffic will get preference before other traffic
- depending on your switch, it might be that the routing of audio packets might increase latency
- a good managed network switch is a cost factor and you need to be able to operate / configure it
- if you think about reusing existing network equipment, then you should also think of, who manages the switches.
Sorry, our IT didn't know about your show, we needed to reload the switches for an SW upgrade … would not be good.
So .. If you have such a "converged network" (Data, Multimedia, Backup traffic, Internet Traffic, audio traffic), things can become complicated in terms of design and operation of the network.

Another point is the sample rate … With MADI the connected devices can follow the clock of the clock master.
This is nice and easy for operation in cases where the sample rate could sometimes change.
Maybe because you are playing Pause Music with another sample rate.

In network setups this is different. In AVB and I also think in Dante networks, it needs reconfiguration of all devices to change the sample rate of audio streams. At AVB, I know/heard, that all audio streams between the devices have to be reconfigured on each device.

So also the setup and handling of a MADI-based solution could have advantages.

If you do not need more then 50 channels you can also think about a USB3 based MADI solution, e.g., based on UFX III.
This recording interface supports DURec, Direct USB recording.
Just in case your DAW freaks out, you have by DURec a backup recording on USB stick.
This could also be very practical for safety reasons if your recording is important (most likely all are).

EDIT1: but before going into details please provide information about what devices (mics or headsets) you actially want to connect. For me it is still not clear whether you need a preamp like the 12Mic or an AD converter like the M-32 Pro Mk II or whether your have a wireless solution that needs something like a Dante network.

EDIT2: regarding clock distribution in networks, see this thread:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=36603
If you have to deal with different sample rates then it looks as if a MADI based solution is preferrable from operational perspective / ease of use.