Affected Products

Problem | Symptoms

In Q-SYS systems, the MAC address of the LAN B/AUX A/AUX B port appears as the PTP Grandmaster on LAN A. This may raise concerns during system setup, especially when LAN A is intended to be the primary interface for clock synchronization.

Causes | Verification

You're seeing the MAC address of LAN B—even though it's not physically connected—because Q-SYS uses a single unique identifier (the PTP Clock GUID) to represent the Core in the PTP domain. This GUID is often derived from the first OS-enumerated NIC, which can be LAN B depending on the Core model (e.g., on a Core 110f, LAN B is typically enumerated first).

So, even if LAN B isn’t connected, its MAC address may still be used as the Clock GUID and shown as the clock leader. This is expected behavior and doesn't indicate an issue—PTP only needs a unique identifier, and it doesn't depend on which NIC is active or cabled.

Additionally, when the Q-SYS Core is the clock master, we enhance the display with a "pretty" Core name. However, in cases like Software Dante configurations, where clocking info comes via Dante rather than Q-SYS PTP, that enhancement is lost, and only the raw GUID (MAC-like string) is shown.