KVR Audio

MFXxx · Post by **MFXxx** » Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:21 pm

rod_zero wrote:If you want stability and the best performance out of your system get an RME; yeah they are expensive but totally wirth it, specially if you are on windows.

In mac many brands get good latency, specially the ones using thunderbolt.

Got to echo this. RME always supporting updated O/S's etc. Solid as a rock units. Im using an RME FF800 bought 2nd hand from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_John ... yboardist) in 2009, so not sure how long he'd had it but if its was good enough for him then, the newer models have got to be superb. Id say if you can get a good 2nd hand fireface and you have firewire TI chipset (pcie cards are only about £30 which I recently purchased as my Mobo with on-board Firewire recently died).
The RME's still going strong and well the credentials speak for themselves, so cant be overly wrong!

filter303 · Post by **filter303** » Tue Dec 05, 2017 11:52 pm

Another +1 for RME. They simply have the best reputation (+history to show it) when it comes to drivers. If you get one of their interfaces you can be sure that it’s driver support will last for a very long time. Their products wont become doorstoppers every time a new OS comes out. Products from winxp times are still supported and updated (they use custom chips for firmware that can be updated very easily). Their totalmix software is also very useful, altought it takes some time to learn how to use it. I have a kind of love/hate relationship with the mixer

Some RME models have dsp fx so you can have realtime compression, eq, delay and reverb for headphone monitoring when recording vocals etc. RME interfaces also have very low latencies. Drivers of some models can offer as low as 32 samples latency, which is very low.

If it comes to that, their interfaces are also very easy to resell. I always see them snatched up quickly when the used ones come up for sale at my country.

I have UR22 mk1 on my another pc and it’s inputs are very noisy. The driver has been good so far but it doesn’t offer as low latencies as my RME UCX. I also don’t expect that it will be supported as long as the RME, who have won me as their permanent customer because of their excellent products and services. My experience with their customer support is also positive.

ataraxia89 · Post by **ataraxia89** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 1:26 pm

Thanks for the advice everyone, looks like the answer is RME, but holy **** it's more expensive than I thought, cheapest used UCX I can find is 5 x the cost of my production PC

Looks like I'm stuck with the ProFire for the time being

Zexila · Post by **Zexila** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 2:43 pm

Saffire Pro 24 is absolute bang for the buck, it's the thing Focusrite really did good.

BertKoor · Post by **BertKoor** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 3:39 pm

ataraxia89 wrote:Thanks for the advice everyone, looks like the answer is RME, but holy **** it's more expensive than I thought, cheapest used UCX I can find is 5 x the cost of my production PC

In that case it's totally possible that your PC just cannot deliver the power needed to run your project. AFAIK there is no conclusion yet to draw on what exactly in your system is the limiting factor. It could be that your virus scanner is eating up all the CPU cycles and blocking all disk IO. Have you recently done the DPC Latency check?

ataraxia89 · Post by **ataraxia89** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 4:12 pm

BertKoor wrote:
ataraxia89 wrote:Thanks for the advice everyone, looks like the answer is RME, but holy **** it's more expensive than I thought, cheapest used UCX I can find is 5 x the cost of my production PC
In that case it's totally possible that your PC just cannot deliver the power needed to run your project. AFAIK there is no conclusion yet to draw on what exactly in your system is the limiting factor. It could be that your virus scanner is eating up all the CPU cycles and blocking all disk IO. Have you recently done the DPC Latency check?

I hope it's not the PC, I am running dual quad-core Xeons at 3Ghz each, alongside 32GB of RAM on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit. It's a former company server.

Edit: Just done a DPC Latency check whilst running Cubase (with my biggest project open), Adobe Premiere Pro CC (the hungriest application I have, whilst loading 37 4K videos into memory), a media server and a full system scan with Norton antivirus and the highest reading I got was 1317ms, it averages around 200-300ms on normal running

rod_zero · Post by **rod_zero** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:19 pm

There is a monitoring software named Latencymon which will test the system and can give you a diagnostic.

BTW RME has PCIe cards which are much cheaper as well as the babyface model which is the entry level USB card,l maybe you could look for Babyface generation 1 models second hand.

Scotty · Post by **Scotty** » Wed Dec 06, 2017 5:45 pm

Yes looked for a used RME Raydat - I got both of mine for $450 each. Pair that up with an adat convertor and you'll have a nice system for under $1000.00

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 8:47 am

Yeah, RME. They excel with their drivers and overall robustness. Speaking from long experience with interfaces

, running a RME HDSPe AIO in my main workstation. It's "fire and forget" awesome, doesn't crap out even under ridiculous CPU loads, and provides you with so short buffers you wouldn't have thought of routinely using before.

phreaque · Post by **phreaque** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 11:04 am

I got RME Babyface the older one, it is better than Steinberg's UR824 to be honest..

Wondering what's the RME asnwer to Presonus Quantum 2 though...

ataraxia89 · Post by **ataraxia89** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 11:32 am

Guenon wrote:Yeah, RME. They excel with their drivers and overall robustness. Speaking from long experience with interfaces , running a RME HDSPe AIO in my main workstation. It's "fire and forget" awesome, doesn't crap out even under ridiculous CPU loads, and provides you with so short buffers you wouldn't have thought of routinely using before.

May be a dumb question, but it doesn't seem immediately obvious from RME's site, what are the physical outputs of this? I need 2 x 1/4" TRS outputs and preferably something to cater for headphones.

Edit: cancel that, I presume this (HDSPe breakout cable) is what I need? I can deal with XLR.

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 3:26 pm

Ah, yes, you found the breakout cables already. It can be a bit vague because of the different options

, but yep, that's the balanced XLR one, with other stuff like the headphone jack. The card comes stock with an unbalanced one, RCA connectors for ins/outs, with also a headphone jack provided. Then there are also expansion boards that go inside your workstation chassis, in case you need more ins or outs at some point. There's an analog input and output model, and if I recall correctly, also different digital connector models [not using an expansion like that myself, might want to make sure if you think there's any need for one later]. They don't add more complexity to the setup in the bus connectivity sense (they just take up a physical card slot but communicate with the main AIO interface with a cable).

Boards like this:

https://www.thomann.de/gb/rme_ai4s192_a ... _board.htm
https://www.thomann.de/gb/rme_ao4s192_aio.htm

Instead of going straight to the interface with headphone/monitor leads, though, I always recommend using a monitoring solution like for example the Monitor Station https://www.thomann.de/gb/presonus_moni ... ion_v2.htm ... This way you'll have external headphone amps for (multiple) cans, and actual passive volume attenuators for your monitor speakers instead of relying on software volume control. A monitor controller plus an RME interface might be a bit too hardcore in one go, cost-wise, but I'm mentioning this if you want an ideal setup for the long run

yellowmix · Post by **yellowmix** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 4:13 pm

ataraxia89 wrote:it averages around 200-300ms on normal running

That's kind of high, to be honest. Try shooting for 150, it's probably achievable with little effort. I have mine at 40ms idling.

You need to look at startup items, running services you don't really need. Crap like Java, Adobe, Chrome updater (better to ditch them all anyway). And if you ditch Norton it'll probably help a lot. Also check your power profile settings, make sure it's running at max when you're in your DAW.

Other sources are a little more difficult to address. Stuff like WiFi drivers eating cycles. I'm running a 10m ethernet cable to my workstation to address that. Firewire and video card drivers can also be bad citizens.

V0RT3X · Post by **V0RT3X** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 4:19 pm

If you’re on a mac, this is a good one.

http://www.apogeedigital.com/products/ensemble

Guenon · Post by **Guenon** » Thu Dec 07, 2017 4:44 pm

About the DPC latency thing, that does sound quite high for an audio/media workstation, and we are talking about microseconds in this case, not milliseconds

For comparison, this workstation:

What is the best (fastest, low latency) audio interface?