Should I ditch my Presonus Fire Studio for an RME?

[darkcatt]

I have had nothing but issues with my Presonus Fire Studio. At this point I am considering getting a new sound card.

Is the RME worth the money? are the drivers stable? Should I just stay the course with my 2 Presonus Fire studios?

[McQ714]

they are well worth the money.
drivers are very stable.
if you want to continue having issues and become more and more frustrated, then yes, stick with the Fire Studios.

[darkcatt]

Is there another card I should consider in place of the RME?

[analogcabin]

Echo Audiofire

[mr.ergonomics]

I'm a bit biased since really like RMEs attitude as a company. But if one can afford it, my choice definitely would be RME.

[nuxnamon]

i was in a similar situation but had an m-audio fw1814.. went and got a RME FF800 and yes it was totally worth it.. no more hassles, better drivers, better mic pres, better AD/DA.. i don't know how much more is the ufx but you might be able to find a solid but used FF800 on craigslist or something..

[2be]

If I had the money, I would go RME for sure. As I'm on a budget, Echo is my best choice.

[Khazul]

Had an RME FF400 for a while - very good at low latency, audio quality is very good if perhaps a bit clinical (not a bad thing, just an observation), and that includes the mic pres.

On drivers, I have had them crash very occasionally on windows XP and crash loudly, but its been fine on windows 7/64. My co-producer uses the FF400 pon a mac book pro and its been completely reliable with that and ableton live.

I quite like their total mix - very handy for monitor mixes etc when recording.

Anyway - I took the plunge today and ordered the RME Fireface UFX which hopefully should be here next week some time and so let me sell of a bunch of TC hardware fx boxes which should mostly pay for it

If you are looking at RME - then you do pay a premium, but I think you get what you pay for and I think as a combination of both good mic and line audio quality and very well designed hardware assisted computer interfaces for both USB and firewire, then I personally rate them among the best you can buy at a given price point.

i don't know how much more is the ufx but you might be able to find a solid but used FF800 on craigslist or something..

Alot more - over here 950-1K UKP for FF800 and around 1600 for the UFX (though DV in london gave me a pretty good deal on it and some other stuff). Audio quality is supposed to be a tiny bit better than the FF400/800, but marginally. You are paying alot extra for the builtin fx which has its own additional DSP. If you dont need that, then stick with FF800/400 or even the UC which is basically a modernised FF400 with USB. For me - it was a chance to replace a load of TC hardware, so worth getting the UFX, otherwise I would have just one of the others.

Other much alternative is the babyface (same audio and USB quality I beleive as the other fireface units) - I personally dont like its format (prefer rack gear), but it might make a good companion for an MBP, and it include fx if you need hardware processing (dynamics, eq, delay, reverb etc) to provide a good monitor mix for vocalists and other recording.

Anyway - if you are mixing in live (even without warping) with ableton fx at 44.1K, TBH you probaly wont tell the difference between RME and anything else - but it can be still worth it for the stable very low latency operation.

[gosinisha]

fireface uc working here like perfection

[Rationalizer]

I had the same problems with Edirol Fa-66 so I decided to bite the bullet and get myself Fireface 400 last summer. It's been rock solid and has never crashed. So the question is: how much do you value stability?

[darkcatt]

So I got the Fire Face 8 and OMG does it sound amazing. I am so glad i got it and the drivers are ROCK hard stable!

[Tarekith]

Don't forget to check out the Digicheck app for the Fireface too, very useful tool they give you for free.