Most stable audio card for live performance

[feelthetrip]

Hi there,

I am thinking about upgrade my setup and I am not sure about which audio interface I should buy. I've been quite far from scence and now I need some guidelines...
These are my preferences:

- Money limit: 800€
- Firewire
- I don't need many I/O
- Midi is welcome but isn't mandatory
- Driver stability is key

How about the RME fireface 400?
Thanks everyone in advance

[Rabalder]

RME!

[2be]

RME.

[freshdrumma]

presonus firebox, much cheaper, no drivers, really sturdy, loud and stable

[ian_halsall]

soundblaster live

[hacktheplanet]

soundblaster live

[feelthetrip]

haha

[McQ714]

If you don't need much in the way of I/O, why not go with the RME Babyface?
By itself, it should be more than enough for live performance, and with the ADAT i/o, it would be more than enough for most project studio production work as well.

[feelthetrip]

If you don't need much in the way of I/O, why not go with the RME Babyface?
By itself, it should be more than enough for live performance, and with the ADAT i/o, it would be more than enough for most project studio production work as well.

The Babyface looks pretty cool, thanks!

[feelthetrip]

at this time Apogee Duet 2 is in my mind too...

[Khazul]

Personally, I dont quite trust RME quite enough to plug their interfaces into a powerful PA at a venue when there is a safer option. I think they are among the more relaible studio audio interfaces, Ill happily use them for recording a gig, happily use the UFX as a standalone preset mixer/router/format converter etc, but I dont get a warm fuzzy feeling about using it as an audio interface that is driving a high power PA - just takes one crash and some evidence of shoddy coding to make you nervous for a long time. I you are performing - then a warm fuzzy feeling about the hardware actually really helps - nothing worse than that 'please dont crash' thought nibbling away in the back of your mind

So for live use, NI audio interfaces get used - AK1, Audio 8 DJ, Audio 2 DJ, Audio 10 DJ. Im sure the Audio 6 will be solid as well. Never had it crash, glitch or otherwise go wierd in the 3+ years of using their hardware on either OSX (10.6/10.7) or windows (XP/7-64).

In studio - we have RME UFX and Babyface, used to have an FF400 as well. I think current RME drivers are probably perfectly OK now, just not enough time has passed for me since they were dodgy for me to trust them live yet - especially UFX and babyface which are still relatively new. In practice Live 8 is *far* more likely to crash horribly than the RME audio interface driver.

[mr.ergonomics]

Khazul:

- how would you rate crackle free latency/cpu from NI vs. RME drivers?
- the NI interface don't have a mixer like rme right? so there is no option for a loop back like with rme (aka record what you hear).

[Rabalder]

NI vs RME is a pretty clear choice if you ask me.

Ive had several crashes and lots of small annoying bugs with 2 different NI audio interfaces.
Not a single sign of trouble after I switched to RME Fireface UC over a year ago.

So yeah, its a pretty clear choice if you ask me.

[kirillov]

RME drivers are defenetly one of the most relyable out there!
Im using RME interface live since more then 10 years now.
first the multiface on my desktop pc, then with pcmcia on my laptop,
then the fireface UC. it took me a week to get the UC straight, but I
guess thats solved now.
never ever any crash. and also they can do what most others cant:
switching between latency settings without restarting the DAW for example.

so I didnt test many other interfaces, but I would be very suprised if the
NI ones would be better. RME has the longer experience in writing
drivers and they also have been pretty avangarde with that.

cheers!


thinkpad X220 i5/ Win 7 64/ live 8.2.8./ Maschine 1.7
RME Fireface UC/ Adam P11

[Khazul]

Khazul:

- how would you rate crackle free latency/cpu from NI vs. RME drivers?
- the NI interface don't have a mixer like rme right? so there is no option for a loop back like with rme (aka record what you hear).

My RME UFX and my co-producer babyface can goto lower latency cleanly - no doubt about that at all.

Some really quick tests in a project I happent o have loaded in Live on my MBP. I have NI audio 10 and RME UFX both connected to USB 2 ports.

Project is only using about 8% CPU at 512 samples / 44.1K

So some quick tests:
RME UFX can go down to the minimum selectable buffer size of 14 and is still clean. NI Audio 10 can go down to 24 samples cleanly, but was breaking up at 16 samples.
@96K sample rate, RME UFX was clean down to 64 samples, very occasional glitch at 48 and 32.
NI Audio 10 was good down to 128, but not 96.

At no point did CPU use exceed 40% in tests, so plenty of CPU headroom, so Im guessing I hit the driver limits on this machine. With this in mind, it should translate into being able to use RME interfaces at higher CPU loadong before breakup.

To me there is nothing at all suprising in this - and this is probably where the hardware USB protocol handling in RME audio interfaces comes into play. NI dont have that advanatge, in fact Im not sure anyone other than RME do their audio interface hardware the same way for USB and FW.

As this was done using an RME UFX via USB, I would also expect the RME babyface (I dont have it here) to manage slightly better due to fewer audio channels.

For Live use - I dont run them that low - usually 128 samples at 44.1K, but I fully understand the desire to get it as low as possible if playing live keyboards, v-drum etc (Im very intolerant of latency when playing as latency tends to mess up my groove slightly).


BTW - is this for studio use or live as well? If justbfor studio - then my reasons for using NI dont apply to you at all - get the babyface