more on RME
..
RME is good. I have the Hammerfall for several years now. DigiCHECK is a must. But the thing I hate about RME is that they don't have any WDM drivers. So QuickTime 7 or iTunes 6 is not possible on a PC. That's lame!
thanks a lot.
can you give me the email address of someone (a tech)
at RME who I can email directly? Preferably someone who answers quickly and who you trust. Maybe a designer?
I want to get the MULTIFACE vs. FIREFACE 800 speed question definitively answered.
I still can't get on that rme group forum.
How can I get on there with a mac? I tried newsfire, and safari/firebird but nothing works.
can you give me the email address of someone (a tech)
at RME who I can email directly? Preferably someone who answers quickly and who you trust. Maybe a designer?
I want to get the MULTIFACE vs. FIREFACE 800 speed question definitively answered.
I still can't get on that rme group forum.
How can I get on there with a mac? I tried newsfire, and safari/firebird but nothing works.
One thing to take note of, is CPU use and latency link.
To get down to sub 5ms or so you'll need a CPU that can handle all your
stuff at 96kHz with a low sample buffer.
I get 13ms (in+out thru loopback) with 256 samples at 48kHz with my
multiface on PCI. Just got a new computer so going to give 96kHz a crack.
-Ben
To get down to sub 5ms or so you'll need a CPU that can handle all your
stuff at 96kHz with a low sample buffer.
I get 13ms (in+out thru loopback) with 256 samples at 48kHz with my
multiface on PCI. Just got a new computer so going to give 96kHz a crack.
-Ben
-
muthafunka
- Posts: 2251
- Joined: Fri Jan 10, 2003 5:28 pm
- Location: Tokyo
Yes you can do it if you get your ISP's news server address, for various reasons mine doesn't work but as I said Mozilla (on Mac anyway, it's open in front of me now) will allow you to subscribe with a single click on that link and I thought I remembered Firefox doing so too when I had a PC. OddMarkH wrote:It's a Newsgroup server, not a forum, so you your ISP should give you a News Server address to use. It's way old school.taikowaza wrote:PS. I still can't access the RME forum at
news://news.x-networks.de/rme-audio.forum
firefox tells me that news is not a registered protocol.
taikowaza-
If you are in the US and trying to get in contact with RME I would suggest emailing Synthax (http://www.synthax.com/index_comp.html). Synthax handles the US distibution of RME and the guys there are great. They know what they are talking about and are extremely helpful.
I've worked with both the Fireface and the Multiface (I wrote the Fireface review for audioMIDI.com). I haven't checked performance side by side, but from my understanding PCI is still the fastest way to get audio in and back out of a computer. Firewire works well -but is used more because of the "ease of use" (or for laptops that don't have PCI), and isn't inherently better than PCI. I've tested quite a few different Firewire interfaces and they all can have peculiar issues -like not playing nice with other peripherals on the Firewire bus, causing cracks and pops, etc.
I spoke to Mattias (spelling?), who is the lead engineer behind RME, at a trade show a few years ago about when they were going to create a Firewire device. His answer was "when we can get the performance out of it that is worthy of RME". The Fireface lives up to the RME name and is generally regarded as one of the best Firewire devices yet. That being said, you will not lose on latency -and may improve it a bit, by going the Multi-Face/PCI route.
By the way, the latency I reported in my review, of 2ms, is what I had set in Live's preferences. Now, this might not be the "true" latency of the audio going in and back out of the computer, but I can say I haven't had better results than what the FireFace is capable of for low latency. That being said, I usually have no problems overdubing a live guitar, processing thru plug-ins, and playing with 2-6 backing tracks on Firewire interfaces from Presonus, M-Audio, etc. Keep in mind though, I usually work at 16 or 24bit, and 44.1KHz.
Either way, with the Fireface or Multiface, I don't think you could go wrong by choosing RME, and I don't think you will find better performance in any other company's device.
If you are in the US and trying to get in contact with RME I would suggest emailing Synthax (http://www.synthax.com/index_comp.html). Synthax handles the US distibution of RME and the guys there are great. They know what they are talking about and are extremely helpful.
I've worked with both the Fireface and the Multiface (I wrote the Fireface review for audioMIDI.com). I haven't checked performance side by side, but from my understanding PCI is still the fastest way to get audio in and back out of a computer. Firewire works well -but is used more because of the "ease of use" (or for laptops that don't have PCI), and isn't inherently better than PCI. I've tested quite a few different Firewire interfaces and they all can have peculiar issues -like not playing nice with other peripherals on the Firewire bus, causing cracks and pops, etc.
I spoke to Mattias (spelling?), who is the lead engineer behind RME, at a trade show a few years ago about when they were going to create a Firewire device. His answer was "when we can get the performance out of it that is worthy of RME". The Fireface lives up to the RME name and is generally regarded as one of the best Firewire devices yet. That being said, you will not lose on latency -and may improve it a bit, by going the Multi-Face/PCI route.
By the way, the latency I reported in my review, of 2ms, is what I had set in Live's preferences. Now, this might not be the "true" latency of the audio going in and back out of the computer, but I can say I haven't had better results than what the FireFace is capable of for low latency. That being said, I usually have no problems overdubing a live guitar, processing thru plug-ins, and playing with 2-6 backing tracks on Firewire interfaces from Presonus, M-Audio, etc. Keep in mind though, I usually work at 16 or 24bit, and 44.1KHz.
Either way, with the Fireface or Multiface, I don't think you could go wrong by choosing RME, and I don't think you will find better performance in any other company's device.
Thanks Dedge
Thanks a lot dedge for your thoughtful reply.
I have successfully joined the rme forum and spent quite some time reading all the pertinent forums there cocncerning fireface 800 vs. multiface II.
There have been many others with the same question, so I appreciate the patience of you forum members. This is quite a hard call, actually! The fireface's pres are so nice, I love the 1U spacing and it just reeks quality. For the price, the multiface II with PCI and cardbus bundle is also most the same as the fireface- and with the fireface you seem to get so much more functionality. I would prefer to invest in the fireface. And yet- even without ever testing one of these interfaces, my experience with FW fa-101 has been so bad, and the little details that I have heard about the extra latency caused by the fw implementation on various MBoards (not the fault of the excellent RME crew, and what an active forum!), makes it seem that the PCI is so much more inherently stable.
I can see a market space for an RME product with PCI/cardbus interface, and the specs of the fireface. Like a multiface III, with preamps and the video features. As of now, I am somewhat loath to invest in a multiface II with no preamps, when the fireface is so complete.
Thanks for listening to this ramble,
T
I have successfully joined the rme forum and spent quite some time reading all the pertinent forums there cocncerning fireface 800 vs. multiface II.
There have been many others with the same question, so I appreciate the patience of you forum members. This is quite a hard call, actually! The fireface's pres are so nice, I love the 1U spacing and it just reeks quality. For the price, the multiface II with PCI and cardbus bundle is also most the same as the fireface- and with the fireface you seem to get so much more functionality. I would prefer to invest in the fireface. And yet- even without ever testing one of these interfaces, my experience with FW fa-101 has been so bad, and the little details that I have heard about the extra latency caused by the fw implementation on various MBoards (not the fault of the excellent RME crew, and what an active forum!), makes it seem that the PCI is so much more inherently stable.
I can see a market space for an RME product with PCI/cardbus interface, and the specs of the fireface. Like a multiface III, with preamps and the video features. As of now, I am somewhat loath to invest in a multiface II with no preamps, when the fireface is so complete.
Thanks for listening to this ramble,
T
follow up on fireface/multiface
got my fireface last night and I think that I'm going to switch it for a multiface II afterall.
Impressions: the fireface is beautiful. built like a tank. very great preamps with lots of gain.
hard to set up, for me. drivers wouldn't take.
once in, the sound quality was excellent. However, I am not seeing processor gains, the firewire bus inherently takes more processor power than a PCI bus.
If you are concerned about timing being SPOT ON (I play percussion over dense effected tracks) then I recommend a PCI bus Multiface or MADI. I am enclosing the reasons why, here.
1) I am concerned that the firewire bus tech is inherently slower and more buggy than PCI.
2) I didn't realize the full concept that RME PCI cards are 'zero processor overhead' (even at high track counts) while the firewire bus is processor intensive.
That said, the fireface has the I/O features I want, but it's quite a drain on the system, and not the massive improvement over the FA-101 that I had anticipated.
After reading the manual I am coming to the conclusion that an RME PCI solution might be more appropriate to my timing-critical application.
I am going to A/B a multiface II and see which is the answer., Even though it has no mic preamps on it I can always add those later.
(FROM MULTIFACE II PCI MANUAL)...
Our high-performance philosophy guarantees maximum system performance by executing as
many functions as possible not in the driver (i.e. the CPU), but directly within the audio hardware.
--4. Brief Description and Characteristics
· Hammerfall design: 0% (zero!) CPU load, even using all 36 ASIO channels
From FIREFACE Manual
37.3 FireWire Audio
FireWire audio is in several ways different from RME's earlier PCI audio interfaces. First of all,
our cards have a PCI interface which has been developed by RME and optimized for audio.
FireWire on the other hand, uses OHCI-compatible controllers that have not been optimized for
audio, no matter from which manufacturer they are. Our PCI data transmission is per channel,
while FireWire is working interleaved, i.e. it transmits all channels simultaneously. With the
Hammerfall, drop-outs thus occur only on the last channels, which is not always noticeable,
while a drop-out with FireWire always concerns all channels and is thus perceived much
clearer. Apart from this, RME's PCI audio cards establish a direct connection with the applica-
tion under ASIO (Zero CPU load), which is principally not possible with FireWire, because
communication has to be established by the operating system's FireWire driver. ****Compared to
our PCI cards, the FireWire subsystem creates an additional CPU load at lower latencies. *****
37.4 Number of Channels and Bus Load
As explained in chapter 37.3, FireWire Audio does not reach the same performance as PCI
audio. On a standard computer with modern single PCI bus, about 100 audio channels can be
transmitted per direction (record/playback). Exceeding this limit, any system acitivity - even
outside the PCI bus - causes drop outs.
Transferring these experiences to FireWire and the Fireface 800 means that besides the num-
ber of channels the bus load has to be taken into account too. One channel at 96 kHz causes
the same load to the system as two channels at 48 kHz!
To use FireWire as efficiently as possible, the Fireface allows to reduce the number of trans-
ferred channels. Limit Bandwidth provides four options, limiting the transmission internally to 28,
20, 12 or 8 channels. This limitation is independent from the sample rate, which is why the op-
tion's descriptions are not fully correct at 96 kHz. As can be seen in the following table, in 96
kHz mode there is no difference between the setting All Channels and An.+SPDIF+ADAT1. For
a valid reduction of the bus load ADAT must be unselected completely. As the Fireface offers
only 12 channels in Quad Speed mode, the options All Channels (28 channels) down to Ana-
log+SPDIF (12 channels) perform no change at all. Logically, as ADAT isn't available in this
mode anyway.
Limit Bandwidth 48 kHz (28) 96 kHz (20) 192 kHz (12) FW-Kanäle
All Channels x / / 28
An.+SPDIF+ADAT
1 x x / 20
Analog+SPDIF x x x 12
Analog 1-8 x x x 8
The bus load is doubled at 96 kHz and quadrupled at 192 kHz. Limit Bandwidth sets a constant
number of channels, but those channels cause a bigger load in DS and QS mode, because
more data have to be transferred. For example the 12 channels at 192 kHz equal a FireWire
and PCI bus load of 48 channels at 48 kHz! The following table shows the real bus load in all
modes.
Impressions: the fireface is beautiful. built like a tank. very great preamps with lots of gain.
hard to set up, for me. drivers wouldn't take.
once in, the sound quality was excellent. However, I am not seeing processor gains, the firewire bus inherently takes more processor power than a PCI bus.
If you are concerned about timing being SPOT ON (I play percussion over dense effected tracks) then I recommend a PCI bus Multiface or MADI. I am enclosing the reasons why, here.
1) I am concerned that the firewire bus tech is inherently slower and more buggy than PCI.
2) I didn't realize the full concept that RME PCI cards are 'zero processor overhead' (even at high track counts) while the firewire bus is processor intensive.
That said, the fireface has the I/O features I want, but it's quite a drain on the system, and not the massive improvement over the FA-101 that I had anticipated.
After reading the manual I am coming to the conclusion that an RME PCI solution might be more appropriate to my timing-critical application.
I am going to A/B a multiface II and see which is the answer., Even though it has no mic preamps on it I can always add those later.
(FROM MULTIFACE II PCI MANUAL)...
Our high-performance philosophy guarantees maximum system performance by executing as
many functions as possible not in the driver (i.e. the CPU), but directly within the audio hardware.
--4. Brief Description and Characteristics
· Hammerfall design: 0% (zero!) CPU load, even using all 36 ASIO channels
From FIREFACE Manual
37.3 FireWire Audio
FireWire audio is in several ways different from RME's earlier PCI audio interfaces. First of all,
our cards have a PCI interface which has been developed by RME and optimized for audio.
FireWire on the other hand, uses OHCI-compatible controllers that have not been optimized for
audio, no matter from which manufacturer they are. Our PCI data transmission is per channel,
while FireWire is working interleaved, i.e. it transmits all channels simultaneously. With the
Hammerfall, drop-outs thus occur only on the last channels, which is not always noticeable,
while a drop-out with FireWire always concerns all channels and is thus perceived much
clearer. Apart from this, RME's PCI audio cards establish a direct connection with the applica-
tion under ASIO (Zero CPU load), which is principally not possible with FireWire, because
communication has to be established by the operating system's FireWire driver. ****Compared to
our PCI cards, the FireWire subsystem creates an additional CPU load at lower latencies. *****
37.4 Number of Channels and Bus Load
As explained in chapter 37.3, FireWire Audio does not reach the same performance as PCI
audio. On a standard computer with modern single PCI bus, about 100 audio channels can be
transmitted per direction (record/playback). Exceeding this limit, any system acitivity - even
outside the PCI bus - causes drop outs.
Transferring these experiences to FireWire and the Fireface 800 means that besides the num-
ber of channels the bus load has to be taken into account too. One channel at 96 kHz causes
the same load to the system as two channels at 48 kHz!
To use FireWire as efficiently as possible, the Fireface allows to reduce the number of trans-
ferred channels. Limit Bandwidth provides four options, limiting the transmission internally to 28,
20, 12 or 8 channels. This limitation is independent from the sample rate, which is why the op-
tion's descriptions are not fully correct at 96 kHz. As can be seen in the following table, in 96
kHz mode there is no difference between the setting All Channels and An.+SPDIF+ADAT1. For
a valid reduction of the bus load ADAT must be unselected completely. As the Fireface offers
only 12 channels in Quad Speed mode, the options All Channels (28 channels) down to Ana-
log+SPDIF (12 channels) perform no change at all. Logically, as ADAT isn't available in this
mode anyway.
Limit Bandwidth 48 kHz (28) 96 kHz (20) 192 kHz (12) FW-Kanäle
All Channels x / / 28
An.+SPDIF+ADAT
1 x x / 20
Analog+SPDIF x x x 12
Analog 1-8 x x x 8
The bus load is doubled at 96 kHz and quadrupled at 192 kHz. Limit Bandwidth sets a constant
number of channels, but those channels cause a bigger load in DS and QS mode, because
more data have to be transferred. For example the 12 channels at 192 kHz equal a FireWire
and PCI bus load of 48 channels at 48 kHz! The following table shows the real bus load in all
modes.
-
Mike Goodwin
- Posts: 1119
- Joined: Tue Nov 22, 2005 6:29 pm
Pardon my technical newbiness, but am I correct in understanding that a PCI card that removes the processing of audio from the CPU (i.e. the Multiface) means that you won’t get a significant advantage out of throwing a faster computer at it? (as the sound interface processor remains the same?)
(I understand a faster computer will do a lot of non-audio stuff faster – like graphics etc, so that will make a difference.)
Will a multiprocessor compliant release of Ableton Live mean that those with duo/quad processors get a massive increase in performance, yet those with a PCI card like the Multiface don’t benefit so much?
The talk of PCI-card processed audio and the reduced load on the CPU leaves me wondering how my mate’s old (almost ancient, I guess) creamware pulsar rig would run with newer versions of Ableton Live, given it also removes the processing from the CPU?
(I understand a faster computer will do a lot of non-audio stuff faster – like graphics etc, so that will make a difference.)
Will a multiprocessor compliant release of Ableton Live mean that those with duo/quad processors get a massive increase in performance, yet those with a PCI card like the Multiface don’t benefit so much?
The talk of PCI-card processed audio and the reduced load on the CPU leaves me wondering how my mate’s old (almost ancient, I guess) creamware pulsar rig would run with newer versions of Ableton Live, given it also removes the processing from the CPU?