Hi Vincent,

> are you saying i dont need an interface but only need rme pcie card?

Sorry, no. I never said that, surely a misunderstanding.

But .. if you have the requirement to connect a guitar or bass directly to the recording interface, you needed an instrument input.

The RME AIO PCIe card does not provide an instrument input. In this case you would have to connect the guitar with another device/solution that has line level outputs (no matter if balanced or unbalanced), so that you can connect the device to an analog input of the RME AIO.

For this you need the RME AIO and the already mentioned optional available add-on card AI4S-192 AIO (4 additional analog inputs). There is also an expansion card AO4S-192 AIO available, which provides 4 additional analog outputs. The additional analog outputs might be useful for you to i.e. connect a second pair of monitors and analog outboard equipment.
These expansion cards cost an additional €199 each, so the RME AIO would cost €977 in maximum configuration.

Alternatively (to get the instrument inputs) you could also connect another device to the RME AIO, which supports instrument inputs, by using ADAT. Some microphone preamps could be used for this, but this would make the setup more expensive. Another thing to mention is, if the recording interface (like the AIO) has only 1 ADAT ports, then on higher sample rates you loose channels (8 @44.1/49, 4 @88.2/96, ...)...

There are also other very good RME recording interfaces (USB / Thunderbolt) that come close to the Round Trip Latency of PCIe cards, but which already have 2 or 4 mic/instrument inputs and 8 analog inputs and outputs, and have other interesting features like Autoset, DURec and expandability like MADI (RME Babyface Pro FX, UC, UCX, UFX II, UFX+).
For some examples of RTL, see my blog article about the Flagship interfaces RME UFX+ and UFX II:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … 8-RME-UFX/
See also tabular at the end of my posting, which contains the sum of input and output latency for different RME solutions (USB, FW, Thunderbolt recording Interface, also in combination with MADI). On the right side you see a screenshot of the detailed RME manual as well. where you can see where the RTL values came from. RME documentation is simply excellent.

You may not have considered everything when selecting the recording interface.
Therefore it would be useful to specify your  setup or all of your requirements and to revise your input posting. In other words, a list of which inputs and outputs you need on the recording interface for which application or the connection of which device and whether you have special requirements.
It would also be worth if you could tell, which computer you have, PC or Laptop and how it is equipped: OS, CPU, DRAM, Mainboard.

Then it would also make sense to name your budget expectations for such a solution.

Many thanks.

P.S.: I also use instrument inputs for guitar to be able to record the pure signal coming from guitar with the aim to be able to perform re-amping. The UFX+ has 4 Mic/Instr inputs.
The first two inputs I use to plug my guitar. One with gain settings for humbucker guitars, one with +3 dB higher gain settings for my Tele (single coil). The other two inputs I use to Mic my amp using a Tube Micro and SM57 for silent recording putposes.

Some time ago I released a detailed blog article, where I described my setup and use cases. In short, its simply phantastic. One of the best features is, to use the UFX+ (or an UFX II) as tape deck (DURec, Direct USB recording to a SSD/Disk that you plug into the front of the device).

The full blog article with more details, complete description of features and use cases and sound samples:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … -DURec-DE/

Here a Viso drawing as overview: