1 Topic by o.j.m. (edited by o.j.m. 2020-01-17 11:15:23)

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Topic: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

Hello everybody

I'm a first poster. But I'm a very happy longtime UFX user. It works rock solid since 8 jears and sounds great.

But it is time to upgrade my system. So hopefully someone can give me some advice on mainboard and graficcard?

It will be my music and video production machine with also 2 UAD PCIe cards in there. Are there still firewire boards out there? Or do I have to switch for USB? I've searched the RME site and didn't find any recommendations.

So, I'm looking gladly forward to some help and advice.

Thanks in advance!

Othmar

  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

Product requirements you will find in the manuals and maybe also on webserver.
In the driver download section you will see, for which OS / Versions drivers are available.

Like always there can be rare issues with certain mainboard chipsets or USB3 controllers. The product manual contains information i.e. to which USB communication a product is compliant for or has been tested successfully.

Firewire is not supported anymore by Windows 10.
And Windows 7 is out of support.
Better look for an USB / Thunderbolt based solution.

I can recommend you UFX II or UFX+ if you want to have the RME flagships which are compareble to UFX.
UFX II is closest to UFX, also 30 channel and USB2 based.

But for less than €200 you can also get a UFX+ which supports MADI and thus needs USB3 and thunderbolt because of the much higher channel count.

I don't know whether you want to go into the direction of AVB or Dante.
RME last recently release new products for MADI/AVB.

The flagship interfaces have no AVB support yet. So in order to stay with a solution that supports DURec
I would propose to you to look at either UFX II or UFX+ with MADI.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

You can also have a look at some of my blog articles, maybe it gives you additional ideas:

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … 8-RME-UFX/
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … Cber-MADI/
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … Pro-FS-BE/
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … -DURec-DE/

Whats also cool, to integrate an ADI-2 Pro FS into the solution for best D/A conversion quality and superb phones outputs, dynamic loudnes, Auto Reflevel selection, PEQ, etc: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … our-Setup/

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13

4 Reply by vinark (edited by vinark 2020-01-17 12:27:37)

  • vinark
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

Ramses wrote:

  • Firewire is not supported anymore by Windows 10.

That is not really true. Firewire drivers are still included in win10 and even the legacy FW driver can be downloaded. I have an old focusrite liquidmix working on 10 (which can not be replaced by anything newer). But it is very dependent on the manufacturer drivers writing, but that is also the case with (older) usb devices. Sometimes Win7 or 8 drivers work sometimes not. Not every manufacturer is as loyal as RME to its products, which have win10 drivers for their firewire devices.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
Babyface pro fs, HDSP9652+ADI-8AE, HDSP9632

5 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2020-01-17 12:46:52)

  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

You are right Vinark. Sorry, I remembered it wrong, because I have no firewire device anymore.
I had only this "picture" in my mind, that the information - what to do - was a 3rd party page,
from this I had wrong in my mind, that some 3rd party instance hosted somewhere the old legacy driver.

In fact Win10 has Firewire support, but unfortunately M$ removed the "legacy driver".
The legacy drivers is still downloadable from Microsoft.

I question myself why they couldn't leave it in Win10 along with the other flavour of Firewire driver...
Microsoft decisions are sometimes so braindead *sigh* only generating operational hurdles.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • vinark
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

No need for Sorry! Since it is a public forum just information is best.
Yeah that 3rd party hack was needed in the past but MS reconsidered.

Vincent, Amsterdam
https://soundcloud.com/thesecretworld
Babyface pro fs, HDSP9652+ADI-8AE, HDSP9632
  • Registered: 2020-01-17
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

Ramses and vinark, thank you very much for this informations. UFX will run also on USB, thats not a problem.
I don't wanna upgrade everything at the same time. But I have to admit that I'm tempted with the UFX+....

Can you please give me your personal advice? Which mainboard do you use? Which CPU and grafics will work save? O
I know, the RME drivers are top notch, never had a problem with those. But in combination with 2 UADs Octo in can be quite a lot of bus traffic.

There are so many options to choose from, please tell me wich configuration YOU use.
Thank you very much.

Regards,Othmar

8 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2020-01-17 15:19:15)

  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UFX, mainboard and graficcard recommendation

If you want to play it safe, get a turnkey system.
I can't recommend you my Xeon based build, because its 5y old HW.
Still performant, but not cheap and for that price you should get a more up to date system.

Windows 10 is a must now, as you do not get Win 7 patches anymore from M$.

My initial goal to keep Win7 and to get protection only via an internet Security Suit went nada nada. I had an interesting conversation with a collegue who focuses on security and he told me that the protection of all internet security suits can be bypassed too easy.

So it comes back to the point, that its better to fix any potential security hole also in the OS .. well and then you need Windows 10 (or Win8 which is a little bit longer supported compared to Win7).

Then you need to talk to people who are using the new Ryzen CPUs already which offer a lot of cores, at higher clock speeds and a lot of performance.... You need to look whether DPC latency is ok and up to how many cores / threads your DAW can make use of ...

So that is at the end also a question to your DAW vendor, what CPU he recommends as of now ...
Makes no sense to pay for cores which the DAW can not really utilize ...

Or ask a company who has a lot of experience in building performant systems for this and that DAW platform.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13