"In many recording situations, TotalMix makes issues of recording latency irrelevant, giving you freedom to set up as many monitoring mixes as you have outputs. However, there are still those to whom latency figures are crucial, most obviously musicians who depend on software synths and samplers. And so, to complement what is surely the most comprehensive latency-free mixer to be found outside of a Pro Tools HD rig, RME also provide drivers that are claimed to offer unparalled low latency performance. Usually, my Dell laptop is to rock-solid low latency performance what Britain is to international ski-jumping. With most other interfaces I?ve tried, a 256-sample buffer at 44.1 kHz is pushing it, so I was impressed that the RME drivers continued to work well down to 96 samples. I can well believe that on a machine that is less Eddie the eagle and more Thomas Morgenstern, the lowest 48-sample setting would be practical."

"On the Mac, RME claim that the Fireface UC can operate at an even more impressive buffer size of 14 samples. I wanted to see that for myself, so I hooked it up to an Intel iMac at the SoS office, running Mac OS 10.6, and fired up my copy of Reaper. I gingerly entered "14" into its Block Size field, expected to be greeted by a wall of digital noise, but remarkably, it worked without a hitch, and I was able to play back and record audio with no problems at all, at a reported latency of 1.3 ms. This was mighty impressive, especially for an off-the-peg computer that has never been tweaked of configured for audio use."