• From: Warsaw
  • Registered: 2013-10-26
  • Posts: 7

Topic: Best RME products combination for realtime playing

Hi,

I wonder what is the best RME product (or products combination) for my use case.
Main use case is realtime VSTi playing using lowest possible latency (single miliseconds matter) and some recording. It is going to be used with standalone Win7 PC. Again, low ASIO latency and glitch free operation is critical.

I need:
* some analog inputs (at least 4)
* Hi-Z input
* some analog outputs (at least 4)
* headphone output
* midi in (at least 2)
* I/Os should be on some external box

Fireface UCX seems to be perfect match but it is USB2.0/Firewire which gives a little bit worse performance comparing to PCIe if I understand it right.
Is there any RME product which combines UCX flexibility with PCIe performance?
Let's assume price is not an issue here :-)

Regards,
--
Piotr

  • Registered: 2008-01-01
  • Posts: 3,025

Re: Best RME products combination for realtime playing

Just get the UCX. If your computer is properly set up it will give you very low latency performance comparable (and sometimes beating other manufacturers') PCIe performance.

  • From: Warsaw
  • Registered: 2013-10-26
  • Posts: 7

Re: Best RME products combination for realtime playing

Just get the UCX.

Actually, I've got one :-) and I am more than happy with it.

If your computer is properly set up it will give you very low latency performance comparable (and sometimes beating other manufacturers') PCIe performance.

Currently I'm able to use 48 (or sometimes 64) ASIO buffer (with 48kHz sample rate) for live playing without issues which translates to 1.9ms output latency as reported by Reaper which seems to be in-line with theory. (48+32+7)/48000*1000=1.81

But I'm kinda crazy on the latency thing and considering the fight for this ~1ms.
As far as I know on HDSPe:
* MIDI is a little bit faster (around 0.5 ms),
* I can use 32 ASIO buffer
* there is no 32 samples safety buffer (am I right?) 

On the other hand I've heard that on Windows 1ms is hard limit and it is not possible to go any lower.
I'd love to see real world comparison between UCX and HDSPe (MIDI keyboard key press to audio on analog out). 

Seems like UCX with an External PCIe (as in Madiface XT) would be ideal solution. Hopefully RME is just working on that :-)