No one has any knowledge, thoughts, rumours of this?

Hi Ramses, thanks so much for replying!  The info you've provided is very helpful.  I guess what I'm concerned about is buying a relatively old product right now with old connection types (i.e. USB 2/FW 400 for the UCX) and having these become obsolete and unsupported within just a handful of years.  I've owned my MOTU Ultralite Mk 3 for 12 years and been very happy with it BUT FW 400 was new when I bought the interface and so it has lasted (and been supported) very well. The UCX would be the ideal solution that perfectly suits my needs BUT I can't use the FW 400 port with a new MacBook Pro and I can't help but cringe when I think about spending so much money on a USB 2 interface when Thunderbolt/USB C is becoming the new standard, especially with the MacBook Pro....which is the platform I'll definitely be sticking with. Hence my question about if/when RME will update the UC series with a connection type which is considerably more "future proof" for the next decade or so.

I love the fact that the UFX+ has both USB3 and Thunderbolt; I'd be covered should either connection type become redundant.  However, I just can't justify spending so much money on the UCX when FW is already dead and USB 2.0 is quite old....how long will RME continue to support the UCX when it's already an old product??  If I'm going to spend the premium dollars to get an RME product, I want it to last just as long as my MOTU Ultralite did i.e. more than 10 years and with great support until FW was killed off.

If your ultralite has what you need (I have one too and 3 RME's), why not get a thunderbolt to firewire adapter? If this works, you are up and running again for a few years. Who knows what is available and obsolete then...
Sound quality is more the fine of the ultralite.

> It also doesn't make sense to buy old technology, especially when RME products are (deservedly) priced at a premium.

You should see this under a different angle.

Other vendors try to fix their USB driver performance issues by offering thunderbolt. RME does not have these kind of problems because RME is the de facto standard in the recording industry when it comes to performant and reliable ASIO drivers.

The benefit for customers is, to be able to connect the RME recording interfaces via USB to all computers, not only a limited amount of machines, because Thunderbolt is still rare, at least with Windows PCs and limits you in the selection of computer components / mainboards. There are also people with older Apple computers which also do not have Thunderbolt, but USB.

In regards to costs. The cost of RME devices is justified by technology, quality, features, optimizations everywhere and the outstanding very long driver support and additional features that you get over time with your recording interface.

And expecially as you seem to be price sensitive like every customer .. here it makes sense not to make devices unnecessary expensive for no real (technical) reason and would force you to buy even unnecessary expensive computers with thunderbolt support.

With USB you have additional benefits:

1. Even with USB3 you can go up to 5m long cables. This works i.e. very reliable for me with 3x shielded Lindy USB3 cables.
This allows you a more flexible placement of PC / recording interface. Thunderbolt has a max of 2m if I remember right.

2. USB plugs look to me more solid compared with the tiny thunderbolt cables, for live performances I would trust a solid USB2/USB3 cable more compared to the fragile looking Thunderbolt cables.

3. USB is not so expensive in general (mainboard, cables, recording interfaces ...)

And if you look again into the table above how well USB performs in terms of RTT...
Or here in terms of project sizes: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … cks-de-en/

If you want thunderbolt, then get the UFX+ which is now available for an excellent price, initially €2699 now €2139.
Then you have additional benefits like DURec, Autoset, more i/o and you can make your own experiences with either Thunderbolt or USB3.

Guys, I appreciate your replies and the different insights you've provided. I've decided to buy a UFX+ because it should (crossing my fingers) last me for quite a long time.  I actually wanted to buy a Fireface 400 all those years ago but just couldn't afford it, and so I got the Ultralite instead.  I still can't really afford the UFX+...unless I look at it as a long-term investment.  As a wind controller player using Apple's MainStage, I'm very sensitive to latency and the UFX+ should be a big improvement in this area.  With my current setup (and using in-ear monitoring), any sample buffer higher than 64 introduces unacceptable latency (i.e. > 8ms) but the tradeoff is that I've got to push my MacBook Pro really hard - and devise clever workarounds - in order to avoid increasing the buffer size.  I've recently been getting some distortion when using certain patches at gigs and this is a sign that my system is right on the edge of its performance capacity; and with each new iteration of softsynths/plugins becoming more demanding of system resources, I figured that now is the time to bite the bullet and upgrade my system.

The other reason I'm getting the UFX+ is because of its ability to function as a standalone mixer with onboard DSP effects.  At the moment, I have a separate gig rig with a Behringer XR12 for use with my band and I really don't like the XR12....it sounds awful.  However, it can be used completely wirelessly with a tablet and that's the one significant advantage it has over any of the RME devices.  If I replace my MOTU Ultralite with the UFX+, I can use the one rig, regardless of the gig I'm doing.

I am in a similar situation but the UFX+ is way too big for travelling and the UCX is really due for an update in my opinion, which would bring some features from the current UFX+/II's into a smaller form factor.

With a higher sample rate the RTT becomes lower, but the load on the PC will be higher.

RTL times of different RME equipment you see in my post above

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 88#p147488