Hi Ramses,
I don't even know what to say - I'm shocked. In all my years on the internet forums I have never experienced this type of incredibly helpful support (in just one post!) - and I have only just joined the forum. You have given me so much great information to go through. It will take me some time to go through all this to get educated and think it through how it applies to me. I'm looking forward to the journey to get myself educated and will go through your blogs for sure. By the way, before you posted my feeling was that I perhaps only needed to add somethign like QuadMic II between my microphone(s) and ADI-2 (or something similar to QuadMic II from some other vendor). But clearly there is more that I should at least consider (for longer term options).

THANK YOU!

After taking a look at your own diagram I do have at least one immediate question.
What role does the first ADI-2 PRO play in your setup other than A/D conversion and output to monitors and headphones? Can't you just send the output to monitors directly from your UFX+ (or is becasue the A/D conversion is superior in ADI-2 PRO vs UFX+)? I have the same question about Babyface PRO FS now that I'm taking a look at it - seems to be advertised as solution that would cover small setup with guitar and mic without need for any other hardware (where you can also use it to play music from computer)?

The D/A converters of UFX+ and ADI-2 Pro FS both have a very good quality.

Customers can simply choose to either use the already very good analog outputs of their recording interface, or to additionally get the special features of the ADI-2 Pro, which (for performance reasons) would not fit into a recording interface. If you think further this would also unnecessarily increase the price of the respective recording device, so that only few people could afford a RME recording interfaces.

The special features of the ADI-2 Pro are to deliver a very unique device with a feature density, that no other device on the market has to offer: USB DAC, ADDA converter, phones preamp, HiRes measurement frontend, AKM converter chips, different D/A filter, DSD, 5-band PEQ, dynamic loudness, crossfeee, extreme power phones to drive even phones with high impedace, slow rampup of volume for ear protection, balanced phone support, PEQ separate for left and right channel (if your ears are different, maybe by accident), sample rate converter (SRC), Analyzer, very helpful state overview, the bit test to ensure listening to lossless audio has the desired quality, .. well you should know the feature list yourself, if you read the manual.

To sum up / in regards to your question:
- a recording interface like i.e. the UFX II or  UFX+ alone is also a nice thing to have
- and yes you can also use a BabyFace Pro FS together with an ADI-2 Pro FS if this is all that you require

In some situations it might be very practical to have a little bit more, i.e. in terms of analog inputs and outputs
and in regards to certain RME features: AUTOSET, DURec, ...

So please compare BBF Pro FS with i.e.: UCX, UFX II, .. and take your time.

You need to make some thoughts, what serves your demands best now and in the near future.
And of course .. it needs to be affordable.

You can connect Mic Preamps to the analog ports of the ADI-2 Pro and route everything in the DAW.
But then all of your signals need to go through USB (back and forth) and by this you have a higher RTL (round trip latency).

If you use a recording interface with TotalMix FX, then all will be routed in hardware with near zero latency which is much quicker compared to the RTL through USB.

You hear audio in your phones ... as soon as you play guiatar and sing, audio will be routed on the recording interface from the Mic inputs to the Phones in near zero latency as well. So you hear it with near zero-delay which is nice.

This is the difference whether you have a recording interface where audio can be routed in the digital domain of the interface in near-zero latency, or whether all has to go though the DAW. Especially if you need to increase the ASIO buffer size, if the computer is not quick enough at lower ASIO buffer sizes ....
With an ASIO Buffersize of 256 you have already a RTL of around 10-12ms.

Therefore I would recommend you to get a recording interface for Recording with TotalMix FX and to add the ADI-2 Pro via a digital port.

And if you take a recording Interface with FX chip, then delay and reverb for vocals can directly be send to your phones, so that your recorded vocals sound more smooth, some vocalist prefer this.

Look closely, the BBF Pro has a partial implementation of the FX chip. Dynamic Effects are being calculated on the PC by the driver.

In that regards an UCX might be the most round solution with some additional I/O ports.
UCX gives you a full implementation of FX chip, Autoset and also moer analog ports to be able to connect a second pair of monitors or to add outboard equipment.

The signal flow is fully digital and you can even check this with the ADI-2 Pro Bittest. Download the files from RME webserver, play it in your music player, the ADI-2 Pro will report to you if the end-to-end audio connection was "bit perfect".

Ensure that your audio player doesn't modify the audio signal in any way and the volume needs to be at 100%. You need to use the RME ASIO driver or another driver (i.e. WASAPI) that doesn't modify audio and best doesn't send audio through the windows mixer.

Signal Flow with recording interface and ADI-2 Pro via ADAT:
PC ---- USB ---- Recording Interface  ---- ADAT ---- ADI 2 Pro
|----------------------------------------------------------------- |
                Checked by Bit perfect Test

Bittest, see manual 34.21
https://www.rme-audio.de/download/adi2profs_d.pdf
https://www.rme-audio.de/download/adi2profs_e.pdf

ADI-2 Pro FS and BBF pro FS use different ASIO drivers, a DAW can only work with one driver.

So one recording interface needs to be the center of your solution, best the recording interface with TotalMix FX
and then you can connect the ADI-2 Pro behind it.
For management purposes or flashing you can leave the ADI-2 Pro connected via USB to the PC as well.

ADI-2 Pro and UFX II and UFX+ use the same USB ASIO driver.
If you clock synch ADI-2 Pro and UFX * and use the same ASIO buffer size in the driver settings for both devices,
then your DAW could access both interfaces directly via USB (the ADI-2 Pro and the UFX II / +).

This is a special case if many different interfaces use the same ASIO driver.
And if you look to the MADIface driver, then it supports a lot of devices already: UFX+/UFX II, MADIface XT/Pro/USB, OctaMic XTC, ADI-2 Pro/AE/FS/DAC, Digiface USB

BBF Pro uses the former USB driver.

There are not that much differences and most of them come from different use cases for which the devices have been designed. For example the BBF Pro has been designed for mobility and that you can use USB bus power from a PC or Laptop. As energy consumption is a critical point, you need to make some trade-offs.

The most important thing here with i.e. the BBF Pro is, WHAT's all possible for an USB bus powered device and that you can optionally use a Power Supply, should your Laptop be not able to deliver stable power.

Also UC and UCX are kind of special, look what they can so in this attractive small form factor ...

And you need to consider the long term driver support. With RME you have a much longer product life cycle, because the FPGA based design allows for this and RME as company is willed to do so ...

For other vendors you have a paid project team and a much shorter product lifecycle. And short product lifecycles have also a drawback for software. Its often the case that a mixer software has been developed for a certain product which doesn't lead into a mature and optimized product. Look at some other software mixers where you can read in reviews that they are laggy, etc.

In contrast to that RME uses TotalMix FX for every recording interface since about 20y so this product offers a high level of quality / maturity. And sometimes customers get "a present" that RME introduces new advanced features or i.e. to be able to use a remote like the ARC USB for up to around 18y old devices for which initially no remote was planned.

> you have to consider even down to drivers of specific devices and buffer sizes

Where the difference of 48 to 32 is not that high tbh, as all RME drivers perform excellent.
Low latency does not only depend on the size of an ASIO buffer, what you also need to consider is
- driver / code efficiency and
- that you do not depend on weak 3rd party products for the data transfer over USB
For the latter RME uses own code in their FPGA's so that they are able to optimize things on their side by firmware upgrades.

While you are waiting for your device its the right time to watch a few TM FX videos from RME.
They do not take much time, as everything is well explained "to the point" without wasting time.
Then you have already a very nice overview what you can do with TM FX.
Also the little older videos have their beauty .. I would watch both sets.

https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … al-Videos/

I also created a step by step guide with some interesting infos: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … rnal-equi/

The manual contains further information about TM FX.

I would go through it in that order .. videos 1st to get a good idea about the capabilities ... next the step by step guide .. next manual to see what additional information is of interest for you.

My UCX arrived a few days ago and I have connected it to the computer via USB and then ADI-2 PRO FS optical ADAT/SPDIF input into  UCX corresponding output as your diagram suggested and adjusted the ADI-2 PRO FS to use AD/DA mode and SPDIF clock (to get clock from UCX). I have still left ADI-2 PRO FS connected to computer as well (USB) so I can easily update the firmware when needed. There is one strange thing I ran into when I was trying to play files via my music player software (JRiver Media Center 25) in this new setup. The UCX output format (in the driver) was by default set to ADAT and I could not get 176.4 kHz and 192 kHz files to play at their native resolutions in this setup - ADI-2 PRO FS was playing those at 44.1 and 48 kHz instead (all other files up until 96 kHz were fine). I downloaded the RME bit test files (thanks for that suggestion as well) and when I played them bit test failed for those files (which makes sense). The fix for me was to change the output format in the Fireface USB Settings window from ADAT to SPDIF - after this change all files are playing at native distribution and bit test succeded for all 9 files. There is still one downside in this setup compared to using only ADI-2 PRO FS as a DAC (without UCX in the mix) - higher resolution files (DSD64 and DSD128 which I could play at 352.8 kHz and 705.6 kHz by using only ADI-2 PRO FS) must be automatically converted to 192 kHz files by my JRiver player (thankfully it has that option) before they are sent to UCX via SPDIF. This works fine and is a minor downside given that most of my music collection are WAV and FLAC files between 88.2 and 192 kHz.
Anyhow, now that my DAC set is completed and working I will move to playing around with microphone and guitar setups with UCX (which was my original reason to get UCX).
Thanks again for all the help so far and I will probably be back with some more questions during this fun journey!

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask but what is the opinion about leaving RME devices on/off when you are not using them (ie when I shut down my computer over night)? I am not asking so much because of ADI-2 PRO FS which has a convenient on/off switch at the front, but UCX unforutanelly only has it at the back of the device so it's not as easy to reach. I'm thinking about getting a power extension with it's own dedicated on/off switch so I can leave both RME device switches on all the time (not mess with their switches) and use the power extension switch to turn them on when needed. Is this a reasonable approach? Any downsides (does this do any damage to electronics long term if you connect/disconnect power on daily basis)? Another reason to do this is that RME devices seem to get warm so my theory is why not disconnect them completely when not in use ...

There are electronic parts with a built in lifetime counter - kind of:

Electrolytic condensers.

Their lifetime is specified as a time/temperature/voltage relationship.
The hotter, the higher voltage - the sooner they die, where temperature is the main factor.

When switched off, beeing cold, they almost live forever.
At 105 °C  they live 5000 hours - 7 month (the better ones).
Every 10 °C down lifetime doubles.

Soundwise there is no change in performance while warming up, very few devices show such behaviour anyway.
At least finally after few minutes every electronic workingpoint has sufficiently stabilized.

With RME stuff the performance is there immediately after switch on.

Now it's your decision

Thanks everyone!

Curt,
My question was actually not about whether RME device performance would be impacted when they are turned on because they need to warm up (although that's perhaps good point that it probably used to be the case very long time ago with some older devices). My question was about whether the RME devices should be turned on/off at all to extend their lifetime (whether it's somehow bad for electronics to be turned on and off frequently - people have claimed over the years it's bad for computers to be turned off and on all the time so I figured this may be similar). And then the follow up question was if its ok to turn them on/off whether it's better to use their own power switches (on RME devices), or if it's just as good to turn off the the power strip where the devices are plugged in (with it's own on/off switch). Sounds like I should be ok to plug my 2 RME devices into this power strip, as well as my 2 power monitors that each have their own dedicated on/off switches so I just need to turn on one easily accesible switch to turn everything on. This question came up only because RME UCX has it's power switch in the back of the device which is inconvenient for me to access the way my desk is set up ...

The question is valid, but tbh we should not be too over cautious running and using our environment.

As far as I remember MC answered such a question some month ago in a way that of course you have some "wear" on electronic components if you turn them on and use them.

But you should not be worried too much, the devices are designed for it and there to be used. I personally turn them off, when its clear that I do not need them over night or for a couple of hours.

I am i.e. not worried to keep UFX+, ADI-2 Pro and Geithain Monitors on while working on the PC even if I do not need high quality audio for several hours. But these are my only PC monitors and I have no room for something smaller, which consumes less energy.
Its simply part of my PC setup and I am the strong opinion, that these devices are designed in a way, that its absolutely no problem to keep them running over day on a daily basis. The preamps, that I use more rarely I keep powered-off and turn them on only on demand, not to waste too much energy for no reason. If I go out for shopping then I turn them off as well.

Or in other words, I bought this stuff to use it, not to optimize my behaviour to not use it or to maybe add wear by too frequent power-cycles.

> people have claimed over the years it's bad for computers to be turned off and on all the time
> so I figured this may be similar).

This was most likely for other reasons, i.e. harddisk (esp server hardisks that are designed to run 24/7) do not like this because of their mechanical nature. They are optimized to run and perform and not for frequent on/off cycles. Although more modern Desktop CDs should also have no issues, because formfactor and weight of mechanical parts decreased.

Simply work with the care from which you think is applicable for such devices. And if you personally have a higher demand to treat your devices gently, then its your decision and its fine.

I think there is no right or wrong except
- excessive power cycles
- to waste energy for hours if you actually do not need a device

If you have a large studio, then you have surely other drivers for keeping certain devices on or off.
Number of devices, limited time, energy consumption of maybe some vintage devices or amps that need more energy.

I think: simply stick to simple easy rules that makes sense, no over-complicated behaviour.

Tom!

I get my "opinions" sometimes from experiences, and other times (mostly) from advancing age.   

My experiences come in the form of coming home from work 35yrs ago only to discover that half of my gear had been destroyed by a Voltage Spike caused by Lightning.   That was back in the day, when "Gear needs to stay On always for best Soundstage" permeated the Audio Mags.

Yeah well...this was MY problem now.

These days here in the Southeast of the US?  I turn off.   When I CANNOT be home?  I not only turn off, but Galvanically Isolate!   Power Cords, Cat 5, etc.  No connection to the outside world whatsoever..

Thus...my Views.

Enjoy that RME Tom!!

Curt

Once a lighning hit to ground some 10m beside my recording studio.
Everything was centrally switched off at that moment.

3 computers were toast, but non of the audio devices.
I have professional mains surge protection installed.
The computers all had long (10m) monitor cables installed, and the graphic cards had visual signs of burn.

The 2nd time a lighning hit only one computer mainboard was toast (literally), but only the chip that made outside connection to the telephone line.
I could replace the chip with a part from the 1st hit.

Moral: long cables work like antennas and are the entry path's if a lightning hits close, the lighning's strong magnetic field magnetically induces high voltages.