• Registered: 2021-02-21
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Topic: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

Hi!

I'm trying to figure out a more cost-effective way of doing the following:

https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1B-k … sp=sharing

Main Objectives

  • Send microphone signal to both computers _easily_

  • Ability for both computers' audio output to be sent to the same headphone jack and the JBL speakers without replugging anything

  • Get the signal out of the i7 desktop digitally or optically is a must (motherboard line out produces loud buzzing when the video card is running)

  • Have plenty of flexibility for the Kemper and future audio gear and at least 2 microphone input

  • Flexible routing

I'd like to eliminate the Babyface if I can. UFX+ seems like massive overkill for this but I like that it has the latest USB spec and all those extra IOs.

I highly doubt it's possible but it would cool if the macbook could be connected via thunderbolt and the PC via USB3 and both have access to TotalMix independently.

Anyway I'm out of my league here so I would appreciate some advice on a more intelligent setup.

Thanks!

  • waedi
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

May be I am outdated but in the old days I learnt to disable onboard audio in the BIOS when using a audio interface.
When you say you want to get rid of the Babyface does that mean you are the owner of all that stuff in the drawing ?
You have a MacBookPro and a UFX+ ?
Get rid of the PC and use the Babyface as a mobile solution.
All your stuff can be connected to the UFX+, no problem.
I am not 100% sure but I think it will not work when you try to have the same Totalmix on a Mac and a Pc at the same time and sharing the same interface.
You can do a test on your own risk.
The special double-ended USB cable of the Babyface can be connected to two computers and then you connect the Babyface and look if both computers recognize it...?
I do not recommend that because I am not aware of the risk.
The result would be interesting.

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue
  • Registered: 2018-12-21
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

Two computers cannot use the interface at the same time.
If you do not need them at the same time, you could use a USB switcher (I have better experiences using USB switchers with the UFX+ in USB 2.0 mode, especially with longer cable runs. If the UFX+ is already overkill, you could save some bucks with the UFX II which has USB 2.0 and otherwise the same specs, just no Thunderbolt and MADI which you might very well live without, though the price difference is not so huge..).
Also a UCX would do just fine. It also comes with all the FX which might be useful for live streaming, it's a bit from the specs, but I doubt you will notice a big difference. It has a little less gain on its preamps, but you could still increase the level using the dynamics section.

Also you might not need that headphone amp, the headphone outs on the RME are quite good and powerful enough to drive any Sennheiser HD6XX. Maybe get a ARC USB for convenience in volume control...

4 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2021-02-22 08:17:10)

  • ramses
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

Had no time to look at the full picture but I only wanted to throw in the following basic idea.

I think with a MADI setup something like this is possible, but would be more expensive due to additional MADI components.

You could create a MADI ring of e.g.
+---UFX+ --- Preamp/Converter --- MADIface Pro ---+
|                                                                                |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Then UFX+ and MADIface Pro could access the 64 MADI channels at the same time and route audio to the channels as required. UFX+ and MADIface Pro were only examples, could also be two MADIface Pro or even in combination with MADIface USB. As each MADI device can be mapped to the MADI bus and the recording interfaces can also route their audio to the BUS.

It should even be possible to connect UFX+ and MADIface Pro alone with each other by MADI ...
Then you have a lot of channels to exchange audio through the two devices.

At the end the same as you would do with ADAT and TOSLINK with the exception to have higher amount of channels and longer cables compared to ADAT (10m according to standard vs 2km in MultiMode and 10km in Single mode).

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub13
  • Registered: 2021-02-21
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

waedi wrote:

When you say you want to get rid of the Babyface does that mean you are the owner of all that stuff in the drawing ?
You have a MacBookPro and a UFX+ ?.

I don’t have any RME components yet but I’m looking at them as a solution, hence this post. I do have everything else.

waedi wrote:

Get rid of the PC and use the Babyface as a mobile solution.

The Macbook pro is a work supplied machine used for software development, conferencing and Spotify only. I would have used just a simple DAC to get the audio out but I need to get that Microphone input in there for conference calls so either I use a crummy 3.5mm mic/headphone adapter or get a USB interface for it too.

waedi wrote:

All your stuff can be connected to the UFX+, no problem.

I think I would have to use the Macbook pro’s 3.5mm port if I only used the UFX+ right? I don’t see another way of getting the microphone input into the Macbook from the UFX+ and the audio signal out of the Macbook into the UFX+.

hselters wrote:

Two computers cannot use the interface at the same time.

OK that’s what I suspected, thanks for confirming. It would be nice if one could act as a network remote or something but I guess that’s where the ARC comes in. I’ll have to look into this iPad remote option a bit more.

hselters wrote:

If you do not need them at the same time, you could use a USB switcher

That crossed my mind but switches as I’m sure you’ve experienced have an extremely wide variety of quality and compatibility. It’s the type of point of failure I’d rather avoid but it would be a large cost savings. Hmm….

I wonder how the UFX+ would respond being hot switched between computers.

hselters wrote:

Also a UCX would do just fine.

I’ll try a diagram with the UCX at the centre. It should be all I need and it would be a nice cost savings. I don’t like that it hasn’t been updated to USB3/Thunderbolt though.

hselters wrote:

Also you might not need that headphone amp, the headphone outs on the RME are quite good and powerful enough to drive any Sennheiser HD6XX.

That’s good to hear! I left it in the diagram to show that I wanted that kind of flexibility. Maybe in the future I’ll splurge on ADI-2 Pro FS R Black Edition!

hselters wrote:

Maybe get a ARC USB for convenience in volume control...

100%

ramses wrote:

I think with a MADI setup something like this is possible, but would be more expensive due to additional MADI components.

You could create a MADI ring of e.g.
+---UFX+ --- Preamp/Converter --- MADIface Pro ---+
|                                                                                |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Then UFX+ and MADIface Pro could access the 64 MADI channels at the same time and route audio to the channels as required. UFX+ and MADIface Pro were only examples, could also be two MADIface Pro or even in combination with MADIface USB. As each MADI device can be mapped to the MADI bus and the recording interfaces can also route their audio to the BUS.

It should even be possible to connect UFX+ and MADIface Pro alone with each other by MADI ...
Then you have a lot of channels to exchange audio through the two devices.

I didn’t know much about MADI so I had to read up on it a bit and it’s blowing my mind.

The possibility of using the UFX+ on my PC and a MADIface on the Macbook and being able to share all those channels between them is overkill but very appealing nonetheless!

You also illuminated something I poorly understood regarding the UFX+ and Babyface Pro FS ability to use ADAT to share channels between devices. If I do get the UFX+ and Babyface Pro FS I could simplify the diagram by just using the ADAT IOs between devices correct? That would allow me to send the Macbook pro computer audio as a channel to the UFX+ and receive the microphone signal at the Macbook all via ADAT.

I wonder how the latency would be with that setup.

Thanks for all the help so far guys.

  • waedi
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

If I do get the UFX+ and Babyface Pro FS I could simplify the diagram by just using the ADAT IOs between devices correct?
Yes, correct.
I wonder how the latency would be with that setup.
If your routing is inside Totalmix only, you will have zero latency !
If your routing is going thru a DAW or OBS or some software, then you can end up having latency up to 5 Milliseconds I guess, depending on what's going on inside the DAW (plugins ).
Adat is an 8-spurige Autobahn, 8 channels in one direction and another 8 channels in the other direction. Lots of signalflow.

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue
  • ramses
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

One of the two interfaces need to be clock master.
Latency for A/D and D/A you find in the manuals.
Latency for the digital transport inside of an interfaces routing matrix or between digital ports you can silently ignore.
The latency between recording interface and computer through USB/FW/TB is higher compared to converter latency and depends on the ASIO buffer size (Windows), also Apple has some buffers (as also documented in the manual).
The RME ASIO driver reports usually the RTL (round trip latency) which is the transport of audio trough USB/FW/...
incl. A/D e.g. from Mic and D/A to phones or monitors.
Make a drawing and then you can add the latencies to it from manual and from the DAW.

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: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

waedi wrote:

If your routing is inside Totalmix only, you will have zero latency !

If your routing is going thru a DAW or OBS or some software, then you can end up having latency up to 5 Milliseconds I guess, depending on what's going on inside the DAW (plugins ).

to 1- Yes. But if the audio signal came from an analog input or is being send to an analog output, then you need to add converter latency.

to 2- is the so called RTL (round trip latency), sum of:
1. A/D on the device
2. transport inside of the device / output to a digital port (this is very low)
3. transport to PC/DAW through USB/FW (depends most on ASIO buffersize and a little on sample rate)
4. processing on PC
5. transport to recording interface through USB/FW (depends most on ASIO buffersize and a little on sample rate)
6. transport inside of the device / output to a digital port (this is very low)
7. D/A to your monitors or phones

If you have the transport
- from UFX+ (Windows) Mic input
- through ADAT
- to BBF Pro (Apple)
- to DAW

Well then you have to perform some calculations
1. A/D on the UFX
2. time for the transport inside of the device, through ADAT to the other device you can ignore
3. time from BBF over USB to PC
   (see reported time in DAW (RTL), minus time for A/D and D/A, divided by 2 = time for 1 way over USB alone)
Well and then it depends to where this audio shall go, e.g.
3. time from PC over USB to recording interface
   (see reported time in DAW (RTL), minus time for A/D and D/A, divided by 2 = time for 1 way over USB alone)
4. D/A towards monitors/phones connected to the BBF

You can't simply take the time for RTL in the DAW, because in this case
- A/D takes place on the one interface
- D/A takes place on the other interface
and the interfaces will have other converters.

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

9 Reply by hselters (edited by hselters 2021-02-23 22:04:50)

  • Registered: 2018-12-21
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Re: Purchase Advice | Gaming/Work/Livestream Setup, 2 Computers, Kemper ++

neurocean wrote:
hselters wrote:

Two computers cannot use the interface at the same time.

OK that’s what I suspected, thanks for confirming. It would be nice if one could act as a network remote or something but I guess that’s where the ARC comes in. I’ll have to look into this iPad remote option a bit more.

You can network control things with Total Mix Remote, not only on the iPad but also available for Win and Mac.

neurocean wrote:
hselters wrote:

If you do not need them at the same time, you could use a USB switcher

That crossed my mind but switches as I’m sure you’ve experienced have an extremely wide variety of quality and compatibility. It’s the type of point of failure I’d rather avoid but it would be a large cost savings. Hmm….

I wonder how the UFX+ would respond being hot switched between computers.

Doing this daily since years, works like a charm and never failed. Using a cheap USB 3.0 switcher from Delock, UFX+ in USB 2.0 mode though due to long cable runs which are not working well with USB 3.0. After switching it takes only a second and the UFX+ connects to the other computer. You can even set Total Mix that it always uses the software settings, otherwise it will ask if you wanna use the ones currently active on the UFX's hardware.

neurocean wrote:
hselters wrote:

Also a UCX would do just fine.

I’ll try a diagram with the UCX at the centre. It should be all I need and it would be a nice cost savings. I don’t like that it hasn’t been updated to USB3/Thunderbolt though.

There is absolutely no need for it to use USB3 as that much bandwidth is simply not required. And USB 2.0 works much better with longer cables as described above. You can just get a cable from USB-C to USB-B if you wanna avoid adapters. About Thunderbolt I agree, it requires quite an adapter chain to adapt to the UCX's FireWire 400... it is still working great on every Mac though.