• Registered: 2021-03-31
  • Posts: 19

Topic: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

I read in the manual that the fireface uc supports balanced for all inputs and outputs. Is it beneficial to connect to the monitors with balanced cables, will i hear a difference? I first used instrumental cables and there was lots of noise. Then i connected a behringer hd400 between the cables and the monitors, so i had to use 4 cables. Now i read that you should use balanced cables for your monitors as they improve sound fidelity. Also a guy said on the internet that he measured the performance of the behringer hd400 between his interface and the monitors and he stated, that it does a bad job while transforming unbalanced to balanced and deteriorates sound quality immensely.
So I have a few questions: Will the quality of my fireface uc´s sound put into the monitors degrade when i use unbalanced cables or the behringer hd400? Which headphones should i use for mixing, does balanced play a role here? Are the beyerdynamic 990 pro good for this task? Is spdif balanced or unbalanced, let´s say i wanted to connect another interface to the uc and get the sounds from the microphones like drums into the fireface uc, does spdif deteriorate the signal? Does using balanced cable on the input in fireface uc improve noise when playing guitar (because i had lots of noise with instrumental cable)?

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-01-22 18:36:04)

  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

Connect monitors balanced, use google to get an explanation why balanced is more resistant against noise.
Balanced is not about sound .. it's about noise cancellation and potentially a little bit higher SNR, but this is not audible.
Don't be fooled by "sound", balanced is +6 dB louder and louder sounds better to our ears.
So when comparing sound pls at exactly the same volume levels.

Balanced for phones is not so important. A little bit less noise (which is not audible) and more volume.
But volume is usually also not a problem for unbalanced phones outputs.

SPDIF is digital transmission, to avoid any kind of hum/noise use optical connections which gives you galvanic isolation like:
- ADAT
- optical SPDIF / AES
- MADI (optical)

To be able to transfer more than 2 channels digital you need ADAT or MADI.
The UC supports ADAT, so you can transfer over TOSLINK cable
- 8 channels at single   speed (44.1/48 kHz)
- 4 channels at double speed (88.2/96 kHz)
- 2 channels at quad    speed (176.4/192 kHz)
Such cables may be 10m long according to standards, but usually even 16m work.
I can recommend Mutec optical / TOSLINK cables, e.g.:
https://www.thomann.de/de/mutec_optisches_kabel_2m.htm

The Behringer is not required.

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

3 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2022-01-24 07:31:09)

  • ramses
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Re: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

[ why did you remove your posting, took some time to answer all of your questions ... ]

> Does +6db mean double the volume?
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm

> I tried balanced now on di input which supports balanced, but it still has disturbances but not so much anymore.
DI input ? What are you talking about now ?
What do you want to connect to where using what type of cable ?

> I had the krk rokits rp7 attached to the fireface uc and they sounded so bad for mixing
> that I thought about unbalanced and balanced and that it may affect my speakers.

Balanced connections are more resistant against noise and run on (higher) studio levels supporting longer cables. So it's a little louder and louder sounds better to our ears (psychoacoustic), but at the same listening levels the sound is the same.

> Support from thomann said, good studio monitors cost 1200 euro a pair, far beyond what I would spend for a monitor.
> Can this really be true? Does it facilitate mixing that much?

Try it out. Go to a shop with high quality music and listen.

> Like with interfaces, they have gone incredible these days, even low-budget ones.
> I think that the fireface uc is exceptional in sound and clarity
> but principally a device from 2021 could hold up with the fireface which released in 2009 already,
> or am I totally wrong here?
> Isn´t the main selling point of the Fireface UC the exquisitely reliable drivers even for the old devices
> like fireface 400 and the superb toalmixfx mixing software with lots of capabilities?

This article gives a few examples what makes RME interfaces different.
See also the Excel for feature comparison: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … B-MADIfac/

Most if not all other vendors - especially applicable consumer devices - do not have such a long product lifecycle
and are far from being able to deliver such a round package where everything has a high quality including documentation.
Often you pay quite high prices already and are still far from getting the overall quality and features of RME including a very mature digital mixer software like TM FX and TM Remote, plus add-on software like DIGIcheck, etc ...
Other consumer devices of other vendors do not even have a FPGA and use 3rd party chips for the USB/FW/... communication towards the PC where nothing can be fixed if there should be a bug in the chips implementation.
Well and the product lifecycle of RME devices is much longer, for some devices already around 20y.

P.S.: just noticed, you got already a lot of informations to this and similar topics in this thread: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=34056. Would have been better, if you stay in this existing thread about UC .. then its better visible, what has been explained to you already to that topic.

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

4 Reply by fritzi (edited by fritzi 2023-01-12 15:15:53)

  • Registered: 2021-03-31
  • Posts: 19

Re: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

ramses wrote:

[ why did you remove your posting, took some time to answer all of your questions ... ]

> Does +6db mean double the volume?
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-levelchange.htm

> I tried balanced now on di input which supports balanced, but it still has disturbances but not so much anymore.
DI input ? What are you talking about now ?
What do you want to connect to where using what type of cable ?

> I had the krk rokits rp7 attached to the fireface uc and they sounded so bad for mixing
> that I thought about unbalanced and balanced and that it may affect my speakers.

Balanced connections are more resistant against noise and run on (higher) studio levels supporting longer cables. So it's a little louder and louder sounds better to our ears (psychoacoustic), but at the same listening levels the sound is the same.

> Support from thomann said, good studio monitors cost 1200 euro a pair, far beyond what I would spend for a monitor.
> Can this really be true? Does it facilitate mixing that much?

Try it out. Go to a shop with high quality music and listen.

> Like with interfaces, they have gone incredible these days, even low-budget ones.
> I think that the fireface uc is exceptional in sound and clarity
> but principally a device from 2021 could hold up with the fireface which released in 2009 already,
> or am I totally wrong here?
> Isn´t the main selling point of the Fireface UC the exquisitely reliable drivers even for the old devices
> like fireface 400 and the superb toalmixfx mixing software with lots of capabilities?

This article gives a few examples what makes RME interfaces different.
See also the Excel for feature comparison: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ind … B-MADIfac/

Most if not all other vendors - especially applicable consumer devices - do not have such a long product lifecycle
and are far from being able to deliver such a round package where everything has a high quality including documentation.
Often you pay quite high prices already and are still far from getting the overall quality and features of RME including a very mature digital mixer software like TM FX and TM Remote, plus add-on software like DIGIcheck, etc ...
Other consumer devices of other vendors do not even have a FPGA and use 3rd party chips for the USB/FW/... communication towards the PC where nothing can be fixed if there should be a bug in the chips implementation.
Well and the product lifecycle of RME devices is much longer, for some devices already around 20y.

P.S.: just noticed, you got already a lot of informations to this and similar topics in this thread: https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=34056. Would have been better, if you stay in this existing thread about UC .. then its better visible, what has been explained to you already to that topic.




Thank you for the detailled explanation. It took me a while to grasp what really makes the Rme different. It took some time to learn about the totalmix software and lots of manual reading and trying out and watching rme youtube vids.

But now over time I very much like the software, I like the flexible routing it provides and that I can loopback individual channels just as I like to feed them back into an input which the audient id14 and ur22c cannot do. The ur22c has loopback, but not so flexible, plus it has no adat or spdif. It has the effects though, which only the ucx and ucx2 have. The audient id14 i bought (not the new version mk2) does not even have loopback. So id14 and ur22c combined would be cool, but even then the software is not so flexible and cannot be compared to rme.

The complete package of many outputs, adat, spdif, and midi none of the id14 and ur22c have. I think I should have bough ucx for effects, because I would like those functions with compression and eq and stuff and the autoset which I think should be very useful against clipping.

I especially find the additional inputs and outputs useful as I bought a digital piano which i can route into the interface via a dual cable to play the sounds of the keyboard into a daw or out from the interface to the piano when I want to feed a mic signal into the digital piano´s speakers for recording it there or having my voice fed into the yamaha p515s speaker.

As the p515 does not have a mic input like the roland fp90, I can only do this via the fireface uc because i don´t think I could route this with any other interface like the ur22c or the id14, the manual states it can be done with a preamp. I loved the p515 because of how it feels to be played tons over the roland fp90x as I have been classicaly trained for piano and noticed the difference as it tops the feel of a real standard piano and can almost be compared to the feel of a grand, while the fp90x does not feel so nice.

Thanks to the uc i have now lots of scenarios where i can use the interface and connect gear to it without problem, even a second montoring speaker set if i would like to without the use of an additional splitter and have it all set up, also midi from p515 into the interface via the breakout cable.

I get the feeling that the total mix software is a complete better version of a mixer where i have the total control over my channels even better when using a standard mixer.

I am still learning about the uc over time. Moreover, with the other interfaces, I fear the update to windows 11. With the rme, I think I will be fine. I don´t want to buy ucx2 right now, but maybe sometimes I will buy it. I definitely see now how powerful the software is. Much newer interfaces have much less to offer and are far behind an interface that was released already in 2004 i think with the uc, also i think there is much more expensive interfaces with only advertise it for the quality of the mic preamps and cannot do what the rme can do.

One question arises though. I have a loopback when I connect to my piano. I need to set the gain lower so it does not occur. Would this vanish if I used a dynamic microphone or does it produce the same screeching noise when gain is set to high? I thought this may be because of phantom power, but I am no sound technician so I can only assume things and try out which would need me to buy a dynamic microphone as I currently only have condensers.

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2007-04-10
  • Posts: 9,549

Re: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

You seem to have a feedback loop configured in your software or in Totalmix somewhere. This shouldn't be happening. Or does the piano signal go back to speakers somehow?

Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME

RME Support's Website

6 Reply by fritzi (edited by fritzi 2023-01-12 15:28:06)

  • Registered: 2021-03-31
  • Posts: 19

Re: Fireface UC, should i use balanced cables?

RME Support wrote:

You seem to have a feedback loop configured in your software or in Totalmix somewhere. This shouldn't be happening. Or does the piano signal go back to speakers somehow?

i think there is an audio loopback option on the yamaha itself. In the manual it is stated to leave this on. I have only one aux on the p515 which i have then connected to two outputs like (analog 3+4) merging into one via an adapter so i can feed the mic signal into the piano. When i now have high gain and the speakers of the p515 on, it screeches, turning the gain down improves it.

loopback is off, I have the mic of the analog 1+2 routed to the 3+4 of the aux output.