ramses wrote:> Is there a PCIE card by RME that has EQ? (Besides of HDSPe MADI FX)
No
> What is your general difference in latency between UCX II and HDSPe units?
Extremely low, check my comparison for different products here:
As a side note … which latency do you mean?
A) Converter Latency?
The RayDAT has no AD/DA converter, this you can't compare and depends on what device you connect via AD/DA
B) Latency for transport through PCIe/USB? Nearly the same.
C) RTL (round trip latency, incl. AD, DA, transport from/to PC)?
Depends to the highest degree on the selected ASIO buffer size.
Converter latency: Is in the range of 5–6 samples for the UCX II which is 0.11/0.13ms for AD/DA (worst case at 44.1 kHz, with higher sample rates it becomes even lower). Again: RayDAT has no converter of its own.
RTL: In contrast to that, the RTL can be between 3-~100ms depending on whether you choose an ASIO buffer size of 32 or 2048 samples at single speed.
As a side note: not much important, but I want to mention it. There is a little difference between the lowest ASIO buffersize that you can select in different drivers. The RME HDSPe driver has 32 samples as the lowest ASIO buffersize at single speed. The RME USB driver 48 samples. The MADIface driver, 32 samples.
But this is kind of "artificial". Nobody would permanently work with 32 samples because the risk of getting audio drops is simply too high if you work on DAW project with different VST and maybe also VSTi.
Normally, everything up to 128 samples ASIO buffer lets you stay under 10ms, which is critical for playing VSTi.
And for pure recording, you would anyway use the highest value to have the best stability and that nothing gets lost during a recording session.
I used 32 samples only at the beginning when I tested Amp VSTi. Otherwise, I made the experience that I can play guitar very well in time if the RTL stays below 10ms. And this is the case with any ASIO buffer size of up to 128ms at single speed.
Well, but this is a special case and not applicable for everybody.
D) DPC Latencies
Regarding "My PC is very capable". Maybe in usual synthetic benchmarks, but they do not check whether the system can
handle audio applications with real-time requirements well, which is a different thing compared to pure number crunching.
DPC latencies can happen when badly written drivers block CPU cores for too long. You do not hear it as a delay (like an audio effect) but if the PC cannot process audio in time, then you will get audio loss at a certain point.
If an audio process is scheduled to such a CPU core, then audio loss can easily happen, no matter how powerful your PC or CPU actually is.
Should you use very low ASIO buffer sizes, then the risk is increased that a PC might not be able to process audio in time.
There are other things around energy saving, BIOS, 3rd party USB chips, bad mainboard design which can also be reasons, why a PC can be powerful but not well suited for processing applications with near-realtime processing requirements.
Great measurements in that picture you linked, but I wish you did UCX II in there too.
Since you have not included UCX II in that ranking, what is approximate percentage difference between it and Raydat?
I am not looking for exact here, but generally what would you say is the percentage between them (if you know) ?
This is my latency report, and that is the same be that an hour or 5 minutes of running, stays pretty fixed, only current value jumps up to 25 once in the while
What do you think of it?
You see, I am battling pops and clicks that happen when I listen to music, look through Youtube, or simply play games, I am not even talking about recordings. It seem like I have pops and clicks even with higher buffers and HDSPe Raydat.
I tried to isolate the issue, but the only thing that could be part of the issue imo is the GPU and my older Saffire Pro 40.
Perhaps it's the clock that is being unstable on the unit itself, or transient spikes of RTX 4090 (well documented issues with 4090 cards)
I started having FW Active lock issues with Saffire Pro 40, so I put it in standalone and use HDSPe as Master clock, and tried to sync to Saffire by running Saffire as Master as well.
I still have an occasional pop. I ran 64 samples and 96khz (same as Saffire) on HDSPe Raydat, then after having couple of clicks, I bumped it up to 256 and 512, and I actually didn't see much difference, so I set it back to 64 samples 96khz 24 bit.
I speculate it's an older Saffire Pro 40, but I cannot be 100% sure. I have no other ADAT device to sync HDSPe Raydat to.
I was thinking of buying DAC for Raydat, or returning it and getting UCX II, because it has what I need + EQ in Total Mix.
There is something wrong with that signal chain, but I cannot trace it, it happens way less with HDSPe, but it still happens, and it's random, be that high buffer or low through Hammerfall DSP software.
I would jump to UCX II instantly if I knew I would get rid of these pops and clicks completely :-(
Right now UCX II is also sold out on Sweetwater, so I can't purchase one to try, and return window on my HDSPe is running out in next couple of weeks.
Don't know what to do for certain.
Other brands like Focusrite and Audient, SSL2+ and such had constant drop outs, way worse than my Saffire Pro 40 over Firewire.
So, I returned them all.
Have you experienced pops and clicks while doing normal things such as Youtube with USB 2.0 RME devices?
I know RME is quality, but it's also picking a right configuration, and knowing how low can I run my buffers, as higher buffers affect some things negatively for me, besides of recording audio.
I play competitive games, where a 5 ms can make a difference as I listen to footsteps and such.
I also hate recording with 10 ms latency, that is disorienting for a style I record in. It makes me slow down a lot.
Thanks for input
I have done a lot of reading on these units, but the ultimate answer eludes me
