One of the best things about the Fireface 800 is that if your computer crashes, the sound keeps going - so you can use it to mix live, or in the studio, stay in communication with others that are connected to the busses (headphones) while the computer resets. Using a PCI/e card won't give this functionality, as the power drops on the PCI bus when the computer resets, there will be no audio pass through. Granted that all the MADI connected boxes (ADI, Mictasy etc) will still operate normally (maybe loose sync if HDSP MADI is master clock), but the sound passes through the PCI/e card so there will be a break in circuit when the power drops.

I began thinking about the plausibility of a standalone RME MADI box. There are lot's of things you could add to, say a hard drive to act as a stand alone recorder, Balanced i/o's, some sort of LAN funtionality and a digital option slot. The major brick wall I hit was, how would you then interface it with a computer.

This post is just to stir the pot a little, any ideas anyone?