bbecohen wrote:Hey everyone,
As an orchestral composer, I've always struggled with USB or FireWire external audio interfaces. As the number of VST instruments in my sessions grew, I ended up with larger buffer sizes, which resulted in more latency. So, I switched to an RME HDSPe card nearly two decades ago, and I'm currently using the RayDat. I couldn’t be happier with the switch!
Lately, I've been working extensively in the Atmos format and am updating my studio to a 9.1.4 setup. I'm thinking about getting the UFX III to simplify things, especially with AD/DA converters, headphone and built-in preamps. But I'm still concerned about latency.
Has anyone here compared the HDSPe and UFX III? Any noticeable differences in latency or performance? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences!
Thanks a ton!
Bernard
Hi Bernard,
if you want to see some latency comparisons for Windows at 44.1 kHz, see my blog article:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/
All products are "on par", no matter whether you have USB, FW, PCIe
For digital cards (RayDAT, HDSPe MADI FX) I had to add converter latency to get comparable RTL.
With more recent devices / converters, the latency would be a little less.
The UFX III (also UFX II) got some remarkable updates, see this blog article:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … iii-en-de/
Even under high CPU load I didn't experience issues using USB, see blog article
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … cks-de-en/
and especially this forum article where I performed a CPU load/stress test and got no audio loss 64 samples ASIO buffer size
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.ph … 92#p210092
With an UFX III, you have an excellent mix of everything that you might need, a solid base.
Depending on your PC/setup it might be needed to isolate it behind a Sonnet USB3 expansion card with FL1100 USB3 chipset which was tested / validated by RME to work well. See manual.
The HDSPe MADI FX is also a fantastic card. If you plan to work in double speed and if you are using 32 channel MADI devices, like AD/DA converter, then one MADI bus can be full rather quick.
So this card allows you to connect M-32 Pro alike converters with 32 channels to one MADI bus at double speed.
Thereafter, you still have two MADI buses left for adding e.g., mic preamps like 12Mic or other equipment as you like.
Exceptional with the HDSPe MADI FX is the driver, which optimized CPU utilization.
It is explained in this blog article here, download the latest PDF
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … Pro-FS-BE/
PDF: https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/attachme … -v1-1-pdf/
Last recently, the HDSPe MADI FX also got Room EQ and cross-feed.
BTW .. HDSPe MADI FX is the only card with (full) implementation of FX chip.
Similar to your RayDAT the HDSPe MADI FX is a full digital card (with one little exception, the phones output).
RTL will be comparable, converter latency is much smaller anyway compared to transport from/to PC.
If you are using devices with current AD/DA converters then even the converter latency is very low around 5-6 samples.
Also nice with the HDSPe MADI FX, 2x MIDI I/O and AES. Through the AES port you can e.g. integrate one of the reference converters very nicely (ADI-2 Pro FS R BE or ADI-2/4 Pro SE).
You can buy an optional daughter card for getting the 3rd MADI bus also as optical port which I prefer because of the galvanic isolation and OM3/OM4 cables are really well for connecting devices. Copper cable is often a bit stiff.
BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
