Topic: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

Hey there.

I recently Bought a new studio PC, this is the setup:

* I9 14000KS CPU
* corsair DDR5 5400mhz
* SSD nvm2 SSD 5th generation
* gygabite aero g Z970
* RME UCX

Im looking to get the lowest latency, lowest buffer size possible working with heavy projects with lots of channels and plugins.

Im using the UCX and ChatGPT suggected me to upgrade to a thunderbolt supported audio card like the UFX+.

It explained it like this: "You are driving a fast car, which is your system, in a traffic jam ,which is the USB 2 connector of the UCX".

ChatGPT is sure that i will experience drastic improvement in latency with the thunderbolt connection.

This card is over 3000$ here in Israel and I dont mind upgrading if it will give me the improvement in latency.

I was sure that the driver is what matters when it comes to the latency regarding the audio card. other than CPU, SSD...etc..

2 (edited by waedi 2024-10-20 16:03:01)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

You are not the only one who wants low-latency audio interface. The whole industry is working on that goal.

At the moment the RME UfX lll is the top notch model.

Thunderbolt is legacy, why should you invest in an outdated technology ?
Trying to compete in a modern car racing with an oldtimer ?

ChatGPT did only compare the numbers of bandwith of USB and thunderbolt and throwing the conlusion on you, USB2 would be traffic jam...!
The Digiface USB uses USB2 for 66 channels low-latency, no problem.
Your UCX has 36 channels, there is nothing wrong with that interface.

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue

3 (edited by ramses 2024-10-20 21:25:32)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

I would prefer to rely on the judgement of experts when it comes to questions like this rather than trusting ChatGPT's thumen babble. ChatGPT is like a stirring rod. All the rubbish from the Internet is properly mixed and reprocessed. ChatGPT has no judgement whatsoever about what information is right or wrong.

All RME drivers are of high quality. All current interfaces of recent years have built-in converters with low latency. There is virtually no latency within the RME interfaces.

The extent to which you can reduce the buffer size to a minimum for large projects or CPU-hungry VSTi essentially depends on the quality of your computer. This doesn't just mean pure benchmark performance, but above all whether the CPU can process the workload efficiently and agilely or whether cores are blocked by bad drivers.

The larger and more complex a project, the more compromises you have to make. You can also set up a project incorrectly. Use too many inserts in one track and so on.

The best recording interface with the best drivers cannot help you if there are deficits in the above points or if the load is simply too high and cannot be processed in time with the set ASIO buffersize.

However, RME drivers and the internal structure of RME recording interfaces are of the highest quality. Here you have at least the best basic requirements at recording interface level for every device.

I compared the RTL of different interfaces that I owned or had access to, see here:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/

I would concentrate more on the features that you need.

After the implementation of Room EQ you might be interested to get one of the interfaces with support for RoomEQ and crossfeed like e.g.: UCX II, UFX II, UFX III or maybe also HDSPe MADI FX (newer models of this card).

This excel from my Blog might also help you comparing features of the different interfaces:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=35156

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

4 (edited by jonathanmorgan23 2024-10-21 13:06:58)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

I would prefer to rely on the judgement of experts when it comes to questions like this rather than trusting ChatGPT's thumen babble. ChatGPT is like a stirring rod. All the rubbish from the Internet is properly mixed and reprocessed. ChatGPT has no judgement whatsoever about what information is right or wrong.

All RME drivers are of high quality. All current interfaces of recent years have built-in converters with low latency. There is virtually no latency within the RME interfaces.

The extent to which you can reduce the buffer size to a minimum for large projects or CPU-hungry VSTi essentially depends on the quality of your computer. This doesn't just mean pure benchmark performance, but above all whether the CPU can process the workload efficiently and agilely or whether cores are blocked by bad drivers.

The larger and more complex a project, the more compromises you have to make. You can also set up a project incorrectly. Use too many inserts in one track and so on.

The best recording interface with the best drivers cannot help you if there are deficits in the above points or if the load is simply too high and cannot be processed in time with the set ASIO buffersize.

However, RME drivers and the internal structure of RME recording interfaces are of the highest quality. Here you have at least the best basic requirements at recording interface level for every device.

I compared the RTL of different interfaces that I owned or had access to, see here:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/

I would concentrate more on the features that you need.

After the implementation of Room EQ you might be interested to get one of the interfaces with support for RoomEQ and crossfeed like e.g.: UCX II, UFX II, UFX III or maybe also HDSPe MADI FX (newer models of this card).

This excel from my Blog might also help you comparing features of the different interfaces:
https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=35156

Well, this is the reason i decided to post here in the forum. The answer by chatgpt was a bit weird to me as i thought the most important things in regards to letancy is the cpu, ssd and the quality of audio interface drivers. This is why i bought the fastest pc possible.

Thanks for your answer to my post.

My last PC suffered serious latency issues in heavy projects, eventually leading me to ditch ableton live as i think its horrible when it comes to latency and PDC. I find Bitwig way better in dealing with this.

If upgrading to ufx+ or ufx3 wont really make a difference when it comes to lower buffer sizes i would appreciate any advice or best practices to enjoy low latency with heavy projects full of plugins.

Thanks.

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

waedi wrote:

You are not the only one who wants low-latency audio interface. The whole industry is working on that goal.

At the moment the RME UfX lll is the top notch model.

Thunderbolt is legacy, why should you invest in an outdated technology ?
Trying to compete in a modern car racing with an oldtimer ?

ChatGPT did only compare the numbers of bandwith of USB and thunderbolt and throwing the conlusion on you, USB2 would be traffic jam...!
The Digiface USB uses USB2 for 66 channels low-latency, no problem.
Your UCX has 36 channels, there is nothing wrong with that interface.

Is Thunderbolt 4 legacy?

Chatgpt insists that moving to a thunderbolt audio interface can improve performance when it comes to latency. This sounded a bit weird to me as i thought all RME drivers are top quality and that its mainly about my PC setup. This is why im asking here in the forum to get advice from experts.

My last setup with ableton was horrible, even the cursor wasnt in sync.

You suggested the ufx3, will this audio interface provide better performance other than my UCX?

Thanks.

6 (edited by ramses 2024-10-21 00:47:33)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

No, waedi just expresses himself a little strangely sometimes.
Thunderbolt 4 is of course not legacy, but that doesn't really help. An implementation of TB4 for a recording interface is too complex for the pure function of a recording interface. There are also compatibility problems with TB1+2.
More seriously, Intel no longer produces TB1-3 chips. The manufacturers will use what is available and after that, Thunderbolt on recording interfaces will probably be a thing of the past. At least that is the case from RME's point of view. That's what Waedi will have meant, but he wrote it a bit too generally.

I have already answered your questions about performance, but you seem to have missed the point.

Let me put it another way. A recording interface is not an accelerator for audio processing. It's not like a graphics card where you stuff a bigger model into the computer and suddenly a miracle happens and everything is faster. It doesn't work like that. Even with a graphics card, the CPU has to be powerful enough to deliver data to the card quickly enough, otherwise the CPU is the bottleneck.

When it comes to audio processing, neither Windows nor macOS are real-time operating systems in which audio processes can really be prioritised accordingly. To ensure data integrity, low level routines have absolute priority over everything else, including the prioritisation of processes by the process scheduler.

Low level routines are drivers .. It is completely up to drivers on your system, how long they run on a CPU core. Only the driver can detach itself from a CPU core. There are programming conventions for how long this should be at maximum, but some drivers are simply written bad or the company wants to shine in Benchmarks. Such "bad drivers" cause these so called DPC latencies. They can block a CPU core for too long. If important audio processes are scheduled to run on such a CPU core, then it can come to audio drops.

Its is not only important that your system has a fast CPU. There are so many more aspects where the system needs to be excellent, if you want to execute performance hungry VST/VSTi and at the same time with small ASIO buffers.
Like in formula 1 .. You do not win, if you only look for the most powerful motor, everything needs to perform.

So .. again .. a recording interface is no recording or audio accelerator. A system with bad drivers or bad bios/mainboard chipset will get problems with too low buffer sizes earlier than a good system.

The more channels the PC has to process and the higher the sample rate is .. the more stress you put on the system.
Every channel needs to be transferred instantly by your system over PCIe or USB .. no matter whether the channel is in use or not (only a few exception to this rule of thumb exist).

You want to compare UCX with UFX III.
The UCX is an older interface with a little slower converters, but differences in converter latency are tiny compared to latencies due to higher ASIO buffers. Check the RME manual chapter 39.2, Latency and Monitoring.
If you compare this between UCX and UFX III you will see that there is not so much difference.

When you compare UCX USB driver and UFX III MADIface driver. The MADIface driver allows for 32 samples ASIO buffer size, the USB driver has 48 samples as minimum. But also here, this is not a big difference. And tbh .. nobody would really run instantly with only 32 samples buffersize. Its nice to see that this is possible, but for real work you use 64 or 128 (when working with VSTi). If you are only recording, then better use big ASIO buffer sizes for safety. For Mixing and Mastering it depends on the projects, if they are not so big you might work well with 128, 256 or 512 samples buffer at single speed.

My projects are not that big. I am running nearly instantly at 64 samples for normal operation and this with a system which is 10y old with E5-1680v4. But all components are selected and the mainboard is a good server mainboard. With this system everything works smoothly. But too CPU hungry VST/VSTi can bring it down. Therefore I avoid such tools.

If I would do something critical I would definitively increase the buffer size, only keep it at lower values when playing over a virtual amp. But also here with 128 samples ASIO buffersize I stay under 10ms RTL which makes smooth playing possible.

Regarding my system, I have a synthetic Benchmark, it performs with UFX, UFX+, UFX III as well as with a RayDAT PCIe card.
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … cks-de-en/

But every system behaves differently ... and no workload is really the same.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

I was referring to the UFX+ for being a Legacy product, as it is listed under Legacy products.
Buying an UFX+ today makes in my opinion only sense if you need a Madi interface and have a computer with a working thunderbolt port.
Upgrading from UCX to a new USB-3 interface seems to be more reliable to me.

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue

8 (edited by ramses 2024-10-21 04:42:38)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

There's just this small difference between what you might have meant and what you wrote.

>>   "Thunderbolt is legacy, why should you invest in an outdated technology ?"

Too much of a generalization

>>    "Trying to compete in a modern car racing with an oldtimer?"

There are some differences between UFX+ and UFX II feature wise, but performance wise (be it TB vs. USB3 or regarding converter latency) they are not that great that such a statement would be justified.

See
- https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … x-and-ufx/
- https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … cts-en-de/
- RME manuals regarding technical data and converter latency

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

No, waedi just expresses himself a little strangely sometimes.
Thunderbolt 4 is of course not legacy, but that doesn't really help. An implementation of TB4 for a recording interface is too complex for the pure function of a recording interface. There are also compatibility problems with TB1+2.
More seriously, Intel no longer produces TB1-3 chips. The manufacturers will use what is available and after that, Thunderbolt on recording interfaces will probably be a thing of the past. At least that is the case from RME's point of view. That's what Waedi will have meant, but he wrote it a bit too generally.

I have already answered your questions about performance, but you seem to have missed the point.

Let me put it another way. A recording interface is not an accelerator for audio processing. It's not like a graphics card where you stuff a bigger model into the computer and suddenly a miracle happens and everything is faster. It doesn't work like that. Even with a graphics card, the CPU has to be powerful enough to deliver data to the card quickly enough, otherwise the CPU is the bottleneck.

When it comes to audio processing, neither Windows nor macOS are real-time operating systems in which audio processes can really be prioritised accordingly. To ensure data integrity, low level routines have absolute priority over everything else, including the prioritisation of processes by the process scheduler.

Low level routines are drivers .. It is completely up to drivers on your system, how long they run on a CPU core. Only the driver can detach itself from a CPU core. There are programming conventions for how long this should be at maximum, but some drivers are simply written bad or the company wants to shine in Benchmarks. Such "bad drivers" cause these so called DPC latencies. They can block a CPU core for too long. If important audio processes are scheduled to run on such a CPU core, then it can come to audio drops.

Its is not only important that your system has a fast CPU. There are so many more aspects where the system needs to be excellent, if you want to execute performance hungry VST/VSTi and at the same time with small ASIO buffers.
Like in formula 1 .. You do not win, if you only look for the most powerful motor, everything needs to perform.

So .. again .. a recording interface is no recording or audio accelerator. A system with bad drivers or bad bios/mainboard chipset will get problems with too low buffer sizes earlier than a good system.

The more channels the PC has to process and the higher the sample rate is .. the more stress you put on the system.
Every channel needs to be transferred instantly by your system over PCIe or USB .. no matter whether the channel is in use or not (only a few exception to this rule of thumb exist).

You want to compare UCX with UFX III.
The UCX is an older interface with a little slower converters, but differences in converter latency are tiny compared to latencies due to higher ASIO buffers. Check the RME manual chapter 39.2, Latency and Monitoring.
If you compare this between UCX and UFX III you will see that there is not so much difference.

When you compare UCX USB driver and UFX III MADIface driver. The MADIface driver allows for 32 samples ASIO buffer size, the USB driver has 48 samples as minimum. But also here, this is not a big difference. And tbh .. nobody would really run instantly with only 32 samples buffersize. Its nice to see that this is possible, but for real work you use 64 or 128 (when working with VSTi). If you are only recording, then better use big ASIO buffer sizes for safety. For Mixing and Mastering it depends on the projects, if they are not so big you might work well with 128, 256 or 512 samples buffer at single speed.

My projects are not that big. I am running nearly instantly at 64 samples for normal operation and this with a system which is 10y old with E5-1680v4. But all components are selected and the mainboard is a good server mainboard. With this system everything works smoothly. But too CPU hungry VST/VSTi can bring it down. Therefore I avoid such tools.

If I would do something critical I would definitively increase the buffer size, only keep it at lower values when playing over a virtual amp. But also here with 128 samples ASIO buffersize I stay under 10ms RTL which makes smooth playing possible.

Regarding my system, I have a synthetic Benchmark, it performs with UFX, UFX+, UFX III as well as with a RayDAT PCIe card.
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … cks-de-en/

But every system behaves differently ... and no workload is really the same.

First of all, thanks a lot for the extensive answer, now I understand better. Basically, Upgrading my audio interface wont change much and It mosly depends on companies to write high quality drivers. So, there is not much i can do in this matter. Is there a way to the scan my system somehow in order to view if any driver is might be causing problems? Maybe its a good routine to maintain a solid system after driver updates.

Regarding my PC, I didnt just get a fast CPU, I tried to purchase the best overall components possible in order to avoide bottlenecks. A 5th generation ssd, DDR5 RAM 5400mhz, and a GYGABITE AERO G motherboard.

What about Optimizing windows for audio work? Doesnt it prioritize audio processes over the others? what about the way Apple handles drivers other then windows? Does it have any advantage when it comes to real time audio processing?

By the way, You mentioned Room EQ - do you mean REW? Does it mean that after scaning the room you can load the file into the card software and it will eq correct the curve of the monitor output?

Again, thanks a lot for your answer.

10 (edited by ramses 2024-10-21 14:15:04)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

LatencyMon is the tool for that. You can find a lot of threads in this forum.
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Check a few typical settings in the BIOS and on Windows, to e.g. disable energy saving or power-saving for USB, PCIe.
Some examples from my system:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … -X10SRi-F/

Most important is IMHO - if you have Intel System - the following BIOS settings
- Disable C-States (and if your system has P- and T-states)
- Disable C1E (enhanced halt state)

You can use Bitsums ParcControl to review / adjust the power profile settings for CPU core parking and CPU clock
https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

You should also think of getting longer quanta for the Windows process scheduler, see my blog article.
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … es-or-not/

Disable telemetry and background processes (apps) and other stuff with O&O Win10 ShutUp++:
https://www.oo-software.com/de/shutup10

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

11 (edited by jonathanmorgan23 2024-10-21 20:12:20)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

LatencyMon is the tool for that. You can find a lot of threads in this forum.
https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

Check a few typical settings in the BIOS and on Windows, to e.g. disable energy saving or power-saving for USB, PCIe.
Some examples from my system:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … -X10SRi-F/

Most important is IMHO - if you have Intel System - the following BIOS settings
- Disable C-States (and if your system has P- and T-states)
- Disable C1E (enhanced halt state)

You can use Bitsums ParcControl to review / adjust the power profile settings for CPU core parking and CPU clock
https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/

You should also think of getting longer quanta for the Windows process scheduler, see my blog article.
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/Ent … es-or-not/

Disable telemetry and background processes (apps) and other stuff with O&O Win10 ShutUp++:
https://www.oo-software.com/de/shutup10

Wow, nice! Thanks a lot, I wil review all of this information. Its all safe in regards to the BIOS\CPU right?

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

Yes, but I wonder why you ask. In what regards safe? Or where you have doubts?

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

jonathanmorgan23 wrote:

Is Thunderbolt 4 legacy?

Chatgpt insists that moving to a thunderbolt audio interface can improve performance when it comes to latency. This sounded a bit weird to me as i thought all RME drivers are top quality and that its mainly about my PC setup. This is why im asking here in the forum to get advice from experts.

ChatGPT is very unreliable, as Ramses wrote (to paraphrase) earlier in this thread.

This is my experience as well as a software developer where the generated code may seem correct but is still wrong, sometimes very subtly so. While it can be a useful tool for areas you know very well, it's dangerous otherwise.

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

Yes, but I wonder why you ask. In what regards safe? Or where you have doubts?

Ah, in regards to changes in the BIOS. In some forums I've seen instructions including changing voltage parameters and clocks speeds, Which are basically overclocking, and I know that might be risky with non sufficient cooling, or monitoring CPU temp's.

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

OK, but I didn't tell you anything like this.

I am also not a friend of overclocking because I do not like to operate components outside their specifications, I like to play it safe.

Deactivation power saving and alike in the BIOS is useful; otherwise you get higher DPC latencies.
This you see in all recommendation for tuning DAW for optimum performance.
The result of higher DPC latencies is, that audio drops are much more likely with smaller ASIO buffers and higher system load.

You can also see it in my blog article which additional DPC latency you usually get the deeper the sleep state is.
Ideal is if the CPU stays at C0/C1 and if CPU core parking is deactivated.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

OK, but I didn't tell you anything like this.

I am also not a friend of overclocking because I do not like to operate components outside their specifications, I like to play it safe.

Deactivation power saving and alike in the BIOS is useful; otherwise you get higher DPC latencies.
This you see in all recommendation for tuning DAW for optimum performance.
The result of higher DPC latencies is, that audio drops are much more likely with smaller ASIO buffers and higher system load.

You can also see it in my blog article which additional DPC latency you usually get the deeper the sleep state is.
Ideal is if the CPU stays at C0/C1 and if CPU core parking is deactivated.

Overclocking is point and click these days. Not that it was any harder 20 y ago

ADI-2 DAC, ADI-2 PRO, DigifaceUSB, UCXII, ARC, HEGEL.h80, KEF.ls50, HD650, ie400pro _,.\''/.,_

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

OK, but I didn't tell you anything like this.

I am also not a friend of overclocking because I do not like to operate components outside their specifications, I like to play it safe.

Deactivation power saving and alike in the BIOS is useful; otherwise you get higher DPC latencies.
This you see in all recommendation for tuning DAW for optimum performance.
The result of higher DPC latencies is, that audio drops are much more likely with smaller ASIO buffers and higher system load.

You can also see it in my blog article which additional DPC latency you usually get the deeper the sleep state is.
Ideal is if the CPU stays at C0/C1 and if CPU core parking is deactivated.

Oh great, I saw this and wondered if its some kind of overclocking "adjust the power profile settings for CPU core parking and CPU clock https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/"

Im looking forward to try your advice.

18 (edited by ramses 2024-10-21 17:51:59)

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

Do what you can, but please be careful not to recommend it in general. Especially not for an area where stability is (or should be) more important than squeezing out the last bit of performance. And please, don't start a fundamental discussion about overclocking, thanks.

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

ramses wrote:

Do what you can, but please be careful not to recommend it in general. Especially not for an area where stability is (or should be) more important than squeezing out the last bit of performance. And please, don't start a fundamental discussion about overclocking, thanks.

Me? hehe...I never overclocked a PC, I thought you were suggesting it with this:

"adjust the power profile settings for CPU core parking and CPU clock https://bitsum.com/parkcontrol/"

Im more into optimizing my PC for audio other than squeezing out the last bit of performance, like you mentioned.

Re: Upgrading from the UCX to UFX+

I meant Happy...

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14