Hi Everyone,

I am a new RME fireface UC owner and i have a question about using SPDIF. I saw somewhere that you could loopback the SPDIF connecion to record system audio back into the DAW without re-conversion.. great idea!

I tried this, and the results were interesting... I took a mixdown and played it out of Itunes and recorded into protools... sound was not so great! It sounded like a dulled down version of the song when i A/B with the original mixdown playing back beside the new recorded version in pro tools... i basically came to the conclusion that the itunes playback engine is pretty horrible.

so then i recorded directly out of pro tools and back into protools via SPDIF. The sound was much better this time but still the recorded file did not have the same stereo width and clairity of the original, but it was MUCH better than when recording out of ITUNES.

Since the SPDIF loop back didn't re-convert anything the signal sound be identical to the original, or no? How much quality loss is normal in this sort of situation? Is there a tweak or two i should do to the SPDIF settings to get better quality from the loopback?

My focusrite mixcontrol has a built in feature for loopback to the DAW which is suuuper handy. I find myself wishing for this feature in totalmix... SPDIF should be the next best thing??

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated

*****
macbook pro 13inch (2010 model)
4gigs Ram/ OS up to date
rme fireface UC
Protools 9
Logic 9
Cubase 5
1tb Gtechnology FW800 drive