I have owned several RME interfaces and devices over the past decade or so and have never had any trouble figuring out the Totalmix mixer. I picked up a Babyface a while back and immediately noticed that output channels routed from Cubase 5, did not seem to be getting to the right analog outputs via the interface. After hours of fiddling and playing around with the TotalMix FX I decided to bite the bullet and RTFM.....this helped....or maybe confused me more, i don't know...

Long story short, it sometimes seems that I spend more time trying to figure out how to route a damn output from Cubase, through the Totalmix FX mixer, without having it "crossed" with another output, than I do recording. I can't bill my clients for this time and it makes me look foolish, which maybe I am....but this software is FRUSTRATING AS HELL!!!!

Here's where I'm at. I have Cubase 5 sending a HP mix to RME "Analog 3" and "Analog 4"....in the Totalmix FX mixer, software playback section, the second fader in the group shows "PH 3/4" at the top of the "strip" and "PH 3/4" at the bottom....there is signal present on this channel and the fader is set to unity! It SHOULD be that simple....the control room mixer seems practically useless and impossible to use, but just to be safe I have selected assign > phones 1 > PH 3/4 and turned the fader to unity on the channel marker "Phones 1"....there is no signal indication on this channel.

So, I have PH 3/4 coming from Cubase (indicated by the signal on the fader) and even though every fader I can find that is associated with PH 3/4 or "Phones 1" (which SHOULD be "assigned" to PH 3/4) is turned up, I get NOTHING in the phones.....I even made sure the volume is turned up on the interface itself for "Phones" and DIM is not selected.

Now, for the really frustrating part....if I go back up to "software playback" and turn up AN 1/2 in the PH 3/4 output, I get audio in the headphones immediately.....WTF?!?!?!? Seriously?!?!

I do not expect to get a useful answer to this question....I'm sure I will figure it out anyway before anyone responds. My point is that this is the most frustrating, least intuitive, most confusing MADDENING piece of garbage software I've EVER used......I won't sell my babyface because of it, but I definitely won't recommend it to a friend or client until it's FIXED!

Thanks, RME, for spending a ton of time to make a complete TURD!!!! Now excuse me while i click on a bunch of random garbage until I can hear the correct mix in the headphones....