There is a new firmware for the RayDAT available. Changes in version 5: ADAT 3/4 and MIDI I/O 1/2 have been swapped. The input receivers mute when no signal is found. Available for both Mac and Win.

The manuals of the HDSP-AES 32 and the HDSPe AES have been updated.

Hello,

the Windows driver 3.069 includes two interesting additions. First the Post fader mode of TotalMix, moving a fader in Input or Playback row with right mouse button held, is now also available by a MIDI command, sending MIDI note hex 0x45 (C4). This equals F16 on the Mackie Control. On the Behringer BCF2000, hold Shift 2 (Encoder groups lower row left) and hit the button left of it (the last of the 16 unlabeled keys).

Second TotalMix now supports the Faderfox TM1, a 6 fader remote control, small, easy to use and totally adapted to TotalMix, so that all functions that one usually needs in the studio are easily available. This includes everything in the right side panels of TM and some more. It's greatest plus is the direct TM compatibility, layout and the small size. No motor faders, so the well-known BCF2000 does not get direct competition. Please don't bother us or Faderfox with further questions about this unit, more information later. The unit will most probably not be available before 2009, and that is really everything you need to know at this point.

Lots of new drivers and firmware on our website:

- HDSP and HDSPe series to 3.074

- Firmware updates for HDSP MADI/AES-32/9652 and HDSPe MADI/AES/RayDAT, Win, Mac Intel and Mac PPC.

Driver 3.079 includes some significant changes which - just this time - I would like to explain in detail.

- Reliable stop of an ASIO thread even in difficult situations. When an ASIO application crashes then usually the driver should notice this and stop playback. This did not work in certain situations. Timur came to Musikmesse to give us a step-by-step example on how to always cause a crash that fails. And indeed, we did everything correctly, just had to use a different function within Windows to finally and reliably identify the current process where the driver has to react on. This also affects the Fireface driver, a fix will come soon.

- Process management of multiclient ASIO did not work as expected on some computers. We have lots of industrial users that write their own software. In this case they ran into a problem that starting a second ASIO app caused ongoing distortion on the first app. They did send us the software and it worked perfectly on our computers. So finally they sent us their computer, and lo and behold the error was there and could be fixed by (similar to above) some changes in how to identify events. So while this error seems to be very seldom it also affects the Fireface driver and a fix will come soon.

- Incompatibility of the driver to cards with PLX (PCIe to PCI) bridge fixed. Some of our industrial users have multichannel AD-cards or special video cards. As soon as they added the AES card the other products failed. The reason was some left code in our driver from the early days of the HDSP AES-32, where we experimented with a PLX Bridge (a product we later never used). Shit happens...

- Settings dialog: Added password protected storage of the current settings for the next reboot. In broadcast environment a fixed setup for easiest and most failure-free operation is desired. But even these users sometimes have to add material from a source that can not be synced (DAT, CD-Player). So they will - for a short time - change the clock setting. Now to make sure that the next day, no matter who uses the workstation everything is in the original state, this new option makes sure that the desired setting is used every time you reboot the computer. This feature makes sense not only in broadcast, IMHO.

- Settings and TM: Experimental extension for operation of up to 6 cards. Selection in TM by left mouse click with held shift key. While we do have lots of customers with miserably performing computers that find no other place to get rid of their frustration than this forum, we do have lots of customers with stellar DAW systems as well, that use 3 MADI cards in 96 kHz mode and ask for a fourth one. Therefore we extended the Settings dialog to handle more than 3 cards correctly. TM's Unit selection is with shift-click, so a max of 6 cards can now be used (theoretically).

- TotalMix: New skin and new icons, Settings dialog: new icons. This driver now includes Terry Gorle's DC skin for TotalMix. I have been working with Rob Sinistral on new icons, and they found their way into both tools as well. We now have icons even in 256 pixel size for Vista - check it out!

The Mac OS 64 bit transition is in full gear, so to say. After the Fireface UC we now provide a fully supported driver for the whole HDSPe series - version 2.69. Some comments are necessary:

We tried hard to make it compatible to older OS, but this seems to be impossible. So the new driver operates from 10.5 on (and this already cost us some hairs that got pulled out). Users of 10.4 have to continue to use the old driver 2.67.

The HDSPe PCI and ExpressCard require a firmware update to version 18 to use this driver. So FIRST update the firmware via the Flash Update Tool, don't worry as the new firmware is downwards compatible, then update to the new driver.

Indeed we would recommend to even deinstall the old driver before updating (after flashing) as described here:

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic … 681#p23681

2.69 comes with a new mechanism to automatically load settings and mixer as soon as a card is found in the system. That has caused some problems in the past, these should be solved now by using a so called Agent. The HDSPe Agent will be installed to /Library/LaunchAgents during the driver installation.

The Settings program has been modified to the latest improvements made in the FF UC driver (DDS removed, sample rate setting which is the same as in Audio MIDI Setup added, plus some 'under the hood' changes)

TotalMix finally uses the new bitmaps, and no longer occasionally crashes on startup.

Sounds like some work done? Definitely. And more to come...

The HDSPe MADIface (Express Card) has been updated to v 15. The firmware update solves some mysterious input detection and lock problems reported.

And here comes another update to firmware 19 for the MADIface, sorry.

HDSPe MADI FX: We got aware of certain motherboards/chipsets that did not work reliable on the record side, for example Intel H55. Therefore we had to change the card's internal PCIe buffering. V 86 required a lot of internal changes in the FPGA. To be on the safe side the older firmware 84_16 is still available on the website, so if you need to return here is the link:

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/fut_hd … win_84.zip

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/fut_hd … mac_84.zip

The latest driver for the HDSP and HDSPe series, v 3.37, has an installer, allows to change the card order when using more than one card, and adds MMCSS option for ASIO.

The latest driver for the HDSPe MADI FX, v 1.14, which also supports the upcoming MADIface XT when used via External PCIe, has the same features, and comes with TotalMix FX 0.99.

Windows: We had to perform a quick fix for the MADIface USB driver 0.9361: it wasn't possible to use the Flash Update Tool to update the firmware to the latest version. Madiface USB driver 0.9362 fixes that.

And Mac drivers 3.07/113 bring back 10.6 compatibility.

The Windows MADIface USB driver has been updated to 0.9375 and includes support for USB 3 pure isochronous streaming as option. For that to become available the MADIface XT has to be flashed to firmware 165. The manuals german/english have been updated with explanations about this, as well as more detailed information about USB 3 and E-PCIe.

The new Mac flash tool flashes 165 as well, but the isochronous option is missing, as currently Macs with USB 3 work perfectly in the (better) default mode of the XT, which includes transfer error correction. You might also want to try the new Mac driver 1.91 (not officially released yet) in case you use the XT in USB 2 mode on 2009 iMacs and MacBook Pros.

The Windows MADIface USB driver has been updated to version 0.9380, including TotalMix FX 0.998:

- Reduced DPC latencies by optimizing the driver code and record functions
- Bug fix: Playback data were not shown correctly in DIGICheck
- ASIO sample rate change did not work correctly in Pyramix

TotalMix FX 0.998
- Improved Undo: Loading a Workspace after editing Snapshots removed the last edits from the undo buffer
- Several small fixes

Will there be an associated Firmware Update for the MF-XT, or will installing this driver by itself enable the -20dB gate threshold?

Thanks!

The new firmware (XT 32, FX 21) is now available for download. The improved DSP routines together with TM FX 0.998 or up bring an extended expander threshold, improved gain control with Limiter/Compressor, improved attack behavior below 6 ms, and at least 20% more DSP power for more EQs and Dynamics than before.

The new Windows driver 0.9383 can (again) significantly improve the performance and behavior of the MADIface USB and MADIface XT - by getting rid of all never used WDM devices. Here is the news:

- New: number of WDM devices can now be defined in the Settings dialog. A reduction accellerates the change of the sample rate, reduces the time of continued CPU load, brings quicker behavior on plugging and unplugging the unit, and reduces the boot time of Windows with connected interface. The best setting is 0, means no WDM devices at all. Only ASIO and MIDI are active then. A typical setting is 1 to 3 devices (WDM for Media Player etc.), also causing a much quicker behavior than full WDM channel count.

- TotalMix FX 0.999

- Note: this driver version requires DIGICheck version 5.71 or higher!

Windows USB driver 0.9387 brings TotalMix FX 1.01 with some changes:

- General: ASIO latency offset includes 'DSP for record' option

- Changed sync behavior for external clocking (ASIO error message)

TotalMix FX 1.01:

- Fixed wrong display of the FX section under Windows XP

- Since 1.0 the LCD support of the Mackie Protocol was broken

- MADIface XT: Main and Phones channel selection in CRM are expanded to MADI channel 64

PCI Express Windows (2.01) and Mac (1.15) drivers for the HDSPe MADI FX and MADIface XT are now available with these changes:

- Extended configuration of WDM devices, includes: global choice between multi-channel (up to 8 channels) or stereo (2 channels) WDM devices. Via ‘Configure‘ a table is shown which allows any of these devices to be activated or deactivated. It is not required anymore to have the first WDM device plus consecutive ones active. The configure dialog can be switched to the Speaker view, where any of the currently active WDM devices can be assigned with the Speaker property. This includes multiple Speaker assignments.

- Number of WDM devices can be set to 0, effectively disabling the WDM functionality and all its side effects

- Improved DirectSound compatibility and operation, especially in Surround/multi-channel modes

Plus TotalMix FX 1.03 (see post one up) and some more. Note that the MADIface XT needs DSP version 33 from now on.

Windows USB driver 0.9410 now includes TotalMix 1.07:

- Fix: ADM steered wrong channels when some channels were in mono mode. Volume of Listenback input is saved. Settings (F3) did not work correctly. Chosing specific Talkback/Listen channels could cause more trouble. Clear Submix (right mouse click) no longer deletes the submix of Talkback and Listen inputs.

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/dr … _09410.zip

Windows MADIface USB driver 0.9430 comes with TotalMix 1.11 and fixes a problem where TM FX is not working for the MADIface USB after driver installation. TM FX news:

- Mirror function for hardware outputs
- Copy function for Input and Playback channels
- Copy function for Input/Output FX
- Added right mouse button context menu to the Matrix channel labels
- New option ‘Hide Control Strip’ in Window menu
- All faders of a fader group which include the Main output now follow the ’Do not load volume/balance’ option
- Added Mackie remote Extender support
- Channel names edit function for Control Room section and Channel Layout dialog

Detailed information: http://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=21921

The new Windows PCIe FX driver 2.05 includes the Windows 10 MMCSS fix already released for the HDSP series.

The new Windows MADIface USB driver 0.9485 for MADIface XT and MADIface USB has been heavily reworked with astonishing results:

- ASIO: improved start/stop routines reduce the time for reconfiguration significantly
- ASIO: improved start/stop routines now allow to change the buffer size (latency) on-the-fly quicker and without USB errors
- ASIO: improved start/stop routines now allow to change the sample rate on-the-fly
- ASIO: improved start/stop routines now allow to change buffer size and sample rate on-the-fly even in multiclient operation

Unfortunately there have been several bugfixes as well:

- Bugfix: DIGICheck Hardware Level Meter did stutter with TotalMix FX window closed
- ASIO: MMCSS switch did not work. Please retest your DAW whether this option on or off gives any benefit. To change issue an ASIO reset.
- ASIO: Added MMCSS support for Windows 10
- ASIO: Number of simultaneous hosts in multiclient operation raised from 4 to 8
- ASIO: bugfix multiclient hosts did not free their slot on exit

New Windows (2.07) and Mac (1.19) PCIe FX series drivers are now available. These include improved Plug & Play and TotalMix FX 1.21 with tons of new features. The new features require a firmware update!

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/dr … in_207.zip
https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/fu … in_new.zip

https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/hd … ac_119.zip
https://archiv.rme-audio.de/download/fu … ac_122.zip

The News:

- Plug & Play behavior optimized. Removing and inserting the ExpressCard or a Tunderbolt PCIe Expansion chassis (with any RME PCIe card inside) made more robust and reliable.

New in TotalMix FX 1.21:

- Win: optimized reaction on stereo gain changes via ADM even if they don't arrive fully synchronized

- Win ADM: odd channels of a stereo pair were sometimes not set correctly when loading a snapshot

- selection dialog improved to prevent select-confirmation already on the first mouse click (example: Reverb - Type)

- the View Options panel can now be collapsed like all the other panels, thus getting more and flexible space

- as with the iPad app, the FX panel can now be opened by clicking on the round DSP meter. The View Options therefore can indeed stay closed after selection of the basic settings.

- Win: changed behavior of the icon in the notification area: first click brings the window into the foreground instead of minimizing it

- many small code improvements and fixes for possible bugs and pitfalls

New in the FX section (Reverb / Echo):

- added 8 new reverb types with individual character and behaviour (requires firmware update for UCX, UFX, 802, MADIface XT and HDSPe MADI FX)

- overall improved tonal character, density and fade out behaviour

- improved operation of Smooth and High Cut controls

- longer reverb time for all reverb types

- some parameters are now saved during normal operation for every reverb type, so that comparison and set up is more easy when switching between them

- improved the sound when using reverb and echo simultaneously. Note that these operate in serial with the echo first, so it is possible to generate echoes that get reverb on them.

- added High Cut (HC) option to the echo effect for more natural sound or an intentional damping

- echo delay time is now shown in ms and BPM, and can also be given as BPM (double-click on lower value)

Detailed information: https://www.forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=22978

Windows driver 0.9526 completes the WDM changes added to the Settings dialog:

- Number of currently active WDM devices is shown in the Settings dialog

- Multi-channel WDM devices will default to 8 channel mode, if possible