Derail away, Lew. I just wanted to vent a bit when I ordered it to some people that would understand my excitment (was at work at the time)
All audio interface and recording technology discussion welcome!
Anywho - after a few days with it these are my preliminary observations.
1: Its awesome
2: No, really, its AWESOME
3: Seriously now, first thing you notice is its so bloody easy to install. And from that moment on it just works (provided, it would seem, that you dont screw with the firewire drivers).
4: Its stable. Like, mountain-range stable. You can boot without it on, then switch it on, then switch it on and off to your hearts content and it doesnt bat an eyelid. I've heard of interfaces (I forget exactly what but I think it was Edirol) that you have to reinstall the drivers on if you switch it off while the PC is on, and my EMU wont let you switch the breakout box on after boot up, or switch it off and back on.
5: The word clock is so, so, so awesome. A: its as solid as the rest of it and B: you can change to any timing without reboot, restart, switching it off or anything else
6: the software control of the device is sweet. EMUs patchmix does a similar job, but this executes it so much better: 2 screens, one for settings, one for levels and routings, very cleverly thought out and you can put it in pretty much any state you like in about 20 seconds.
7: the mixer ROCKS. 3 x 29 faders - physical ins on the top, software procesing channels in the middle and physical outs on the bottom. Anything can be sent anywhere in seconds. You also only have to glance at it to see whats active, whats routed where, what signal strength, panning and panning control, what input gain is applied - anything you want.
8: The DACs are so very clear, so very dynamic. I just moved up from an EMU 1616M (dacs at least advertised as the same as digi HD stuff - how true that is I cant say, I've never used a Digi HD rig, but I can imagine that there are inferiorities in the EMUs compared to the Digi, like the word clock, for example; nonetheless fantastic dacs) and am listening through Adam A7s and senn HD25s and RS130s (havent tried my Future Sonics Atrios or Sure E4s yet), and the sound is very noticably better - more articulate, more controlled when it should be/aggressive when it should be etc etc - I'd trust these dacs with anything.
9: the High-z and XLR inputs are clear as a bell, but full sounding as well. Again, the EMUs were pretty good, but tended toward thin and whispy: these have at least as much detail in the highs, but take in lows and low end dynamics better too. Again
10: a Downside. Goddamn it. The clarity and detail in all frequencies of the pres means my modellers now all sound like shitee, and I have to re-aclimatise myself to their sound and adjust inputs accordingly. Alas I havent hooked up a mic/mics and tried the powerball with it yet as I dont want to scare the very very old people I just moved in next to :(
11: Setting up inputs in Sonar (7 pro) was efortless.
12: With the cache set to 128, latency in sonar is 2.9ms (about the same as the PCI emu). I forget what I tweaked (it was a sonar setting not an RME one), but it can go down to 1.9ms, but I dont see the need to have latency that low, and have run into irritating sounds with such low latency before, so I notched it back up.
13: It coexists with on-board sound very hapily (RME in fact advise that the fireface isnt used for windows sounds, and is not the default device, so I reactivated my strikers soundcard and lined it out to a creative sub& from a 5.1 powering a pair of JBL control 1Gs for 'everyday' sound, set Foobar to use the fireface anyway (so I can listen to music on it) and both are working swimingly. It should also work fine with a PCI card installed as well, since RME suggest "A cheap blaster clone" if you "Cant live without windows sounds".
Thats all for now. I've only had it a few days and I'm far, far from an audio pro, so I cant give a complete analysis anyway (I got it to be something I can rely on, trust not to be a weak link in an audio chain, not to be overpowered by anything, grow into, learn with and hopefully if not never grow out of, take ages to do so - the EMU, great device though it is, was getting just a little small). Outstandingly versatile, great (in that its honest) sounding easy to use, well thought out contraption.
Now, about that Apogee.....:D
