best sound card for max msp (LOW LATENCY)
Hi list,
I'm searcing a very good sound card to work with max/msp (very low latency).
Very important question: Firewire or USB ?????
RME Fireface 400 (Firewire) ???
RME Fireface UC (USB) ???
Thanks
FV
I use a RME Fireface UC with great satisfaction (OsX system).
matteo
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www.matteopennese.com
You can also look at RME Babyface. RME says it has very low latency and its size is like Apogee Duet.
Regards.
The MOTU ultralite is very good and get down to 32 sample latency. Also it can be used to send out Control Voltage and Gates to analogue equipment.
If you can afford it, the RME sounds better and the built-in mixer is more versatile. The MOTU and RME are of the very few I would recommend for driver compatibilities and stability. Stay away from Digidesign (and their M-Audio sub-products) and from Roland (who did not nail the OsX drivers the last time I checked).
pa
RME quality of conversion (in this price range)is without doubt nicer to many people, and I agree (I say nicer because better is relative).
MOTU forever...
Just to make an example, I brought my old 828 everywhere , and after a while without even bothering to keep it extremely safe during transport anymore. It took 5 years of intense moving around, gigging, drinking on it - and a blow arrived when a lady at a party was so kind to throw herself in a maniac dance ended up on my FW cable which broke inside the MOTU. Repaired it and still lives, with honor and glory.Got a Ultralite too now.
Worked with Digidesign, and yes, they are not easy or everyday life risky music biz products. AND GO for FW even if the industry is apparently fighting against us FW users.
I have been very happy since I switched to an RME Multiface 2. Last year I needed to get a second interface in addition to my MOTU 828mkII because I was doing some recording work and needed more than 8 channels of analog input. I decided on the RME Multiface 2 because of recommendations from some trusted sources regarding sound quality, stability, and (part of why I use it as my interface when performing live with my laptop) is that I've been told that using RME's HDSP to connect to the interface can allow CPU use in MSP to go a few percent higher without glitching versus FireWire. I have not tested this myself, just came as advice from some trusted sources who have tested it and seems in line with the statements RME makes about the technology. The other reasons I have experienced first hand to why I use RME in live performance vs my MOTU is I love the sound quality and the internal mixing is far superior to the options on the MOTU.
Some friends I know have run into problems with MOTU gear as far as driver stability (on Windows I think) and repeated hardware failure. Personally, I have not had any of those problems. The once or twice I had a driver issue, was quickly fixed by resetting the interface. The one thing I have noticed with my 828mkII and 828s at other studioes is after being on and connected for a long time with the clocked slaved to other gear over ADAT optical (my RME in my case, Yamaha digital mixers--don't remember the model--in other cases) sync problems would sometimes crop up. Never ran into this problem unless leaving the devices powered on for a long time, during any recording session where I slaved the 828mkII to the Multiface 2 to get some extra analog inputs I have had no problems. Whenver I need an interace for my desktop I still use the MOTU as I haven't bought a PCIe card for the Multiface 2 yet, just have the ExpressCard for using with my laptop.
Both are good choices, but as far as sound quality and the internal mixer, I tend to recommend RME interfaces over MOTU these days. I've used Digidesign and M-Audio gear from time to time, and I'd avoid it if you can--really like others have said, RME and MOTU are the best two options as far as I can see.
I agree with what other have said that if choosing between FireWire and USB, I would always go for FireWire. The higher sustained throughput of FireWire seems appealing if you are working with more than stereo and I believe running USB gear uses more CPU than running FIreWire devices.
I own an RME FireFace 800, and I highly recommend it.
One "problem" for some people, could be the form factor.
Drivers are solid, both on macs and on windows. Plus,
there is a possibility that it will be soon supported in
Linux via the FFADO project.
Don't know about F.Face 400.
I am considering UltraLite as a more "portable" solution
myself.
cheers,
Panos
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I own an RME FireFace 800, and I highly recommend it.
One "problem" for some people, could be the form factor.
Yeah, forgot to mention that is another thing I like about the Multiface 2, the size is nice as long as your don't regularly need built-in preamps.
I currently have a MOTU828 mkII (Vista/Centrino-Duo); very solid, latency well under 15ms. Always lusted after RME hardware, and the new Babyface looks very very tasty indeed.
Brendan
quick "me too" on the RME firewire love: the sound *is * better than MOTU , to my ears, as good as the Apoggee interface I listened to.
but i hasten to point out that in reality
unless/even when you own the latest fastest processors,
the speed of the latency one can support is very often limited by the amount of processing you need from the machine during that (latency producing) sound buffer period: shorten latency up fast enough to satisfy a classically trained guitarist on a 2GHz G5 like mine , and even one Camel Alchemy plugin voice (to name a cpu intensive synth) can produce calculation based stuttering...
and even on the most powerful intel multicores, one can run into a need for longer sound buffers/more latency to avoid stuttering when recording along with amp emulations, dynamics processing, convolution-based reverb, etc.
so , other than that caveat, the firewire RME device I own has been a blessing.. i can get down to barely detectable latencie s ..the smallst buffer size my RME offers me is 14 samples: thst is insane, and I don't think my processor could do much of anything (like run a DAW) with that small a time slice...28samps roundtrip @44100 = 6,2ms or so?
just some thoughts, YMMV
j2k