Audio Interfaces For Jaguar+, Requesting EXPERIENCED opinions Options

[Levon River]

I'd really appreciate hearing recent experiences from users of various audio interfaces that absolutely, guaranteed, no doubt work under 10.2 and later. I'd like messages in this topic confined ONLY to those interfaces. (Now, by that, I hope it's clear that I obviously *don't* mean audio interfaces that won't work under anything else but 10.2+--even if there is any such interface, which I severely doubt--but I figured I'd better clarify this or sure as grits is groceries somebody would try to interpret it that way.)

So much has changed so fast, and there has been so much written in this forum on various audio interfaces--often with NO distinction regarding whether they are being used under 9 or X--that I think it would be very helpful to collect at least an informal round-up of user experiences with the current crop that are KNOWN to be working and supported in OS X 10.2+.

If you are currently using any audio interface under 10.2+, I'd really like to hear about your experiences, with the following information:

1) Type of connection (USB, Firewire, PCI card, etc.)

2) Simultaneous audio input/output capabilities of the interface.

3) Digital I/O capabilities if any (If so, what?)

4) Audio resolution.

5) Quality of the A/D-D/A in your opinion.

6) MIDI I/O included?

7) DSP onboard, if any, and quality thereof

8) Any particular software included--or required.

9) Any other bells and whistles you want to mention.

Love to hear your views, reviews, and rants.

[filarion]

Alright, here goes!

Audio Interface used: RME Hammerfall DSP Multiface / Cardbus combo.

1) Cardbus card with proprietary (but easily available) cable to breakout box. when used with the PCI card it's being powered over that cable, the Cardbus card can't do that, but there's a car adapter included in addition to an ac adapter. plus, the manual describes how to set it up with a battery.

2) 18 in/out simultaneously. 8 analog balanced I/O's as TRS jacks, one Adat optical I/O, one S/PDIF I/O.

3) 8 channels via ADAT, 2 via S/PDIF, ADAT Sync in, wordclock i/o

4) 24/96

5) best I've heard in its class. it's no apogee and rme's own more expensive stuff probably beats it as well, but as far as audio interfaces go it beats the stuff I can compare to (audiowerk, pulsar, layla) out of the water.

6) yup, 1 midi I/O, defunct under OSX so far, support promised once the driver hits 1.0

7) dedicated mixing dsp for promised zero cpu load - works fined in windoze and os9, under osx there currently still is a constant cpu load when the driver is open. nothing other audio interfaces won't do though. I hope it'll get fixed soon.

8) just a settings app and the Hammerfall DSP mixer which gives you complete routing flexibility. for instance, I have presets for Traktor DJ Studio Live prelistening situations, for my homestudio, for the Avids at work, etc. Works like a charm. no other software included.

9) I am -only- using osx on this powerbook, so I'm pretty much dependent on this (beta) driver now. there's still a bunch of minor issues that can be annoying. sleepmode, for instance, doesn't work yet, got to eject the cardbus card before putting the powerbook to sleep. working at 64 sample (1.5ms) latency in Logic and Live is just what you'd expect, however, general performance isn't like on os9 yet. rme regularily blames apple in their newsgroup and I'm beginning to believe them. speaking of support, probably the best of any audio gear manufacturer I've worked with. usually email response-time is under 24 hours and they're actively participating in the newsgroup.

overall the driver now is stable, performance-wise still improve-able, but that's just the impression when you're used to the ultra-high-performance asio drivers the card had. I should also note that a bunch of the issues I mentioned are exclusive to the Cardbus system, the PCI card works a lot more stable.