I've got some time to plan my i7-iMac-to-M1 migration. Part of that is about driver updates for the M1 and Big Sur. I'm in no real rush, but wondering if I should also migrate from the Fireface 400 (Firewire 400!) interface to something that plugs directly into Thunderbolt 3.
I like RME stuff and can use the FF400, but it requires a series of 3 clagnut adaptors:
- Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 (£50!)
- Thunderbolt 2 to Firewire 800 (£30!)
- Firewire 800 to Firewire 400 (£10)
Whereas the PreSonus Quantum 2626 would plug straight in and (once drivers are available) give the big benefit of
really low latency and easier workflow (no digital mixer to setup - just the DAW).
Any thoughts?
(If it matters, I'll almost certainly be using Logic, although the Quantum comes with a licence for the middle version of Studio One which I might try out.)
Comments
I have the added complication that I want to go AMD Ryzen Zen3 fairly soon, so need a board that can support TB3. Looking at the Gigabyte B550 Vision D, which has native TB3 support and is supposed to be pretty great.
Yes, been there, too. I liked the Apollo Twin I had for those plugins, but that got spendy quite quickly. And I ended up back at RME, partly for the latency with soft instruments not hosted in the UA-DSP and also because I wanted a MIDI interface in one box+cable.
For now, the path of least resistance is to stick with RME over Firewire and buy those clagnuts.
I recommend this interface for sure.
https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/comment/2741721/#Comment_2741721
Long and short of it ... the latency is okay for a lot of situations, and if all you're doing is VST instruments with a small bit of outboard, then great. And if you're doing mostly audio recording without monitoring through the DAW, then it's awesome. Do everything in Console and treat the DAW like a tape machine.
It's that tricky middle ground where you're doing 50% of one and 50% of the other.... the latency can be a bit of an issue in some of those cases. Like I've got a 100 track project that needs a buffer size of 1024 to run properly on my i7 7700K machine ... and all of a sudden I want to add a piano .... can't really play it in real time.
Short version: I should just buy a Babyface Pro and STFU.
After selling the NI KA2 this week, I dug the SPL Crimson out. It ran beautifully with my i7 4770 PC that was last year transformed into an R5 3600 machine. I've also added in an i5 8300H laptop and got given an Acer Swift 3 i3-8310u machine.
Sadly the Crimson doesn't run anywhere near as well with all three as it did with the i7. It's not horrible but the pops when first added to the i5 laptop were very apparent. Spent last night and this morning tweaking all three machines and the Crimson is running but there's now this little blahblahblah in my brain about it as the Crimson drivers haven't had an update since Feb 2016 where the BFP drivers got updated last month.
Had a Multiface in the past so I know how solid RME is. It's the right choice and I need some entertainment as it looks like I won't be doing much work next month with the Covid rates as they are in this part of London.