NAID: RME UCX II

[TheTrueZoltan!]

I'm actually very happy with my PreSonus Quantum 2 interface. Extremely low latency and very good performance in general. The only thing that really bothers me is the error-prone S/PDIF clock synchronization. And since it's been out of production for quite a while now, I'm afraid that driver support will soon be discontinued as well. But I've been thinking about getting an RME for ages. For whatever reason. Now I found a pretty good offer for the UCX II and bought it straight away. I'm now going to test it thoroughly and compare it with my Quantum 2 to find out whether it's really worth switching. The switch from Thunderbolt to USB 2.0 worries me a little and I'm curious to see whether I'll notice a significant drop in performance.

 

[MirrorProfiles]

Congrats! The best thing I can say about RME is I don't even notice it working. It never throws a fuss. I'm sure you'll be really happy with it and its one less thing to think about.

 

[mavrick102000]

How many instruments /tracks are you recording simultaneously?

USB 2.0 can handle most of the simultaneous instrument/data through that any home studio player can use, so that shouldn't be a concern.

And the RME drivers are one, if not the best, out there for latency. Although the Quantum was pretty darn good for latency.

 

[JasonE]

I bought my UCX II three years ago and I don't have one negative thing to say about it. At the time I bought mine they had a promotion going where I go the ARC-USB free with it. I love that thing. The price on the interface has gone up $200 since I bought mine. I can't believe how much it has gone up. After spending a few years with mine, I would buy it again at that price though.

As stated, RME has some if not the best drivers on the market. The other positive thing about them is they tend to support their units for far longer with updated drivers than any other manufacturer out there.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

I was afraid that the switch from Thunderbolt to USB 2.0 would lead to a considerable deterioration in performance. But RTL has only increased slightly by about 1.2 ms, and the activity monitor shows 2-4% more CPU load for Cubase, which is absolutely negligible.

So far I didn‘t experience any audio hiccups and the interface seems to be built like a tank.

But you know what I really enjoy about the UCX? The stepped main encoder. So satisfying!

 

[2dor]

@TheTrueZoltan! nice seeing your post on the UCX II. Had sold the Motu M4 recently & was looking for something else that has great AD/DA conversion & is stable. The UCX II is the one I'm looking at grabbing.

How do you like it after a while of use? Still good?

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

@TheTrueZoltan! nice seeing your post on the UCX II. Had sold the Motu M4 recently & was looking for something else that has great AD/DA conversion & is stable. The UCX II is the one I'm looking at grabbing.

How do you like it after a while of use? Still good?

Yes, the UCX II works flawlessly, I can wholeheartedly recommend that interface. And Sonarworks confirmed that direct calibration file export to RME TotalMix is coming soon.

 

[2dor]

Yes, the UCX II works flawlessly, I can wholeheartedly recommend that interface. And Sonarworks confirmed that direct calibration file export to RME TotalMix is coming soon.

I was looking through the manual on how many mixes can you have in TotalMix; is it 10? Am I reading this right?
Contemplating having some sort of in-ears setup sometime in the future for the band.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

Sonarworks has just released a SoundID update with support for calibration file export to RME TotalMix. Just tried it - works like a charm. That‘s is a pretty cool feature.

 

[laxu]

Sonarworks has just released a SoundID update with support for calibration file export to RME TotalMix. Just tried it - works like a charm. That‘s is a pretty cool feature.

I've never owned any RME gear. How does that work? Does it apply the IR or EQ curves in the RME Totalmix so it can just run inside the audio interface rather than have to use the Sonarwork app or plugin?

Because the Sonarworks app is a crashing pile of crap that they could not get fixed during the time I owned it.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

[...] Does it apply the IR or EQ curves in the RME Totalmix so it can just run inside the audio interface rather than have to use the Sonarwork app or plugin? [...]

Exactly. You simply export the correction curve directly from the SoundID app as a RoomEQ preset and load this into TotalMix. The correction then runs via the internal DSP of the RME interface. The only limitation: Since RoomEQ only has 9 bands per side, the much more complicated curve of the SoundID app is reduced to 9 bands. To be honest, I hardly hear any difference here. And it really is a huge advantage not having to have the Sonarworks app or plugin running in the background all the time.

 

[laxu]

Exactly. You simply export the correction curve directly from the SoundID app as a RoomEQ preset and load this into TotalMix. The correction then runs via the internal DSP of the RME interface. The only limitation: Since RoomEQ only has 9 bands per side, the much more complicated curve of the SoundID app is reduced to 9 bands. To be honest, I hardly hear any difference here. And it really is a huge advantage not having to have the Sonarworks app or plugin running in the background all the time.

Yeah 9 band EQ is good enough for this.