Presonus Quantum 2626 - what magic is this?

[EOengineer]

I took a couple hours yesterday to swap out my 2011 Mac Mini and an old firewire audio interface with an M1 Mac Mini and Presonus Quantum 2626. This change effectively swapped out the core of my band's silent rehearsal and recording rig. I was shocked to see the round trip latency drop from almost 12ms to 3ms @ 44.1kHz. While I expected an improvement in latency, I didn't expect THAT. I'm tempted to go to 96k just to see how close I can get to 1ms.

Technology is incredible. That is all.

 

[eaeolian]

Better drivers, better hardware.

 

[Orvillain]

The Presonus units don't have built in mix capabilities - you have to use your DAW - this speeds up the driver. That and Thunderbolt, which doesn't necessarily improve the speed, but does have more bandwidth, which often seems to mean fewer overruns at lower buffer sizes.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

It‘s a shame they discontinued the original Quantum and Quantum 2. When my Q2 dies I‘m going to have a huge problem to find an adequate replacement. Fastest and most stable interface I ever owned.

 

[Orvillain]

I reckon they'll do a Quantum 3 series at some point. Presonus have always had interfaces on the market, I don't see that ending.

 

[TheTrueZoltan!]

I reckon they'll do a Quantum 3 series at some point. Presonus have always had interfaces on the market, I don't see that ending.

USB interfaces, yes. However, they could discontinue their line of Thunderbolt interfaces.

 

[Orvillain]

Possibly. And yeah that would suck.

 

[EOengineer]

USB interfaces, yes. However, they could discontinue their line of Thunderbolt interfaces.

From everything I've read, the Quantum 2626 and others in that same product family are fairly popular, especially amongst those in similar situations as myself where it is critical to minimize round trip latency. Just curious why you think the thunderbolt gear would be discontinued?

I think I've read of some of the windows folks having a hard time with thunderbolt, so maybe thats the rub? In either event, I don't really care if they keep thunderbolt or if I need to connect the thing with a garden hose to make it work, as long as those latency numbers stay low I'm happy.

 

[paisleywookiee]

USB interfaces, yes. However, they could discontinue their line of Thunderbolt interfaces.

I doubt it, now that Thunderbolt shares the same physical interface as USB-C.

 

[laxu]

I think I've read of some of the windows folks having a hard time with thunderbolt, so maybe thats the rub? In either event, I don't really care if they keep thunderbolt or if I need to connect the thing with a garden hose to make it work, as long as those latency numbers stay low I'm happy.

It's more like a lot of systems just don't come with it. I don't know what the situation is with laptops but for desktop systems it's either buying a Thunderbolt PCIe card or a motherboard with Thunderbolt built in. Both are on the expensive side.