I was messing around with this late last night, and it was a bit of a pain to get it going with Windows 7/64 bit. Microsoft makes it so the software will not autorun, so I manually installed everything from the CD, and set
the babyface as the default sound device. I restarted and Windows recognized it, there were no conflicts, yet still I had no sound. My advice for anyone setting this up in the future would be to ignore the accompanying CD and go straight to RME's website and download the appropriate driver and firmware. Once that's done, you can get TotalMix and DIGIcheck ala'carte off the CD. Once I did that (after erasing all the other stuff), it worked beautifully.
I played some (lossless) music through Foobar and I must say I am amazed at what a quality sounding DAC this is. I have an early RedWine Audio Isabellina DAC (non oversampling) for the main home audio rig, so it was with great surprise that I heard the babyface sounding so informative and listenable. I started off using Senn HD280's but quickly switched to my old trusty 580's. I must have listened to music for at least a couple of hours with no fatigue. I'm impressed.
I tried recording a bit with the mics I have. I'm just starting out so I only own two different mics at the moment- an EV-RE20 and a pair of AKG C210's. Compared to the pre's on
my Tascam US2000, the RME unit is more informative and open, and it laid bare the extreme differences between the two mics. I lack the language to explain what I'm hearing, so let's just say the quality of the pre is quite noticeable. I'm not sure I will need a stand alone pre for now.....perhaps in the future, but for now I am delighted with what I'm hearing. I was hoping for this as it sort of justifies the price of the unit somewhat.
BTW, this was a lot of money (for me) to justify to the wife...especially considering how much money I have spent on this stuff already (monitors, mics, etc), so I'm hoping to get every penny's worth out of it.
