RME Fireface 800 - a few questions

A

anton

New member
I have a few questions for those of you that own the RME Fireface 800. From reading reviews and talking to some people who have it it seems like a really good piece of gear.

My main goal is to be able to record mostly acoustic instruments, probably solo guitar most of the time but also a small celtic band, at a professional level as possible. I was looking at the firepod, and it seems great, but the fireface seems like a big step up.

I will admit i have not been able to wrap my head around all the routing possibilities from reading the reviews. On the following website i found this quote which i dont quite understand.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec04/articles/fireface.htm

"The analogue outputs are slightly more straightforward in that the first eight outputs go directly to the eight balanced TRS outputs on the back of the Fireface, with outputs nine and 10 reserved for a stereo quarter-inch TRS headphone output on the front of the unit."

Perhaps its just my lack of knowledge but i dont really understand what they mean. I figured since there are no dedicated monitor outputs on the fireface you just assign a pair of the outputs as monitor outs in the total mix software. Does the signal from tracks 9 and 10 work in the same way?

For most of my recordings needs the fireface is probably overkill with all its options, and would take some time to learn. But in terms of preamps and converters it seems to be one of the best out there.


anton
 
anton said:
I have a few questions for those of you that own the RME Fireface 800. From reading reviews and talking to some people who have it it seems like a really good piece of gear.

My main goal is to be able to record mostly acoustic instruments, probably solo guitar most of the time but also a small celtic band, at a professional level as possible. I was looking at the firepod, and it seems great, but the fireface seems like a big step up.

I will admit i have not been able to wrap my head around all the routing possibilities from reading the reviews. On the following website i found this quote which i dont quite understand.

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec04/articles/fireface.htm

"The analogue outputs are slightly more straightforward in that the first eight outputs go directly to the eight balanced TRS outputs on the back of the Fireface, with outputs nine and 10 reserved for a stereo quarter-inch TRS headphone output on the front of the unit."

Perhaps its just my lack of knowledge but i dont really understand what they mean. I figured since there are no dedicated monitor outputs on the fireface you just assign a pair of the outputs as monitor outs in the total mix software. Does the signal from tracks 9 and 10 work in the same way?

For most of my recordings needs the fireface is probably overkill with all its options, and would take some time to learn. But in terms of preamps and converters it seems to be one of the best out there.


anton
Click to expand...

TotalMix can route ANY input to ANY output. Basically output 9 and 10 are set up in Totalmix as the "headphone out". For monitor outs, most people would use 1 and 2, so this keeps the headphone mix "away" from the main outs...

And yes, the Fireface would be a huge step up from the Firepod.
 
The only few things the disappointed me so far with the RME FF800 are -

1. Being Firewired based, RME could not achieve good performance with buffersizes greater than 1024, so they just limited it to 1024 !!
This is furstrating as some sessions cannot be mixed unless you use large buffers (the Multiface for example is able to run as 8K !)

2. RME support is aweful. Instead of listening to their customer they do not stop telling them how much they are wrong.... I dunno is this is sad or funny, but it is defintely unacceptable.

3. I had one year of nightmare using the FF800 with the drivers provided. Needed to dig very hard till I found a solution.

4. Jacks seems to be very fragile.

Other than that it is killer soundcard, could not expect better flexability (except for the buffersize limitation).

The large amount of inputs and output is great and my entire studio runs through it.
 
I bought mine a few months ago, and couldn't possibly be happier with it...

I must admit I have not been using it to iits full potential... but I have used all 4 of the mic pre's on the front and the sound is crystal clear...

The DI on the front for guitars and basses is really cool too...

As for the Outputs, I'd like someone to explain how I would go about setting up some of the outputs on the back as Headphone monitors ...

When i am recording a drummer for example ...i usually get the guitar player to play the rhythm and have the drummer listen through the headphone channel on the front of the fireface ....

Would it possible to have lets say 3 of the outputs on the back set up as a headphone amp? and if so how would i do this in total mix? :)
 
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