RME Fireface 800 review - Testing setup and equipment
Author: Vedran Dakic
Date: 12 Feb 2007

This is not one of the easiest setups and/or devices to test, so I decided to build a typical studio-setup with additional devices to see how Fireface(s) can cope with the usual studio load. The main PC was built around a Intel 955-chipset motherboard with built-in Firewire 800, dual-core Intel 915 CPU (2.8GHz, 800MHz FSB), 4x512MB OCZ DDR-2 memory, Western Digital's RaptorX, RME's DigiFace (and HDSP PCI), OCZ GameXstream 850W PSU and Dell's 30" LCD monitor. I also added a TC Electronics PowerCore FireWire to the chain, and Tascam's US-2400 USB MIDI mixing surface. As a base audio app, I've choosen Sonar although it's pretty much the same with other applications out there. I chose to add the aditional Firewire device (PoCo FW) to be absolutely certain about the Fireface's Firewire performance. Windows XP SP1/2 actually have quite a few problems with Firewire 800 and because of this, RME issued a firmware update (prior to this, you could only use 100Mbit/s). This is all well documented on RME's website so - you can check them out there.

Before we go on, it's absolutely paramount to give you a heads-up about one thing. Don't even think about having this kind of setup without installing the sonar_asio drivers from RME's website. Check that out here.Without that, you'll have a whole range of problems with just about everything, especially Tascam's US-2400. So, make sure you use that.

And just to make my test a living hell, I decided that to connect only one stereo recording source to this setup would be a joke. I mean, to have 2x28 channels and use only two - that's gotta be some kind of a crime :-) So, I used all of the Korg OASYS's outputs (10 of them being analog - main L/R outputs and 8 individual outputs - and S/PDIF output, as well. So, I divided all of the analog connections between the two Fireface's and added the optical S/PDIF connection to Fireface #2. This just might be the most "stressed" setup I could think of at that particular time.