AudioMedia - March 2009 - (Page 24) ALISTAIR McGHEE finds a little interface card with big ideas. n RME’s new website there’s no sign of a feature I used to enjoy on its older, much less swish version. There was a menu item labelled ‘competitors’, which when selected spun a little bar forever or until you pressed ‘OK’, at which point it replied ‘none found’. Cheeky monkeys. A few months ago I accepted a lift from man convinced that the Germans were terrified of Britain’s industrial genius, and that the EU was designed to protect German industry from ferocious UK competition. How prophetic those words appear now. We have totally out competed our Continental cousins in groundless house price speculation, credit card debt, and bank executive bonuses. Ha, they must be gutted to be stuck in the old fashioned world of making things. Certainly in the sound card market, RME (and Marian) are doing very nicely indeed. O without a squeak. RME doesn’t include a paper manual, just a sheet of start-up instructions; and is keen for you to download the latest firmware for your card and the latest driver. I’m still a little bit nervous of flashing firmware, but again the process went very sweetly, and within a few minutes I had the very latest of everything. The HDSPe RayDAT has been eagerly awaited for some time, and that’s not surprising when you look at the spec. Four ADAT connectors in and out, sample rates up to kHz, and separate SPDIF and AES connectivity. With the card installed, the first thing you need to think about is drivers, but don’t think too much – ASIO is the one for you. The RME manual lays out all the info you need, but I found ASIO gave half the latency on record Awaited I n Anticipation RME HDSPE RAYDAT Internal Interface Cards O ne Little Letter of WDM and a third on playback. Buffer and latency lore could fill a book. The RayDAT offers a range of settings that are fuss-free in selection, I found satisfactory results at ms but smaller figures are available if you have a beefier system. To be honest I struggled to assemble inputs on ADAT – I had planned to sync a couple of Fostex multitracks, but in the end I could only get my hands on one. A word about word clocks. RME doesn’t provide word clock I/O on the RayDAT on the basis that its Steadyclock technology means that all digital I/Os exhibit very low jitter. So you need to be aware that your kit will need to clock from an ADAT input if you’re relying on the RayDAT as a master. I found that the most solid sync was achieved with everything clocked to the RayDAT in master clock mode. Having waded through the manual, I clocked the Fostex and my Merging Dua off ADAT outputs from the RayDAT, and everything stayed locked down. With the clock sorted I was able to stream a couple of hours of Lesley Garrett on to the hard disk without a murmur. Playback was equally secure, and the card was a pleasure to use. I particularly appreciated having separate SPDIF (phono) and AES (XLR) connectivity. It meant plugging up your monitoring was a piece of cake and really flexible. THE REVIEWER ALISTAIR MCcGHEE began audio life in Hi-Fi before joining the BBC as an Audio Engineer. After ten years in radio and TV, he moved to production. When BBC Choice started, he pioneered personal digital production in television. Alistair is now Assistant Editor, BBC Radio Wales, but is allowed out occasionally. I must confess that I didn’t pay too much attention to the Editor (sorry, Paul) when he asked me to look at the new HDSPe systems. RME stuff has always been a pleasure to deal with and no hassle. Easy money I thought. However I was taken aback a bit by the arrival of these new cards, which are the first sound cards I have come across designed for the PCIe bus. And that little ‘e’ makes all the difference. There are three things certain in this life – death, taxes, and new interfaces to the personal computer. It seems like only yesterday our ISA cards were discarded for the new fangled PCI versions, and now a new motherboard will barely have a PS port to call its own. PCI tried to grow up by offering a -bit version called PCIX that was backwards compatible – you could fit it into a -bit PCI slot if your machine didn’t have the longer -bit version. It never really caught on, and the next stage was a total redesign and a serial rather than a parallel interface designated PCIe. Which is bad I think (the designation and not the serial bit), because it lulls you into a false sense of security. Just one little letter different – it’ll probably fit if I press hard enough. It was only on opening the box of the RayDAT card and gazing on the severely truncated interface connector that I realised that PCI was so passé. You guys out there probably cottoned on to this years ago – especially the gamers. But when I tell you that my workhorse Internet PC died just the other day, and it had dual PIII processors and an AGP slot – well you’ll get the idea. Fortunately my audio machine is a bit newer, and nestling between the PCI slots I found a PCIe slot into which to plug my RME technology. I kind of expected trouble at the mill. New interface, new cards bound to be trouble – I even secretly hoped there would be, “A fie on your new fangled serial-based interface.” But in truth the install went ridiculously smoothly, and the card fired up 24 AUDIO MEDIA MARCH 2009
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