Sorry guys, I thought one could make files public at yahoo briefcase but appearantly they don't allow public files there anymore. I might look for another place to upload the file to later.

Chony, I am not using an external hard drive with my Fireface. I can't understand why several firewire devices would cause any noise in the signal path but I guess it might be an architectual issue. I would think this is on those motherboards where the firewire adapter card is connected to a firewire connector on the motherboard and you use several different devices on the same adapter. I use a Lacie PCI to Firewire adapter and it works great, so I think you should try using a separate adapter for the HD. The RME Fireface 800 is a firewire digital audio interface able to handle 56 channels at 192 KHz/24 bit resolution at low latency. It has 8 analog inputs and outputs + a few mic-pre inputs. Furthermore it has two ADAT and two SPDIF digital connectors, each to handle 8 tracks. The card features steadyclock (the sampling rate is dynamically adjusted where needed to reduce digital jitter in the signal path and it works great), totalmix and a few other useful features. You can connect 3 units to one firewire 800 port, but I run one at a firewire 400 port. I chose this audio interface because I was on a budget and needed an audio interface for my new home recording studio. In every review I read about it they were amazed by this card and I can understand why, they said the drivers were great (that was correct and very important for me) and that the card had good digital converter for the money (that was also correct). I also didn't want any latency problems. I chose a firewire audio interface because I would also be able to play live at 192 KHz with a laptop and a PCMCIA firewire adapter. So for the money I think the RME Fireface 800 is worth it and I know it's the price/quality that has made this card very popular! The built-in digital converters are good, but as far as digital converters are consirned there are better ones if you double the price tag of the Fireface 800. This was my first audio interface so I cannot comment on the sound quality that much, but many have said it is much better sounding than the Delta 1010 series audio interfaces but some have also said that the Apogee interfaces are better sounding than the RME(remember that you then will have to spend about 3000 dollars).

The best with the RME Fireface 800 is that it is a robust product. It always works great! I've come to realise that I made a good choice when I was going for the RME Fireface 800 audio interface. I got a quiet well featured and robust audio interface that lets me record music because it works so great. It might not be the best audio interface in the world but for home recording at a medium budget it is very useful.

I have not taken the card to the max yet, but it could handle over 30 tracks of playback while I was recording in stereo, without latency problems at 192 KHz@24-bit. So when you think of the fact that it is a firewire based interface at least I am a little impressed...!

To those of you that are currently thinking about the RME Fireface 800 I would recommend you to really sit down and think about how much you CAN spend in digital converters. If you have a digital based home recording studio and want good audio quality you really need to focus much on the digital converters, not only the features of the card. I noticed that 96 KHz is pretty much enough even though my soundcard is equipped with 192-KHz sampling rates too. I would say if anything in a studio is worth plenty of money it is the quality of the digital converters, as long as the drivers are of normal quality. I am pretty sure that if you would spend in an Apogee interface you would notice even better sound quality. So it is really a matter of how much money you are ready to spend. But as I already told you, putting much money on digital converts is well spent money!