Hi all!

Tonight I sound checked Yamaha Tyros in combination with my new RME Fireface 800 audio interface. Since someone had asked me to post something after my home studio was recently finished, I thought tonight before I was leaving the studio, yeah sure, so I made a clip afterwards and posted it online, especially for you...

First of all, let me tell you this. It is a very short clip that was made very fast. I didn't mind so much what I was playing, only improvising (all was made real time to audio without MIDI or metronome, drums were inserted in the middle so it was untight), I was more focusing on sound checking the Yamaha Tyros with my RME Fireface 800 and try to edit in Cubase SX to see if I learn anything new about that way of working. The noise you hear in the beginning is due to the guitar I play(that's my Richie Sambora USA strat), I was going through a tubescreamer off directly to the mixer and with much too high gain on that channel (trim set very high). A noise gate would have reduced that noise pretty effectively. The signal path in the RME Fireface 800 is quiet like sh**, I swear...! Furthermore I didn't equalize the tracks or put any compressor on the master, it was just recorded directly. So you will notice that it sounds a little dark and that some instruments are a little too quiet. (it was about 5 audio tracks)

It was a very exiting evening for me because I learned that it is not Cakewalk I want to edit in after all, it is Cubase SX and the reason is that it is much more user friendly and also more powerful (except that it doesn't handle 192 KHz sampling rate)!

Overall I am satisfied with the way the Yamaha Tyros sounded on the recording. I am very new to audio recording and have almost no experiences with audio recording or audio interfaces in general, so this is by no means any professional work. I think that the Fireface was able to convert the analog sound pretty good (it was recorded on ADC and then mixdown without DAC)

You can download the song from this address in MP3 format (1,7 MB):

ArtistYamahaAndy - Sound check Yamaha Tyros + RME Fireface 800

Best regards,
YamahaAndy

Couldn't download...

Are you using an external harddisk as well? Apparantly, using a firewire interface together with a firewire HD (on the same bus), can have disasterous effects! Please let me know, as I have been considering going this way.

What made you choose the RME 800? How many imputs does it have, and does it support digital audio?

The next thing on my shopping list (after I finish my current purchase of Kontakt 2) will deffinitely have to be an upgrade on my current USB audio interface.

Good luck with your setup!

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!

Here's a pretty easy way to share a file for free. I think u can send up to 10 MB per attachment, 100 MB total.

1) Set up a free Yahoo! email account at http://mail.yahoo.com

2) Choose a username like firewiredemo

3) Choose a password like firewiredemo

4) email the file as an attachment to firewiredemo@yahoo.com

5) All of us can log into that account by going to mail.yahoo.com and using username firewiredemo and password firewiredemo

6) We all remember not to delete the message, lol

Oops, i forgot the most important one...

5.5) Read the message and listen to the attachment.

Hi all!

I created an email account and uploaded the file to an email on the same address.

Address: mail.yahoo.com
Username: firewiredemo
Password: fw1234

So now you can finally download the file.

Very nice arrangement: simple, origianl, I like it!

The reason why you could have problems using a HD and interface on the same FW bus, is because you are almost guaranteed to hit your bandwidth limit. But using them on separate buses would be alright.

How much did you pay for it?

Thanks Chony! The peace was not mixed/mstered so it was very blurry.

I spent 1169 euro on the RME Fireface 800 audio interface. When I got the interface the package included a cd with the latest recently updated drivers on it! I was very impressed about that!

I agree that you shouldn't distribute the firewire 400 port among several devices if the audio interface is one of them. The RME Fireface 800 is build so that you can distribute the bandwidth of one firewire 800 port to 3 units.

Chony, if you're thinking about buying the RME Fireface 800, then you really need to know what to expect. I think the RME Fireface 800 is a little hyped today and the price tag really shows that(low for what it does). It has professional features but I think they have saved on the digital converters and instead made good drivers. I think professionals would not choose the RME Fireface 800 even for their home recording studio. There are no shortcuts to very high sound quality. This card is marketed for amateurs that want to setup a professional home studio at a low price tag. It serves that purpose very well. If I would go for an audio interface today I think I would choose differently because now I know the standard of the digital converters in this price range and I have found out that I want better converters. Have you read anything about the Apogee Rosetta 800?

Here is an interesting review of the 192 KHz Apogee Rosetta 800: http://www.digitalprosound.com/2004/03_mar/reviews/zkwhaadj.htm

If I would go for an audio interface today I would choose this product, not the Fireface. It is simply better sounding, even though the difference is not that big. I have read about guys that have sold their Fireface when they got the Apogee. The importance of great digital converters is probably the biggest and moste valuable lesson I've learned since I setup my home studio and it is worth the money even if it is very expensive! So Chony, before you think about upgrading anything else in your studio, save and then buy a high quality expensive digital converter interface. I am already thinking about start saving for an Apogee Rosetta since I feel I just constantly need to strive higher in this area of my home recording studio, partly to make my platform as optimum as possible but partly also because I just love rich sounding beautiful peace of art, it's just so extremely satisfying and fun when you know that your recording studio becomes more and more professional sounding and to learn it by experience! I might use the RME Fireface in the future more for
live purposes since I think I need to strive particularly high in this area! It's important to not spend much in the number of inputs/outputs/sampling rate, but rather spend on the best digital converter that you can get your hands on! I recently talked with a professional that has an extremely huge and expensive professional recording studio and he told me that as far as the features in the audio interfaces go, it's important that the card has 24-bit resolution.

Shit, I think I'm starting to find the perfect place for where to put my money.
Peronally I will now focus extremely much on digital converters for a while.

The RME Fireface 800 is by no means any low quality bad sounding audio interface. Even though I've talked "bad" about the digital converters in it, it's still very quiet and good sounding with plenty of good features! But I think the difference in sound quality is noticable if you step a higher in price and want the best professional sound possible, like I want... I think I would choose differently if I would have 10 audio interfaces to choose from and the RME Fireface would be one of the cheapest of them.

Today I have sound checked the whole day to see what the RME Fireface 800 truly gives and it is once again very interesting to notice that even though I run the audio interface at 192KHz the digital conversion is touching the analog sound so much that it is easily noticable by ear. What goes in doesn't come out. I have tweaked and tweaked and tweaked but it is not possible to compensate the loss in sound quality when the signal is converted from analog to digital. What happens with the sound picture is that it is squeezed together a little, so a little of the stereo picture and a little reverb resonance is cut off. This feels like the sound is becoming a little less in stereo. I've tried compensating with stereo imager plug-ins but it doesn't make the sound the same as analog. I have had several persons to listen live and they say the same thing, they notice a difference.

I had thought that the more expensive audio interfaces of today are so good that you really can't hear a difference between an unconverted and a converted signal. I don't know if the best possible converters of today really are as good as that, but this is the kind of level that the RME Fireface 800 audio interface is on.

[This message has been edited by YamahaAndy (edited 05-05-2005).]