I was looking at UAD, but it seems that you pay a lot for that hardware DSP power, and native processing doesn’t seem to be as much of a priority to them as it is to RME, judging by the latency and benchmark results. Personally, I don’t want to rely on “locked in” plugins for anything other than monitor mixes and monitor control, and the UAD plugins are quite expensive (seems like a bunch are included with their interfaces, though), so they just don’t seem like a great fit for my use case.
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But was the latency really that different between UAD vs RME when both were run over Thunderbolt 3?
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The total benchmark results don’t seem that different, but it seems like most UAD users rely heavily on the DSP for anything latency critical, and the manufacturer still recommends a buffer size of 512, which is very high form a native audio perspective.
Experiences like this one are not very reassuring either:
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Interesting, I kind of wish RME had a mid-level thunderbolt 3 audio interface. Well, I hope to hear your thoughts after you finally get yours.
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Hi chaps, I have a UFX+ if you want to shoot me any questions, I also did a fairly in depth review a while back on Youtube.
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Do you know how long the Thunderbolt 3 cable can be between the computer and this (if I want to leave it in a floor rack beside me instead of on the desk?
Yep thats’s one.
Mikael - I think 2M is max for a regular cable but you can go much longer on the optical ones, although they are more expensive. I have a 2M one that goes from my computer to my rack, no problems.
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Ah I see. Well in case I get the new iMac that is rumored, that would be far more than 2m from the back of that computer to the side of my chair where I want to place a floor rack. I looked at desk rack mounts but those are too high, as in my screens would go too high. Decisions decisions. 
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I’ve seen some 3M ones as well, the optical ones can be huge but even a 5M one is around £200+. I think the standard copper ones lose speeds at longer lengths but I don’t know that an audio interface can really make use of the speeds anyway.
RME’s TB driver is only about 5% better low latency performance than its USB3 one.
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I know, that’s because they are USB 3, whereas most audio interfaces for some reason are still USB2. I am still considering the UAD desktop interfaces though. I just don’t need lots of I/O, so I have a hard time justifying getting a flagship RME interface like the one you have.
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If you don’t need the I/O then the UAD Arrow might be worth looking into, although UAD have gotten pretty terrible low latency scores on their older interfaces like the Apollo USB range. I think I remember seeing something that MK-II versions were much better so maybe the newer TB ones are better.
The Presonus Quantum gets really good low latency scores as does the Antelope Audio Discrete.
Audio interface selection is definitely a mine field!
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What I am after mainly is super high stability, reliability, low latency and CPU efficiency. So TB3 seems like the best choice. Strange that UAD get low scores seeing how popular they are in professional studios?
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TB is probably the better option, generally better low latency and less CPU overhead.
There’s only really one source for properly conducted low latency testing and that’s DAW bench, I remember the UA Apollo twin testing very poorly but that was a while ago, maybe UA have written better drivers since then or TB has helped them achieve better latency.
I think a big part of their popularity though is the plug-ins they make and being able to run them from the interfaces.
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David, did you consider this one: https://www.thomann.de/se/presonus_quantum_2626.htm
or this one: https://www.thomann.de/se/presonus_quantum.htm
It gets low latency scores on the charts I’ve seen, has lots of I/O, TB3, and rack mountable. I am considering this myself now (thanks @will_m for mentioning it). Just wondering if there are some downsides I am missing?
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Well, the most obvious difference is that the Quantum has no DSP mixer (not even straight zero latency monitoring, AFAICT), which of course makes it clean and simple, and suggests they have faith in their solution delivering very low latency. However, if you need to increase the buffering in your DAW to deal with heavy projects, that still leaves you with no low latency monitoring at all. Might not be a huge issue if you don’t record a lot of vocals instruments etc, but keep in mind that this roundtrip latency would also impact any hardware synths you want to run into/through the DAW.
(But of course, if you have an external mixer, this is not generally an issue in the first place, as one wouldn’t involve the audio interface in any monitoring then.)
Meanwhile, the UFX+ can serve as a configurable stand-alone mixer/monitor controller/converter/recorder/whatever without even being connected to a computer, can use USB3 as well, and it can also run in USB Class Compliant mode if you need to use something that doesn’t have native RME drivers. Not necessarily useful to everyone, but it means I can avoid a bunch of additional hardware, and have it all nicely integrated.
Other than that, drivers and reviews… It’s a bit of gamble no matter what you go with, but at least, RME is widely used, and is getting mostly raving reviews. Presonus has gotten great reviews for their earlier products, but not quite as good for the Quantum series. I haven’t researched carefully, but a wild guess would be that these interfaces might seem to be pretty bare-bones (no mixer!), even compared to their earlier offerings, while being much more expensive.
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Ah thanks. So for me, doing everything ITB, and not needing I/O, plus having a great external mixer…the Quantum might serve me well for a much lower cost, would you agree?
However, it seems to always come back to the “driver stability/optmization” factor, which RME for some reason still seems way ahead of the competition for. But seeing my needs I find it hard to justify getting the UFX+ just for those drivers, when I don’t need practically any I/O at all atm.
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Yeah, I’d say the Quantum seems like a more sensible option in that case. I’d probably have gone for that too, had I been all set on the mixer/monitor side.
As for drivers, user experiences are difficult to track reliably… Who are these users? What are they doing? Which ones are more likely to post reviews; happy users, or not so happy ones? Marketing, user base, price range, perceived target audience etc, may all skew things considerably. So, sure; all raving reviews on a popular product is great, but if benchmarks and reviews are good, and most users are happy, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.
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There is something to be said on following what “industry professionals” use, as they have the highest demand for stability etc. RME has a track record among the highest studios to simply be up to date almost immediately as soon as a new driver is needed for OS updates etc. And I never heard any reliability issues with them.
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I’d take a look at the RME user forum on thier website, there’s a pretty active user base and threads for most potential issues.
I’d agree that they are good at keeping drivers and firmware updated and continue to do so for extended periods, which was the issue I had with my Focusrite, they only updated drivers for their new products.
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