1 (edited by Jperkins 2017-08-26 02:09:44)

Topic: Questions From Potential New Customer

Hi,

I had an RME PCI card years ago but eventually moved to a Lynx AES16e when I needed more AES I/O.

I'm considering moving to an RME AES32 for a few reasons but I need to know a few things. I'm not the smartest when it comes to word clock related things but right now my Lynx AES16e system is very stable with no issues.

My current setup involves:

Sending two separate stereo AES signals to my Crane Song Avocet AES inputs for monitoring

Sending AES to and from a Crane Song HEDD
Sending AES to and from a Lynx HILO

I do mastering and I use the HEDD and HILO for sending audio to and from my analog gear via my DAW, and then my main monitoring path from the DAW goes AES to my Avocet. I have an additional AES path to the Avocet for monitoring the full unprocessed audio to A/B compare.

It seems that my HEDD needs a word clock signal from my AES16e to not have clicks and pops but the HILO is stable and clean w/o a word clock cable. I must be getting clocking via AES.

Does this make sense? If move to an RME AES32, I wonder if the Lynx will need word clock as well?

I assume the RME mixer lets me send different DAW playback paths to various AES outputs like the Lynx Mixer?

Overall I'm happy with the Lynx AES16e but I think the RME can have slightly better sound and less jitter.

My main concern here I guess is the clocking configuration and if it will need to be different than what I have going on now with the Lynx AES16e.

Thanks in advance for any insight.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

I guess maybe RME clock out to HEDD clock in, HEDD clock out to HILO Clock In, HILO Clock in to RME clock in? I'm just not as up on clocking as I should be.

3

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

The Lynx will clock on the RME card's AES signal just fine.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

4 (edited by Jperkins 2017-08-26 03:37:46)

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

MC wrote:

The Lynx will clock on the RME card's AES signal just fine.

Thanks for your reply. Can you help me in a basic way understand how to best way connect it all?

What if I want ability to have the option of either the RME,  HILO, or HEDD be the clock? Can that be done AES too? It doesn't seem to be working now as I test with the AES16e interface.

With the RME AES, can I make a word clock loop like this?

RME WC Out connected to HEDD WC Input
HEDD WC Out to HILO WC In
HILO WC Out to RME WC In

Would that provide me with the option of having either the RME, HEDD, or HILO be the clock?

5

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

I don't know as I don't own a HEDD, and as you already pointed out that it is more critical in clocking all you can do is try. But I see no reason to do so anyway. The AES card should be the master clock, so that when changing between 44 and 48 on the computer all interfaces follow automatically.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

MC wrote:

I don't know as I don't own a HEDD, and as you already pointed out that it is more critical in clocking all you can do is try. But I see no reason to do so anyway. The AES card should be the master clock, so that when changing between 44 and 48 on the computer all interfaces follow automatically.

Thanks. I've just been following some advice that whatever I am using for the A/D in my session should be the master clock so I wanted an easy way to change the clock to be either the HEDD, HILO, or the AES card. I'm basically always at 96k so changing isn't a big deal.

I just don't know much about word clock I guess so I didn't know if that was a reasonable loop or how it was intended.

It seems the Lynx Hilo is clocking OK via AES but maybe the HEDD needs WC cable to perform best.

7

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

That is a recommendation from the past. These days professional products all ensure proper (low jitter) clocking by active jitter suppression, so you won't gain anything with internal clock with the RME or the Lynx. Again I can't comment on the HEDD.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

MC wrote:

That is a recommendation from the past. These days professional products all ensure proper (low jitter) clocking by active jitter suppression, so you won't gain anything with internal clock with the RME or the Lynx. Again I can't comment on the HEDD.

Thanks for your help. I have no reason to disagree.

I am strongly considering moving from the AES16e to the RME AES 32.

There was recently a post on a mastering forum about how the SyncroLock of the Lynx AES16e did some harm to the sound and a few people reported how great the RME AES 32 sounded.

I am confused though. Is the Hammerfall an old model? Sometimes I see a black AES32 and sometimes a silver AES32.

Are there two color options or do they have a technical difference?

9

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

The card comes in black PCB and silver bracket, no color choices.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

MC wrote:

The card comes in black PCB and silver bracket, no color choices.

Thanks, last question before I make the purchase:

Your website nor any of the online shops like Sweetwater show or mention much about the breakout cables.

Does the unit come with both breakout cables and roughly how long are they?

11

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

The unit does not come with breakout cables because there are at least three standards of wiring, Tascam, Yamaha and Euphonix. Please read the manual of the AES card, chapter 30.8 Connector Pinouts, for more details.

Regards
Matthias Carstens
RME

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

MC wrote:

The unit does not come with breakout cables because there are at least three standards of wiring, Tascam, Yamaha and Euphonix. Please read the manual of the AES card, chapter 30.8 Connector Pinouts, for more details.

Thanks. I'll take a closer look in the manual. I just wasn't sure if you offered something directly that would work with these common AES units (HEDD/HILO/Avocet).

I think I'm close to making the switch. I use a mix of Pro Tools, REAPER, and WaveLab software and I actually do beta testing for WaveLab and even on the public WaveLab forum, RME gets the most reports of crashing WaveLab when going between files of different sample rates in WaveLab.

Not everybody has problems but some do so while I think the sound of my analog processing could be better moving from the Lynx AES16e to the RME, it would be unfortunate if the RME made WaveLab crash because the time involved to make the switch and configure everything with the RME and my DAWs could easily be a few hours or maybe solid days work.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

Jperkins wrote:
MC wrote:

The unit does not come with breakout cables because there are at least three standards of wiring, Tascam, Yamaha and Euphonix. Please read the manual of the AES card, chapter 30.8 Connector Pinouts, for more details.

Thanks. I'll take a closer look in the manual. I just wasn't sure if you offered something directly that would work with these common AES units (HEDD/HILO/Avocet).

I think I'm close to making the switch. I use a mix of Pro Tools, REAPER, and WaveLab software and I actually do beta testing for WaveLab and even on the public WaveLab forum, RME gets the most reports of crashing WaveLab when going between files of different sample rates in WaveLab.

Not everybody has problems but some do so while I think the sound of my analog processing could be better moving from the Lynx AES16e to the RME, it would be unfortunate if the RME made WaveLab crash because the time involved to make the switch and configure everything with the RME and my DAWs could easily be a few hours or maybe solid days work.

I have the sample rate issue with wavelab 9.1 and my hdsp9652.. but not with my ufx or babyface pro.
I guessed it was just due to the aging card.

_

RME HDSP9652 | | RME Digiface USB

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

garry wrote:

I have the sample rate issue with wavelab 9.1 and my hdsp9652.. but not with my ufx or babyface pro.
I guessed it was just due to the aging card.

Thanks for the report. I admit that I didn't pay close attention to the details because I am not an RME user at this time.

I wonder if anybody has reports of stability with the HDSPe AES and WaveLab when changing the sample rate.

WaveLab will of course change the sample rate automatically but RME users seem to report many crashes related to this.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

I just asked PG from WaveLab he know if the sample rate issue came from a certain interface or interface type (USB/FireWire/PCIe).

We'll see what he says.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

Jperkins wrote:

I just asked PG from WaveLab he know if the sample rate issue came from a certain interface or interface type (USB/FireWire/PCIe).

We'll see what he says.

It's definitely a wavelab 9.x bug as the hdsp9652 has zero issues in other apps
(Cubase9/studio one 3.5/reaper 5.4/wavelab 8.5/vegas etc)

_

RME HDSP9652 | | RME Digiface USB

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

garry wrote:
Jperkins wrote:

I just asked PG from WaveLab he know if the sample rate issue came from a certain interface or interface type (USB/FireWire/PCIe).

We'll see what he says.

It's definitely a wavelab 9.x bug as the hdsp9652 has zero issues in other apps
(Cubase9/studio one 3.5/reaper 5.4/wavelab 8.5/vegas etc)

Right. I guess I meant if the WaveLab bug affects all RME interface, or just certain ones or certain formats (USB/FireWire/PCie) etc.

I can ask if any progress has been made.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

I finally had time to make the purchase of the card and the proper cables from Redco Audio.

I just wanted to say thanks again for your help making this decision.

I will report back if I get the classic WaveLab crash.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

Jperkins wrote:

I finally had time to make the purchase of the card and the proper cables from Redco Audio.

I just wanted to say thanks again for your help making this decision.

I will report back if I get the classic WaveLab crash.

I recently updated to 4.21 drivers for my hdsp9652 and as yet not seen the issue again (although the fix was apparently related to dual card users)

I haven't used wavelab an aweful lot in the past week though.. but the one mastering session I did had no problems (88.2k source files to 44.1k masters) which is usually where I get the issue.
Fingers crossed.

_

RME HDSP9652 | | RME Digiface USB

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

garry wrote:
Jperkins wrote:

I finally had time to make the purchase of the card and the proper cables from Redco Audio.

I just wanted to say thanks again for your help making this decision.

I will report back if I get the classic WaveLab crash.

I recently updated to 4.21 drivers for my hdsp9652 and as yet not seen the issue again (although the fix was apparently related to dual card users)

I haven't used wavelab an aweful lot in the past week though.. but the one mastering session I did had no problems (88.2k source files to 44.1k masters) which is usually where I get the issue.
Fingers crossed.

Thanks for the report. I often go fro 96k down to 44.1k (using custom montage copy and 3rd party SRC) so I'll know quickly if the issue exists there.

Re: Questions From Potential New Customer

I think I can safely say that I am not getting the WaveLab sample rate change crash when using the RME card. I'm on my 3rd full day of using the RME card now with plenty of sample rate changes and zero crashes.

What a relief because overall I am very happy with the sound and operation of this card over the Lynx AES16e. The Total Mix app is also much nicer to look at and I had an easier time setting it all up vs. the Lynx app.

I'm very happy I made this switch and thanks to you both for all your help.