The killer feature for me is DUrect: direct recording to USB drive without computer attached. I set out to try that without reading the manual, also as a test of RME 's interface design. Front-panel gives access to all mix and recording settings when operated stand-alone, The little color display is quite effective, and much more user-friendly than the UltraLite mk3 display. I reasonably quickly found how to activate recording of input channels but couldn’t get the playback of the file to sound. A little manual dive cleared up that I needed to make the analog output channels 1/2 the playback point, not the input channels where I recorded because these were not mixed to the outputs so didn’t sound. Completely logical in hindsight.
So a file playback can appear either directly on output channels (as many channels as the file contains), or on inputs meaning it can be mixed through the matrix and have fx applied before outputting. Neat.
Other thing I found out after reading the manual: the power jack has a locking mechanism that i had missed at first, and when you miss it the power connection is unstable…
The internal routing and mixing is extremely flexible. This is best visualized in the TotalMix FX app. I think the matrix view will be my best friend as the routing is most clear there. I did a quick test of the internal loopback feature, sending an SMPTE timecode signal played in Ableton to Resolume. As I’m only using the analog connections for now, I’ve used one SPDIF channel for this. Ableton outputs on SPDIF out 1. In TotalMix FX loopback is activated for this output. Now the signal appears on SPDIF input 1 without need of physical cables. Resolume was set to listening for timecode on that input and worked fine. (Of course this will work with regular audio signals between applications too)
I’m on Windows and driver support seems great. The Fireface USB settings app has a ton of advanced options and I could hotplug the interface without issues. I was extremely frustrated with the UltraLite mk3 Windows support as it always requires a reboot before it will work properly.
Small thing that threw me of a little: after installing the drivers it needed a reboot before the TotalMix and USB settings app loaded automatically. According to RME they should have appeared when plugging in the interface but that didn’t happen the first time after installing the software. Now it does.
Nice Interface!
I´ve also a Babyface and I go digital to Genelec monitors. But I need a Mutec to convert from SPDIF to AES/EBU. Do you know if the AES/EBU out is reclocked? Or is RME SteadyClock FS just PLL (phase lock loop)?
Got mine from Thomann a couple weeks ago. I think it’s showing as out of stock because they’d sold their entire initial shipment well before the release date and they don’t have a timeframe for their next shipment yet.
The only hiccup getting it set up for me was the locking DC connector — I didn’t notice the lock and thought it was DoA, but their support team answered my email in minutes and got me sorted out (and it’s actually a really nice feature for peace of mind). Drivers/software experience has been absolutely rock solid, like night and day with the PoS Arturia Audiofuse it replaced. Totalmix is great, especially with the loopback feature. I got an Arc as well, and that’s also been a really nice experience — it just works.
Man that’s pretty sweet!
Out of curiosity, have you tried recording at 192k? If so, what was the lowest latency you were able to get?
I was disappointed to see it was usb 2.0 but I thought I read somewhere that they are getting crazy good roundtrip latency on it.
USB3 isn’t faster, it does have more bandwidth (more channels at the same time), which you don’t need on the UCX II, as USB2 has enough bandwidth for all the channels available on the UCX II
Yeah, I think so too about USB 2.0 - but since somebody on this forum told me it’s no problem to adapt to USB-C (which is kinda obvious since it’s downwards compatible), I am okay with this.
But damn… this is expensive - I guess I rather go the MOTU route.
I plan on setting up my Fireface 800 for the extra inputs over Adat so I assume you are referring to the total amount of channels the UCX II can handle and not just the inputs/outputs on the box.
I would LOVE to replace my SSL2, is there anything like this that records directly to USB with good converters but doesn’t have so many I/O channels? I don’t need the lightpipe, but I imagine there’s not much similar they offer beyond the Babyface Pro FS.
Looking to expand with ADAT. Seems that most of the cheaper ADAT interfaces have there IO split between front and back (which is annoying for rack mounting IMO) - am I missing any hidden gems to check out before considering to bite the bullet on an Octamic just because of the placement of IO connectors?
