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I just got the RME Fireface800 and am very happy with it here. I also have the Tango 24 left over from former use with a Digi 001 (can't say how glad I am to have moved on from that unit) Everyone's complimenting the sound on the playback of the RME.
I’m a self produced musician (vocal/guitar/keys). I also have a band and I have a large studio room (1600 sq. ft with 17ft to 12 ft. sloping ceiling) and setup the band to record in a basic band configuration with baffles between drums / bass / guitar amp (boutique JTM45) / Reamp, Keyboard, guitar amp (vintage Marshall plexi). Vocal / PA are my ambience mics. If we want to do vocals later just do some of the takes where we don't sing.
The big surprise and benefit for me is the Total mix software for the no latency monitoring. I'm using Ableton Live 5 and a lot of midi controllers for remoteing and automation. So I'm able to go mixerless. Well my mackie mixer is now a hardware playback/ reverb/delay fx's return now into the RME. So now I'm able to monitor all the Record inputs and the hardware reverb returns through the mixer without latency issues. Even the PA speakers come off of a send from the Fireface Mixer. That's huge for me. Allows me to set my buffers large for safety. I use my external reverb units and I don't use any plugs when I'm recording the band. Just stream in recording about 14 inputs (god bless you Andy Johns for your drum micing technique and Sam my most excellent drummer).
I use the Live program and step on a button for incrementing Scenes. Live has what's called Session view and you trigger a scene to record or playback a section of music 1 second to 2 hours etc. That translates into seperate sets of sound files equalling seperate tracks on the cd when done with the session. The scenes get rendered with a quick mix to Itunes library and burned on CD's. Let everybody else involved sort out what’s to be distilled. Because 4 or 5 hours of playing with a real band has it's moments and previewing it is a logjamming nightmare otherwise. As far as the band goes if we don't do it right as a band what good is it to us anyway. Depth / dimensionality??? if it sounds right to us in the room it translates to the recording and saves a hell of a lot of work is what I'm happy to report. Self mixing to a very large and the most important degree comes from the players.
Now I have a lot of toys so I can produce eveything myself. More and more I look at it as just production tools to put icing on top of the cake. (Reason, Guitar Rig, Little Labs reamp, etc). Because when you’ve got a band you gotta let that pony run.
Now when I listen to stuff that I recorded on Digi 001. I see that the sound of a live recording of the band was colored, but still quite useable. I now look at all the stuff I tracked separately with suspicion. I’m thinking there is something about CLOCKING that really makes for multitracking a track at a time to having fidelity / depth of sound issues. The more tracks done separately the more inaccuracie. MY CHEAP OPINION. I’m no expert.
Bottom line the RME Fireface 800 suprised me in the best way for it’s functionality. (Maybe I’ll add some Apogee or Lavry converters into the RME next). It’s relative though. I get happier all the time this way.
Vision is always ahead of execution. Knowledge of materials is your contact with reality. Uncertainty is a virtue. -Art & Fear-
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