Connecting MR816 to RME

[pablo1980]

Anybody has any ideas?

[pablo1980]

I have solved the headphones issues.
I wanted to ask somebody who has gone from MR816 as an interface (firewire) to RME + MR816 as converters only:

Did you gain stabiliy and lower latencies using lots of vsti?

Is the workflow more difficult? (adding totalmix vs cubase integration)

Any other thoughts?
Thanks!

[norbury brook]

pablo, I have an RME hdsp and 2x MR816's. I find the whole total mix confusing compared to the direct integration of the MR in cubase.

I'm mainly tracking live musicians and the MR in conjunction with the control room is fantastic.

The RME will do lower latency but for me latency isn't an issue due to direct monitoring and the zero latency DSP of the MR.



MC

[Masaaki]

My purpose and the rig is a little different, but I have RME HDSPe AIO in PCIe slot, and Profire 2626 through FW. The driver for AIO (Total Mix) and the driver for Profire are working together just great. This is for recording 4-piece band live, and doing it almost silently (except for vocals).

What I do is to feed instruments (keyboards, guitar effects processor, DI-bass) and mics to Profire (8 analog ins), and send them through AIO's ADAT in (Profire is clocked via AIO's ADAT out). AIO's MIDI receives MIDI triggers from E-drum brain. On DAW side (either Reaper or Cubase 6), I use Addictive Drum or Superior2 to play drum samples by the MIDI trigger. Each instrument is tracked for recording, of course. Then, use Total Mix to create four stereo submix, so that each player gets "more me" mixing. Four stereo submix from TotalMix are: ADAT1/2, ADAT3/4, ADAT5/6, ADAT7/8, and they are routed to Profire's ADAT IN. Those digital feeds to Profire are routed to analog outs (1-8), and each pair goes to headphone amps for monitoring. I can take a request, like "I need more bass with my drum", things like that, really on the fly (via Total Mix).

This is kind of Jamhub simulator, but using drum samplers and e-drum trigger, instead of drum brain's analog out (which is crappy IMO). The latency is very low (3-5ms RTL), since HDSPe AIO can handle 32 or 64 ASIO buffer very easily, and the drummer is very happy. When I need one more submix, I can use S/PDIF out from Total Mix, and feed it to another interface (UFX) running stand alone, and UFX drives two more headphones and analog out to monitor. But UFX is usually kept for my location recording, so I don't do that often.

[pablo1980]

Thanks guys, I forgot to give you some context.
I am a composer, I seldom do large recording sessions, mainly Vsti, so I would better benefit from lower latencies and overall stability (which MR816x don´t have, mainly in very large projects, 20gb of streaming samples and cpu intensive vsti).

[norbury brook]

Pablo if you're working as a composer and doing mainly VI's then the RME will give you better performance I would say.

You also don't mention if you're Mac or PC? if you're on PC then you can pick up a PCI HDSP cheap and you'll still find current boards with a working PCI slot. RME has a current windows 7 x64 driver which will still work with windows 8 so you're good for a few years.

Just feed the RME with the ADAT IO from the MR unit and get your head around total mix!


MC

[pablo1980]

Thanks. Thats the general consensus so far. I am on pc.
Do you think a raydat would not be better than a 9652, pciE seems the way to go?

[e-are]

I am having the exact same issue. I am running 3 Mr816x's and the driver issues I am having are a pain in the ass!!!! I've just ordered a raydat because I know their drivers are rock solid. In addition to the mr's I have an apogee ad16 and a da16 as well as a alesis ai3. I was told it was probably a pc issue so because of that and a few other issues, I've recently picked up a mac and guess what? Same freaking issue. I didn't have any issues when running 1 mr816 but I can't use just one. I plan on using all 32 channels of adat on the raydat and call it the day.Pisses me off tho. The mr does have great conversion. Means nonething if I have a session and my computer doesn't see my cards.


ps I think from here on any piece of computer hardware with the name steinberg on it, I'm running the other way.

[pablo1980]

Same move i am doing (running away from steinberg hardware).
Please let me know how it goes for you!

[e-are]

Well..............To my surprise. As a last minute thing, and because I had one laying around, I popped in a pci firewire card and my mr816's seems to be pretty damn stable. Fingers crossed tho.

[norbury brook]

The MR units have been very stable for me with either onboard TI or pcie TI FireWire. The only issue I have is the problem with the MR extensions and EW plays memory leak. Steinberg/ Yamaha have contacted EW about this but so far no resolution.

MC