RME Madi or SSL Madi, which one is better?

[rockman413]

RME Madi or SSL Madi, which one is better or more acurate?

[brew]

MADI is a standard codified by the AES, AES10-2008 to be exact, therefore, no manufacturer "does it better." MADI is the same wherever it's used--manufacturers can only compete on features, so you need to be more specific about what boxes you're looking at and what your needs are.

MADI was partly developed by SSL.

[londonengineer]

AFAIK RME develop their own cards in-house, SSL's cards were developed by Sydec in Belgium independently of SSL before they were bought out by them, so any advantage by them being one of the original inventors is moot.

My personal experience has been that RME MADI cards have been consistently reliable with excellent software/drivers whereas I have heard anecdotal evidence of a few driver issues with the SSL cards.

[klaukholm]

If you need both coax and optical madi, the rme is better.
If you need dual optical, the ssl is better.
The RME also has a few extra features that some people have a use for.

If optical madi is all you need, go SSL

[rockman413]

Great answers. Thanks!
Why optical then go SSL? SSL's optical is better than RME? and RME's Coxial is better than SSL?

[klaukholm]

Both work fine in optical, but if optical is all you need, the SSL is much cheaper.
If you also need two bidirectional optical streams, you can get that in one card with the ssl 128.

[Steven1145]

We have been using RME MADI cards since 2004, and have mostly been very pleased with their drivers and sound. At one point there was a dodgy driver (when they introduced the AES-32 card) but since then it has been smooth sailing all along.
We plug the RME cards into our Euphonix console for Studio A, and into an SSL converter (AES+Analog) for studio B (S5-MC).

[Jim@SSL]

Originally Posted by londonengineer

AFAIK RME develop their own cards in-house, SSL's cards were developed by Sydec in Belgium independently of SSL before they were bought out by them, so any advantage by them being one of the original inventors is moot.

My personal experience has been that RME MADI cards have been consistently reliable with excellent software/drivers whereas I have heard anecdotal evidence of a few driver issues with the SSL cards.

FWIW the MadiXtreme was not released until well after we purchased Sydec. It was very much developed as an SSL product. Our drivers for the MadiXtreme seem to be tremendously stable and we have very few support requests regarding them.

For the sake of balance - I'd suggest that both RME and SSL have good drivers for their Madi products and your choice between the two is likely to depend on:
Do you need lots of MADI I/O (SSL 128 channels in 1 slot, RME 128 channels in 2 slots)?
Do you need a DSP mixer (RME Totalmix, SSL depends on host DAW)?

[brew]

Originally Posted by londonengineer

AFAIK RME develop their own cards in-house, SSL's cards were developed by Sydec in Belgium independently of SSL before they were bought out by them, so any advantage by them being one of the original inventors is moot.

Not moot. SSL has been using MADI since the 90's, when it was implemented on their digital consoles. The "four manufacturers" mentioned in the spec's forward are SSL, Sony, Mitsubishi, and Neve.

[klaukholm]

Originally Posted by Jim@SSL

Do you need a DSP mixer (RME Totalmix, SSL depends on host DAW)?

You are selling yourself short!
You do have a dsp version of the 128 version right?

[Killahurts]

I use an RME HDSPe MADI card in the Mac, going to the SSL Alphalink SX. IMO, it's the best of both worlds- I get the great SSL analog conversion for my SSL console, plus the RME MADI/Totalmix on the computer side, which is somewhat more versatile for my setup.