RME HDSPe RayDAT

Plugged it in, connected the Optical cables, routed the tracks and started recording. This is the way to interface your digital console to the computer.... Sounds great! One issue that did come up is not being able to play Media Player through the sound card, was told that it was a Software issue with the card.. that's been a bit disappointing...

Great picture

I've had the rme 9652 for years and been very happy. I needed two have the PCI e version and it seems to be just as good. Great company support and another set of adat. No word clock however unless you buy another daughter card. In my set up I've done away with word clock. Apparently so have others. Great sound card for music production.

I've been working with these for 3 years, had no issues ever.

This is a great product. I've been using it nonstop for a year. It has no nonsense, it is rock-solid stable and it is a very good performer. You can easily reach <5 ms latency with a modest modern computer and <2 ms with proper configuration. I've only used it at 48khz and 44.1khz because that's what my hardware is limited to. For anyone else as clueless as I was when I decided to make the jump to an ADAT setup, I'll briefly explain how it works. After installing this in your computer, you must connect an external AD/DA converter, which will take your analog signal (microphone, guitar, etc) and convert it to digital. That digital signal is sent out of the AD/DA, through the ADAT fiber optic cable (relatively short cables are included, longer ones can be purchased at little cost) and into the RayDAT. The RayDAT also sends its output as a digital signal which needs to be converted to analog before your speakers can play it. I'm using a Behringer ADA8200 which is a very cheap AD/DA with 8 mic/instrument inputs with phantom power, and 8 balanced XLR outputs. I have the first 2 outputs (left and right) of the ADA8200 plugged into a mixer to which my speakers are connected. There are 4 ADAT Lightpipe inputs and outputs on the card which means one can hook up 4 different AD/DA units and get a total of 32 inputs and outputs at 48khz and below. As you increase the sample rate, the number of usable inputs halves. If your AD/DA supports 192khz, you can use up to 8 total ins and outs if you hook up 4 AD/DAs (2 I/O per converter at 192khz). I've never tried this as my AD/DA only supports up to 48khz, but I've read that this is how it works. This device allows one to use ASIO and general computer audio at the same time. It even allows multiple applications to use ASIO at the same time. The software allows for "loopback" which lets you route the output of one channel into the input of another. This can be used for playing your DAW audio over Skype, for example.