RME Fireface UCX 36 Channel 24 Bit 192kHz High-End USB and FireWire Audio Interface

I got the RME Fireface UCX to free up my Sound Devices USB Pre 2 for location work and also to provide more I/O for my home studio.The UCX is a versatile, stable, extremely clean, durable, and relatively compact (1/2 rack space) audio interface. It is very well built and has quite a bit of easily accessible I/O for its size. Installation is very straightforward, a firmware update was needed out of the box which can only be done via USB meaning both Firewire and USB drivers are required even if you will only be using Firewire for operation, all of which are available on the RME website. With drivers installed the UCX shows up immediately (I'm currently using it with a Mac mini running OSX 10.10 and ProTools 11) and the TotalMix software starts automatically. TotalMix is quite flexible, has more features than I am using in my current setup, provides zero latency pass thru monitoring, and could be extremely useful for things like standalone operation. The UCX will operate bus powered on Firewire, but requires the included external power supply to run on USB, a second FW port (preferably FW800/9-pin) would have been nice for daisy chaining but it is a small unit already packed full of connectors. Audio is absolutely noise and glitch free all the way to 192kHz and there's lots of internal and external clock options. The single front panel encoder/push button could be a bit limited for standalone operation, but it works great as a studio monitor level control.I highly recommend the UCX as a high quality compact studio interface. It would also be excellent as a location recording interface, though it would be a good idea to create presets with TotalMix if you will be using it standalone (without a computer). There are less expensive interfaces that come bundled with plugin packages (TotalMix has a limited number of effects available) but I think the audio quality, build quality and rock solid driver stability make the UCX a better choice. If you need additional DSP, something like the Universal Audio interfaces would be worth considering, but for a top quality dedicated interface the RME is hard to beat.

This is a great piece of gear. I use this for mobile application and it's big brother the UFX in the studio. A serious interface for pros and for the passionate home studio. I use with a windows pc via a silver USB2 interconnect. The drivers are absolutely stable. Totalmix is a great, easy to use user interface. Brilliant. That said, I would like to see Ethernet or USB3 connectivity neither of which are available as of this writting.

Good Price for a very proffisional audio interface, specially that I can choose to connect it via USB or FireWire

Simply the best quality sound for PC audio interfaceBetter than UC that comes with USB 2.0 only, but UCX model has USB 3.0