Ableton Forum

don't worry, I'm sticking with pcs, but a good friend is looking into replacing a moto 828 with a new RME fireface 800, for use on his macbook pro laptop and (I think) a G5 mac desktop--might be a newer desktop. Anyhow, he's read a few posts online about mac users having trouble with the ff 800. Can Ableton/Mac/RME Fireface 800 users here comment--smooth sailing? Any personal experience/affirmations greatly appreciated, but let's keep it to personal experience with Ableton/Mac/RME Fireface 800, not pcs, not multifaces, not Logic...thanks!

I used a Fireface 800 for a few weeks this year on my old Mac G5 (which dates back to late 2003). I was a little worried that the age of my computer's processors and its OS (10.4.11) that it might be a problem for the Fireface 800, but it was not. The RME ran like a champ. It sounded great.

Holding a FF800 in your hands kind of feels like it felt when I was 13 years old holding a skateboard in my hands. You just want to jump into it and start tearing it up. Sounds goofy, but that's how it felt.

You can't really go wrong with a Fireface 800. I felt confident that I could use the FF800 until my old computer died, replaced it with a state of the art computer and I'm sure the FF800 would have worked with the new one just fine.

Dispite all of this, I think I'm going to plunk down the $$$ eventually for the Fireface UC. I like the idea of using the UC with a 17" MacBook Pro, a large firewire external drive, and a UAD2 Solo card in the expressport. Of course, since the UC isn't compatible with my old G5, I'll have to buy all of those things at once, so I'm holding out until it's necessary. The longer I wait to upgrade, the faster and more capable the computers get. My G5 just won't quit, and it's kind of great.

cool, thanks! any other mac/ff800 ppl out there?

i've had one on a 2 GHz G5 running Live 5, it works well.

the only caveat is, it does not like to see *any* other Firewire devices on the same bus. that can cause occasional problems if you chance it (like refusing to pass audio at all), easily solved with a reboot and completely avoided by using USB 2.0 drives/peripherals.

otherwise, it's solid. sounds great, lots of routing options.

Solid. There are two other choices of similar quality on a Mac , the other two are Mac only, Apogee and Metric Halo, RME is the cross platform one though.

If he's not thinking about PCs at all, Metric Halo have the most rabid advocates, the pres are supposedly insanely good.

Running FF800 with MacBook pro here and all is good

Hidden Driveways wrote:Dispite all of this, I think I'm going to plunk down the $$$ eventually for the Fireface UC. I like the idea of using the UC with a 17" MacBook Pro, a large firewire external drive, and a UAD2 Solo card in the expressport. Of course, since the UC isn't compatible with my old G5, I'll have to buy all of those things at once, so I'm holding out until it's necessary. The longer I wait to upgrade, the faster and more capable the computers get. My G5 just won't quit, and it's kind of great.

Hi HD, cop that UC its ace! Took me a long time to spend that money, but its absoulutely worth it.

Sorry for the jacking

Recent Macs have problems with mean audio glitches, because of the firewire-controllers Apple is using. (And, of course, PCs have the same problems if they use these controllers.) For details see the RME forum. I've had these problems with my c2d Macbook and then the Macbook Pro. But everything works fine as soon as you're using a firewire harddrive or hub (I'm using the Belkin) in between the Mac and the Fireface.

Not a FF800...but I use a Multiface I connected to my Macbook Pro,17",coreduo,2Gb...through an expresscard/pcmcia adapter (Duel), due to the old card and the new Mac (at that moment), there was a small problem (it seems to be firmware)...I couldn't open the settings app, but...as the previous owner was a musician too, the card was setup perfect for me and I don't really need to change anything on it.
No need to say that all my stuff works like a charm... I can have everything connected at the same time...Electribes,KP3,Micron,guitar,Mics,etc...to the Macbook Pro and then into Live with a very low latency.
By the way...the mixer is a beast.