As for the price, it's down from $2295 (US) to $1795 in most retail locations in the States.

I have a pretty sweet array of external mic pre's.  I rarely used the mic pre's on the VS 700- although when I did I wondered why I wasn't!  It's just when you have a couple of Pacifica's and a UA LA610, and you work mostly with songwriters- not bands- I can't see using "lesser" pre's. 

I'm going for the UFX.  I know there's a UFX + on the horizon but it looks to be around $2700 US.  I read specs on both and there's very subtle difference.  I don't see the need for MADI but maybe in a few years I will. 

I appreciate everyone's thoughts!

I went from the vs 700 to ucx ....the vs 700 was making me crazy with its fan noise ... I tried everything then got rid of it .... Exept the fantom and arx expansions : zero regrets

Be sure to get the remote it s super usefull

Appollo is a grzat interface also ...specially if you need confort effects during tracking

I've been using a UFX for a while now.

Rock solid and very low latency drivers under Windows and OS X using USB2, USB3 or Firewire and excellent sound quality, no complaints at all.

vanceen The only "problem" I can report is that the UFX driver doesn't seem to like switching back and forth between sampling rates. If you're working at 96 kHz and switch to 96 kHz, you may get some delays.

 
I've seen this as well.  Sometimes it works after a delay, sometimes it freezes or crashes Sonar on occasion.  I've submitted support incidents with RME and Cakewalk a while back about this, but frankly, it hasn't been a big enough issue for me, so I haven't chased the vendors on this.
 
If I need to change sample rate, as a workaround, I close Sonar, change the sample rate in RME's software, then restart Sonar.  Not the smoothest thing in the world, but a minor gripe.

Sacalait
I'm going for the UFX.  I know there's a UFX + on the horizon but it looks to be around $2700 US.  I read specs on both and there's very subtle difference.  I don't see the need for MADI but maybe in a few years I will

I've not looked at the UFX+ in detail, my UFX does all I require. A quick look at the differences suggests to me that the UFX+ is possibly intended to make up for the lack of internal PCIe slots in current Macs, hence the Thunderbolt socket (which makes sense even for smaller setups as firewire sockets are now a thing of the past on Macs) and MADI and the extended number of channels it can handle with the dsp beefed up to cope with them.

Basically it strikes me as intended as a possible replacement for PCI-based cards that, unlike PCI cards, doesn't require an expensive Thunderbolt to PCI slot converter box interface. As for the price, RME have never been cheap, but they are examples of high-quality German engineering that do what they claim to do and do it very well.

karma1959

vanceen The only "problem" I can report is that the UFX driver doesn't seem to like switching back and forth between sampling rates. If you're working at 96 kHz and switch to 96 kHz, you may get some delays.

 
I've seen this as well.  Sometimes it works after a delay, sometimes it freezes or crashes Sonar on occasion.  I've submitted support incidents with RME and Cakewalk a while back about this, but frankly, it hasn't been a big enough issue for me, so I haven't chased the vendors on this.
 
If I need to change sample rate, as a workaround, I close Sonar, change the sample rate in RME's software, then restart Sonar.  Not the smoothest thing in the world, but a minor gripe.

I can't see it as an issue for me at all.  The VS700 HAS to be turned off before switching sample rates.  I'm so used to it that I'd probably do it with the UFX anyway.  Thanks for the info. 

Only minor consideration on my part is USB 3.0 for UFX+ over USB 2.0 on the UFX. Given the general thumbs up by current UFX/USB 2.0 users, the $500 discount sounds like a good deal. 

Another RME UFX with SONAR Platinum user here.
 
Here's my take...
 
If you are a musician composing and recording yourself, the UFX is a bit overkill. If you have plans to record others for profit as an audio engineer, the UFX is a must have. You simply cannot go wrong with it and it is flawless with SONAR.
 
It will allow you to deliver separate zero latency headphone mixes to all your musicians, with or without effects (while still recording dry into SONAR). You can route anything to anywhere (reamping guitar for example). Sending an output of clean guitar DI to a reamp box and into your amp, while simultaneously recording the mic off the amp. 
 
By plugging in cell phones, and mics, and live internet audio streams, I have recorded live interviews with several different mixes feeding multiple destinations. The list goes on and on...
 
It seems there is nothing the RME UFX cannot do (in audio terms, of course it cannot make your coffee etc...).
 
They will have to pry my UFX from my cold dead hands before they ever get it away from me...ha ha ha.

Thanks Sylvan.  I'm a pro.  I make a living as a producer.  So the way you describe it is good news indeed.  I was actually prepared to shell out $2295 US!  I guess the stars were in my favor!  I pulled the trigger and FedEx has it set for delivery tomorrow!  I appreciate everyone's thoughts and responses!

Another thing the UFX can do is make a very good live mixer in three rack spaces if a couple of 8-input ADATs and an iPad running Totalmix is added in. The routing possibilites mean that splitting the stage mics/lines so separate FOH and foldback mixes can be provided isn't necessary.

It makes sense for a single person recording their own stuff if that person uses hardware synths or processors, where low latency monitoring either direct through the interface (maybe using the built-in eqs, compression and reverb/delay in the monitoring path) or through a DAW's input echo functions is very useful indeed. And unlike many interfaces, there's no "built in safety buffer" that the driver fails to report to the DAW.

For someone who basically works entirely in the DAW using soft-synths and only needs a couple of good very low noise inputs for guitar/microphone the Babyface might be the better, or at least the less expensive, option.

Actually, the only shortcoming of the UFX as far as I'm concerned is that in instrument mode the preamp impedance according to the manual is 470KOhms, where 1MegOhm or higher matches amp input impedances better. Though in practice it doesn't seem to wipe out noticeable amounts of treble any more than a buffered Tubescreamer does when "off".