Audio Quality is a personal thing when you get to the RME / MOTU etc level. Different AD/DAs sound a little different, and the warmest AD converter I have is the Black Lion Audio modified Behringer AD8000. It just kills units 10x it's price.
 
BUT, I own an RME HDSP 9652 PCI and an RME UFX, and for durability, reliability and uncomplicated operation there is IMO nothing to beat it. I bought the HDSP 9652 around 2005 (possibly 2003/2004)as a demo model from a shop, and that card has never ever given one moment of trouble. Drivers are STILL updated every few months and the thing has survived three or four PC rebuilds, one of which was the PC's power supply literally exploding in smoke, all other cards and motherboard blown... the RME just settled right into the new PC and worked like it was a given. The units have also been in cargo holds of airplanes and on building roofs in winter weather (recording Fourplay's Harvey Mason) and no sweat was broken.
 
I use the UFX as a live recorder as well as my main AD/audio router in the studio, feeding my desk which feeds the HDSP9652 (inside the PC). I do this because I like being able to monitor on a real digital desk.
 
For the money, your return on investment should be guaranteed over the long run. But the Pre-amps on the UFX are pretty neutral, so don't expect a flattering sound, just a clean, super reliable workhorse with clarity and a really powerful interface. If Coldplay uses two UFXs to play back their backtracks, and the live Grammies are mixed entirely through RME converters, that should tell you something about the bulldozer nature of RME gear.
 
 
Oh, and the latency ... well, it's hard to find any.
 
 
So is it X times better than other gear? Depends on what better means to you. For me, I'd buy another one tomorrow if I needed to. I suppose it's a bit like driving an older Mercedes...

If paying 300% higher price for a <10% better product/sound fits your "production plan", go ahead.
Well, of course this is caught from the wind, but that's how I've figured it out. After a certain
decent price range (200-400 € ??) you must pay a lot for every, hardly audible, hardly noticeable
improvement.
But I guess sometimes it feels sane to pay for the high quality of build alone, when you're fed up with plugs and sockets that can't bear the weight of the cable. Propably it also gives you more confidence, and a good feel, to know you're using high quality gear.

Somebody earlier in this thread mentioned a new Motu interface vs the specs of the RME UFX. The UFX was first released in 2010, that's 5 year old technology which is still well on par with devices released just this year.

It shows the longevity of quality audio devices and how far companies like RME are in advance of others.

You can get 90 % of the sound and function of goo quality device by going cheaper but as you e experienced after 4 years it's out of date.

I recently sold 2x RME FF800s to buy my UFX. Interestingly the FF800 were released in 2001 and last year had firmware updates so that new features could be added. That's support. BTW. You. Can pay a lot lot more for an audio device and converters than going with RME.

When I considered the cost, I factored in how much I hate to have to tell the band a song was lost due to a glitch.

The RME unit I have hard limits more than clips. It will auto set gain on four of 18 channels. Using the SPIDF to slave I can record 24 concurrent channels. In class complaint mode I can record using Linux which to me is a rock solid mobile recording platform.

Like other interfaces, it has zero latency internal routing. It has EQ and compressor on every channel, input and output.

It comes with DigiCheck which has a great spectral analyzer and other things.

If you connect the ADAT out to the ADAT in, you get all kinds of interesting parallel processing options.

When recording live, you don't need sonar. You can just use RME TotalMix and DigiCheck.

Jeff Evans
Jim will probably back me up on this. Something you have all missed. Latency. RME is way ahead in that department. Amazing round trip latency figues. Better (by a long shot) than anything I have had previously. For some that is a very important factor.  They sound sweet too.  And TotalMix is excellent.

Absolutely.
The short answer is, YES... RME is that good.
They're not cheap, but RME units are the type of audio interface you can use for 10+ years... and never give it a second thought.  Great sound, rock-solid stable, and fantastic performance at ultra low latency.
TotalMix is super flexible (routing/etc)... and DigiCheck is a great utility.
 
At a little bit lower cost, I'm a big MOTU fan.
I had excellent luck with an 8-Pre, 896HD, and now an Ultralite AVB.
 
If the choice is between an RME UCX, UFX... or one of the newer generation MOTU AVB units, you can't possibly make a bad decision.
 
In another thread, I believe Thomas Barnes mentioned that the larger MOTU AVB units have slightly higher fidelity than the UCX/UFX.  That is true.  Keep in mind that both offer noise-floor below -117dB (which is world-class territory).  In both cases, you're talking shades of excellent.
 
 

I have had both Motu and RME and now mainly use Focusrite.
 
RME - I had reliability issues and their after sales service was not good to say the least - luckily I had purchased the RME through Sweetwater and as per usual Sweetwater came to the rescue. But RME - rubbish service and in fact they never managed to get their product to work adequately (even after being poked by Sweetwater!), so it sits in the cupboard!!!
 
Motu - used a 828 very happily for many years - that went wrong eventually and the service from Motu was superb - still using the repaired / replaced 828 today - excellent.
 
But my main interfaces today are Focusrite Saffire Pros - very happy with these indeed.
Nigel
 
 

I've never used RME here at home, but from outside use the hardware is fine and the software is great - and they have a great system.  As said above, latency, dependability and compatibility are stellar.  Can't comment on service.  But if you are doing live recordings or a commercial studio, the above 3 items are what you want.  I've got a TC Konnekt unit that only last year got round-trip latency down into the single digits (ms).  It has as flexible (and even more confusing!) software/mixer than RME, and it sounds just as good, maybe better.  It cost as much - at least when introduced, but I wouldn't have bought it for house work because of the above issues, even if latency would have been good out of the box.  For home use, tho, it was the bomb when they dropped the price to half since everybody bought RME instead of TC.
 
As far as sound quality, beware of stat quotes.  117 dB unit can sound better than a 123 dB unit.    The same ADDA chips are used in all similar classes of interfaces.  It all has to do w/ the electronics around it, the same way an old Neve or new SSL will (hopefully!) sound better than a $100 beheringer, even if the signal to noise ratio might not be as good.  Besides, almost any interface today will have good enough sound, at least as far as ADDA goes.  Preamps are different, but most interface preamps are good enough, too, tho I prefer stand-alone units and transformers.  But I have gotten fine results from built-ins.
 
@

hmm... so I am certainly not on the level of some of the pros here so feel free to totally dismiss this BUT...
 
Considering you are doing this as a hobbyist or even semi pro... wouldn't it maybe be better to invest those massive markup dollars on other input devices that will improve sound quality such as mics, guitars, sweet preamps, mixers or even instruments (like better guitars/amps/etc)?
 
I'm kind of thinking there is a tipping point where a studio may own all the best mics and external gear that the sound going in is at max potential (like 20-30 grand worth of mics and pres and whatever) so then it comes down to how do we get the wicked sound being outputted from that wicked gear INTO the box better. Then paying 3 times as much for an interface might become a priority.
 
BUT on the other end of the spectrum if you don't own that super high end stuff OUTSIDE of the box is it really worth spending that kind of money on something that is merely a vehicle for getting the sound OUTSIDE to the INSIDE?
 
Seriously curious... but really to me I'd keep using my humble Focusrite box and instead dump the money into some mics and/or nice pres/and or some nice mastering software. $1000 can go a long way for a "prosumer" rig.
 
Seriously I do not know though and certainly don't want to contradict the heavy hitters who ahve posted here.
 
Cheers.

Beepster, that is a good point.
 
However, I am not trying to necessarily upgrade my interface. The issue is that it is no longer being supported by the manufacturer. As new versions of Windows come out, there will be no new drivers for it. In fact, officially, Windows 8.1 is not supported. It still works (most of the time) on my computer but others have indicated it does not work on theirs past 8.0. Occasionally I have a glitch but I don't know if it is a driver problem or not. Again, there is no support.
 
Since I use my computer for other things, I will be getting Windows 10. If the interface does not work after the upgrade, I will be buying a new interface immediately. I don't want to wait for that event and then start my research. Interfaces are not cheap and I like to be informed.
 
I really appreciate everybody's input so far!
 
 

If you need low round trip latency for monitoring through a DAW then RME do the business. Their driver and firmware support and installation (different firmware depending whether you're using Mac or PC) to date is amongst the best, if not the best. It works fine off USB2, USB3, Firewire 400 and connected to Thunderbolt 2 via a firewire adaptor cable.

I've used my UFX for field recording at a friend's house armed with the UFX, a 32GB USB stick and an iPad to run RME's iOS version of totalmix. Very straightforward to do.

As for audio quality, the fact is that the mid-price interfaces from Roland, Focusrite, almost anyone, nowadays are all pretty good. Particular AD/DA chips are often used by several manufacturers in products in different price brackets. For example the UFX uses the same DA chip as a less expensive Presonus interface. The difference with the "higher end" tends to be in the drivers and the analogue components, power filtering etc. Also microphone pres and background noise levels come into it.

There's a law of diminishing returns with interfaces like there is with anything else, so once you get beyond a certain point you have to spend quite a bit more to get increasingly less noticable improvement in audio quality. Quite where that point is is debatable of course. I wouldn't get too hung up over 3dB difference in dynamic range though, at least not when you're looking at ranges of over 110-115dB. In the real world that's not very relevant.

If it helps the RME mic pres are quieter than my Focusrite octopre pres, and I think they sound a little fuller, but it's not the kind of difference that makes you sit up and take notice.

I went with RME primarily for the number of inputs and the very low latency drivers. I also considered MOTU but at the time RME struck me as the better option for me. It helped that RME were quick at answering a couple of questions I had and at the time there were some doubts about MOTU's USB performance compared to firewire and I didn't want to have to mess around with firewire on a Windows 8+ PC.

I have a MOTU microlite MIDI interface that works so well I can forget it even exists, which is more than I can say for M-Audio :-/

Both RME and MOTU are reputable, well established and highly regarded and in the music/audio business that says something. In car terms deciding between them (and Apogee if you're Mac only) is a bit like deciding between buying a new Ford Mustang and a Jaguar. The basics are solid in both so it comes down to the little differences and what matters to one person might not matter so much to another.