Sanderxpander
Nice deal! It's a great card, I hope it helps with your issues too!

Thanks mate!
 
Hope that guy delivers.. but it's a commercial seller with 100% rating, so my hopes are high.

Jim Roseberry
If your current machine has PCI slot/s, the 9632 should work fine.
TotalMix is super flexible.
Low-latency performance is rock-solid.
 
You can even go back two generations prior to the 9632... and those RME audio interfaces were rock-solid.
RME has been delivering great audio interfaces for literally decades.
 
RME models are expensive... but you get an audio interface that can be used for 10+ years... and you won't give it a second thought. 

  
 
Jim,
 
I just bought the fireface 400 and it seems to be extremely sensitive to electrical interference.  Has anyone gone through this?  (e.g. electrical noise with the analog ins)?  I've read up on it, and it seems to be a common problem.  

eph221
Jim,
 
I just bought the fireface 400 and it seems to be extremely sensitive to electrical interference.  Has anyone gone through this?  (e.g. electrical noise with the analog ins)?  I've read up on it, and it seems to be a common problem.  

I've read that, too, especially for the internal RME cards. My card should arrive today, I'm gonna report how it turns out. Already had the issue with my onboard soundchip, but with some cablemanagement I was able to deal with it. My monitors tend to react to my cell if it's closer than 20cm.
 
You said you already bought the fireface, what exact issues are you facing? A hum loop? Can you hear the harddrive or mouse activity?
 
p.s. two common approaches are to either ground the device (if it has a non-grounded plug) or to remove the ground connection (if it has a grounded plug) by applying some electrical tape over that pin. Although both workarounds are potentially dangerous, only execute (yourself / your fireface) if you know what you're doing. :D

Just received the card. Couple of problems came up right away.
1.) I had to remove the outermost screw from the dsub connector, otherwise it would have been impossible to install the card.
 
2.) At first the card worked fine, but then I opened an older project and things went south big time. Something must have crashed, I got no output on "Main" and could only restore the working state via reboot. But it happened again couple of times. In this state every click in Windows turned into a loud pop on my monitors (not a static problem). It was so bad I was sure the card is broken.
 
Then I updated the firmware from version Rev. 153 to Rev. 155 and this serious problem seems to be gone. Could be a mismatch between the newest driver and the older firmware. I'll see in the long run. I also turned on MMCSS on the driver panel.
 
When I changed ASIO buffer size Sonar responded with a crash couple of time. Not sure what the ideal settings for both the RME and Sonar are. If you have a link or info please post.
 
When testing the outer limits the RME doesn't perform any better than the M-Audio.
In a "real life" scenario however the RME beats the M-Audio, the later I had to run at 1024 Samples pretty much all the time, RME seems to be happy with 128-256.
 
EDIT: I don't have any static noise, at all. I have the black version of the card, also my PC case has a layer of paint over all slots. Some people reported it helps with static noise and RME cards to isolate them.

So far no more issues. One very positive note I can say now, when using more demanding settings in UVI Falcon my whole machine doesn't crash anymore, just simple Audio Dropout. Still these settings, at least in combination, seem to be made for next generation computers.
 
´

For your interest I have been using this card for the last few years.  It has been excellent for me.  Audio quality also excellent.  I am using it with Studio One.  I have never had instability or crash issues. I can work comfortably down at 32 samples often while playing with virtual instruments.  Especially now that Studio One enables separate input and output latencies. You can have low latency input monitoring option with a high playback drop out protected setting enabling your session to play under load.  This all works well even with this card.  I have tested the input latency to a virtual instrument to be around 4 mS.  Audio latency is lower for 32 samples as well.  Have not tested latency under new conditions for V3.5 of Studio One though. Will do and report.
 
The midi interface for use with hardware synths with his card is also excellent.  I use it as a 9th midi port and it feels fast and tight. The same as my Midex midi interface. I need those two to be in sync and tight also. It works great at 96K too. 
 
Studio One now enables a 16 samples setting for audio buffers but it only appears on certain interfaces.  On my iMac with a thunderbolt Focusrite interface it is available. Not with the HDSP 9632 on Win 7. However I have on loan an RME Fireface 800 at the moment and the 16 samples setting also shows up there for some reason over the firewire 800 connection. I will be testing that to see how that plays out.
 
I was software monitoring a band through a PA while doing a multi track recording with the FF800 and there was no perceptible latency anywhere. Because the monitoring was software based, more interesting and complex monitoring and recording situations could be achieved. Saved and recalled too. 
 
Focusrite interfaces also sound excellent and are very fast as well especially over thunderbolt. For me the top two are both these companies. 
 

Thanks Jeff for your detailed feedback. I'm not sure how to apply your settings to Sonar, I don't think these exist here. If you have further insight on how to setup Sonar and the RME to play along nicely, please share!
 
I've been working with the card the entire weekend, several "black sheep" (bad VST / VSTi) forced me to set the buffers back up to 1024. Really a bummer.
 
On top, other problems I had before, like missing Midi notes when working with linear phase / long lookahead plugins didn't change either, still the same problems as with the M-Audio.
 
I mean 159€ wasn't much money, considering I'll be able to sell the M-Audio I'll probably end up having invested about 100€ for a 400€ card - yet I wish those problems would've gone away.

The types of settings I have described for Studio One are not currently available as far as I know with Sonar.  And it is in our latest 3.5 update.  Sonar will probably be input and output latency locked.  Set lowest for jamming with virtual instruments and high buffers to be able to play back large sessions. 
 
I am sure in time they will also engage in some more options in terms of setting input and output latencies separately.  It seems sensible to me.  Some Presonus users are confused, it is little more complex now.  Plus thrown in is we also now have a low latency monitoring mode for audio and instruments which lowers the latency times even further.  Plus the fact some Presonus interfaces offer zero latency hardware monitoring options.  Anyway we are sorting it all out.  Once you get it though, it is quite excellent.  Enabling various latency and monitoring options. 
 
For me the thunderbolt port over the iMac has the fastest feel in terms of virtual instrument response.  It is quite amazing. Even with something like the Waves Rhapsody Grand piano plugin.
 
The reported latency with my Win 7 computer with HDSP9632 is 1.75 mS input latency and 2.52 output latency. It certainly seems to feel like that anyway.

RME also has "zero" latency monitoring with extremely complex routing options, and Sonar offers a bypass to plugin latency compensation for live audio/softsynth tracks (as long as there isn't anything in the actual signal path that prevents it).

It sounds to me like either your VSTs are a little buggy or, as Jim Roseberry pointed out, unfortunately Rizen systems are less well optimized for low latency audio performance. Assuming your DPC latency is already showing reasonable values, I seem to recall you checked. This is a bummer, I had hoped your issues would be helped along. FWIW, I would say you've pretty much excluded the actual soundcard from being an issue so keep the one you prefer and sell the other. Time to look elsewhere.

Hi occide,
 
some recommendations from RME which could be worth to try:

- Disable MMCSS

- Don't use the 9632 as your default Windows audio device (you could use the onboard sound chip or an other audio
  interface instead).

Then, in "DSP Settings": Set "WDM Devices" to 0 (zero).

FWIW, I use a 9632 on my second computer together with SONAR without a problem since 5 years.
 
Best,
Klaus