I am not a fanboy of any manufacturer, each has their own way of building electronics and even synths. I use Roland Synths because they are available and I am not in a place where I can listen in big store and go back and forth except now there is a GC in town, but.....................there are many manufacturers so it all turns out about the same.
A post you may have missed over there, just copied so perhaps it will be allowed:
As for "misleading", let me quote what you could have read in the manual of the UCX:
"The term Zero Latency Monitoring has been introduced by RME in 1998 for the DIGI96 series
of audio cards. It stands for the ability to pass-through the computer's input signal at the inter-
face directly to the output. Since then, the idea behind has become one of the most important
features of modern hard disk recording. In the year 2000, RME published two ground-breaking
Tech Infos on the topics Low Latency Background, which are still up-to-date: Monitoring, ZLM
and ASIO, and Buffer and Latency Jitter, both found on the RME website.
How much Zero is Zero?
From a technical view there is no zero. Even the analog pass-through is subject to phase er-
rors, equalling a delay between input and output. However, delays below certain values can
subjectively be claimed to be a zero-latency. This applies to analog routing and mixing, and in
our opinion also to RME's Zero Latency Monitoring. The term describes the digital path of the
audio data from the input of the interface to its output. The digital receiver of the Fireface UCX
can't operate un-buffered, and together with TotalMix and the output via the transmitter, it
causes a typical delay of 3 samples. At 44.1 kHz this equals about 68 µs (0.000068 s), at 192
kHz only 15 µs. The delay is valid for ADAT and SPDIF in the same way.
Oversampling
While the delays of digital interfaces can be disregarded altogether, the analog inputs and out-
puts do cause a significant delay. Modern converter chips operate with 64 or 128 times over-
sampling plus digital filtering, in order to move the error-prone analog filters away from the au-
dible frequency range as far as possible. This typically generates a delay of one millisecond. A
playback and re-record of the same signal via DA and AD (loopback) then causes an offset of
the newly recorded track of about 2 ms.
Low Latency!
The Fireface UCX uses the latest AD converters having an innovative digital filter with a delay of
only 14 samples in Single and Double Speed, and 11 samples in Quad Speed. The DA con-
verter even exceeds these astonishing values with only 7 samples delay in all modes. (...)
Note that the total roundtrip delay of the unit from A to A will be a few samples higher. TotalMix
FX causes an additional delay of typically 3 samples as it stays always within the audio path. " Regards
Daniel Fuchs
RME
So each manufacturer is going to have their sells pitch and you usually get what you pay for. Pay more, you get more, and that is the usual way it is. There may not be all that much difference in the end that can be heard, but if you can hear it, it may be more pleasing to work with the equipment for longer periods of time. If I had more money, I am sure I have more audio/interfaces to use or even try and I am sure some studios go through and change equipment off and on and try different equipment out. I am not in a position to do that.
Compared to what I had before, there is much difference in the Babyface compared to what I had before, quite a bit of difference. Whether any of it is needed is then decided by what was out at the time (Octacapture I am sure came out afterwards) and when it is bought.
There usually are some musicians you like and then there are others you will just put up with, and then some musicians you can not fathom why they recorded anything in the first place.
In the end though to me, I am usually just a comedian playing music.