RME Fireface 400. Reliability?

[estatekid]

Hi All. Lately there have been RME Firefaces coming on the second hand market? I have to ask myself why? Im interested in the FF400 but I'm hesitant bcuz im thinking if they are that great why are people selling them. Is there something to worry about with the FF400 functionality, drivers etc. Does anyone use these products and give me an idea. All the best E

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Lots of firewire interfaces have been hitting the used market (not just RME) because apple has abandoned firewire, drivers are not functioning with recent OS updates and you need specific chipsets on PCI and PCIE expansion cards for many of these interfaces to function correctly(or at all) even if you can run the drivers in compatibility mode.

Basically the problem is that technology has moved on, and people are torn between running older software versions of DAWS/VSTs on older computers and being locked in to that feature set forever, and updating their DAW machines to take advantage of newer software which is forcing them to dump older hardware due to lack of ongoing driver support or hardware compatibility issues.

RME have a really good reputation for supporting their products in the long term, but there may be other issues depending on what platform you are using (mac/PC) and what specific harware and software you are running - Google is your friend.

[paul_5]

RME (when I used them years ago) were absolutely rock solid as regards drivers and performance. Their drivers and software work so well together because they made their own ICs, instead of using 'off the shelf' components. I never had any issues with mine, and I was regularly pulling 24 tracks of music into cubase simultaneously. Shame legacy drivers don't work on newer OSs. That's progress I guess.