After living with a Discrete 8 Pro with a Macintosh for a little over a year at home my assessment would be, meh to nice. The build quality is fine unless you plan to use the interface as a hammer or lay bricks with it. The preamps have plenty of clean gain and can use a dynamic as source easily, transformers and AD/DA are top notch, the clocking is solid no complaints.

Afx2Daw has gotten better on Mac but I have heard that it was bad on Windows not sure how it is now. The FPGA FX are OK but there aren't that many of them unless you need a ton of amp models. They are useful during tracking and can be bypassed through the internal matrix to record a clean channel if you don't want to print them or want to print both versions. The internal matrix mixer is a bit complicated but it is the highest value feature of these interfaces if you are not going to make use of it, then they are not worth the spend.

It works with very few issues and I have no complaints but the company themselves do seem a little greasy, if not outright shady. If you are going to use the onboard FX and the matrix mixer to make monitor mixes, rec mixes and a recording channels while taking advantage of the FPGA it has value. If you are going to use it as a tape machine or the same way you would use a standard dumb interface it’s not worth it.

I am not in love with the interface but I don't feel any malice either. I don't upgrade a stable system right way and tend to wait awhile after driver and OS releases to avoid playing driver roulette, so FWIW I've not been affected by any of the coms debacles.

Bus power vs wall warts, that's a personal decision.Modern USBC/TB4 can route a lot more power than old school cables and plugging in one. device to the wall versus 2 is a convenient. Just because it's a laptop doesn't mean you need to run on the battery all the time. Pick what works best for you, there are pros and cons to both solutions.

 

I personally own a lot of antelope equipment
In the recording studio a Goliath HD, in the mastering studio an Amari, zen tour for my sons setup,
New atmos build has a galaxy32 with 15 atlas i8’s
Still have master clocks from when I was doing more analog mixes on consoles. The newer equipment has amazing clocking, I use to love how the atomic clock would make the rosetta800s back then sound so much better. These days cheap converters are better than the old Rosetta converters, like the current motu units with ess converter, no they aren’t prism, metric halo, dad etc but prosumer converters have gone a long way.

rme will always be quality equipment that doesn’t cost a ton.
When i first got the Goliath hd I had so many issues with my Mac pro with it, I had just spent over 20k with antelope and was able to get a tech from antelope to come and work out the kinks with me, overall it was a driver issue and the system for me was just too weak. Ended up switching the Mac pro to a pc I built, never had an issue. Now with the Amari and messing with the galaxy32 far more stable on pc with low latency…
If you know totalmix, I’d definitely get a ucx or ufx. ifyou want tabletop I’d also look into the mt48, I use one on the road and love it for what it is.

 

Awesome thanks for all the replies. Ive had my RME FF800 for 18 years.

Dongling involves firewire 800/or 400 to thunderbolt2 adapter then a separate dongle from tb2 to Thunderbolt3. The last FF800 hub was from OWC, which they stopped selling years ago.Was looking at the babyface but it's usb. All the RME units seem to be USB. USB audio interfaces have always given me problems on mac. Can anybody recommend Thunderbolt interfaces? Primarily desktop oriented.



Since im on the road alot I figured a deskop bus powered interface would fit my needs.

 

Got a Zen Tour for less than 1/2 price with all of the plugins too. I've never liked bus powered devices and the Zen tour was as close to the spec I needed (sounds simialr to what you're after). I agree it's past time to move from FW, especially for mobile setup.

 

OK. USB audio interfaces on macos don't really seem to have the issues they had prior to USB3 (the last time I was using them). According to the twenty articles I've just read.

Anybody using macs that can argue against them?

RME has taken care of me throughout the years: Bricked during update/Crackhead roommate vacuuming behind daw. They always paid to send it back to Germany then back to the US.

 

Never had any issues with RME USB devices. However the USB setups in host machines (apple being a large part and parcel to this) can vary greatly in quality. Some are better than others. USB2 or greater is a perfectly viable medium with which to transport multi-channel digital audio from one device to another. Using USB audio devices of a more dubious pedigree tend to put a bad rap on USB as a transport medium. It's not the fault of the USB2/3 spec it's more a problem with device OEM's implementations of it that are at fault.

 

how does the galaxy compare to an orion or even the amari in terms of ad/da conversion and overall sound quality/reproduction? I guess you can clip the amari and not the galaxy's inputs without it sounding bad?

 

Thanks Bob. Ugh. I'll start looking into it a tad bit more.

 

the galaxy at the moment is still in the box, the atmos build wont be complete until april(march if we seriously work hard through january but a full week already of nothing its definitely adding 2-3 weeks worth of work but on a good note 10 pallets of insulation arrived yesterday so maybe my son and i will fill certain cavities and make some traps
im under the ASSUMPTION that the galaxy conversion should be close to the amari, hell could be the inline or the same, i'll reach out to my antelope rep or vintage king rep to ask about the conversion next week after the new year

the amari is in the mastering room, it was a toss up between it and the hilo, personally the hilo is better clipper but the amari has better image and depth.conversion is top notch, pure2 is great too.
the goliath hd is in the recording studio and yes the amari has better conversion than the goliath hd and the galaxy32/64 are said to be better than it and over the last 6 years ive owned the goliath i havent used ANYTHING that sounded better which was the reason why i purchased it and i was working in pthd and it was simple to use.
i dont think i'll be swapping the goliath for a galaxy anytime soon since i have no issue whatsoever with the goliath, im a gearslut but when things are working i dont like to mess with them lol

now i have clipped the goliath hd rather often b/c before i had a mastering suite id master in the other room. 90% of my mastering chain is analog and the goliath had no issues softclipping.

the lower cost zentour i purchased for my son is great honestly. if i didnt get it when i did i wouldve got him a mt48 b/c i love mine when i travel but my son has no true hardware, all software based and he's getting great tones with just the zentour with a edge duo mic. utilizing the onboard pres and all. im not one to like or even use interface pres b/c i actually have 20k worth of good pres but things are getting much easier without making out an amex lol

 

thank you for your response. Let us know how the galaxy compares. I have a hilo atm and I‘m curious how it compares to the galaxy, especially for summing and clipping the master out.

 

have been an RME user since 2006 (HDSPe 9632 pci) , about 2 yearsa go i went Antelope ZEN GO for their unique dsp plugins: eq, comps and pre-amps. They model exotic analog stuff others don't. I need it for tracking bass guitar, its just perfect for that. I no longer need any bulky di, comp and eq annoying pedals or other racked preamps. For mixing, i'm sold out to UAD2.

 

if you have a hilo, i wouldn't bother... i'll set the galaxy up and a/b with the amari later today if i dont get too drunk before 5pm

the real difference between the amai and hilo where perceived depth in the audio, width, some songs through the hilo were more focused but didnt have thee same image and the image alone sold me. not to say its 20% better, its not.. 10% is a stretch but works better for me and the sound i go for when mastering.
that being said, the hilo is 30% better as a clipper hands down

 

Babyface for sure would be a safe bet. But have a look at Steinbergs UR series.
Besides my main RME setups, I have some of Steinbergs outboard usb stuff and need to say: Nothing wrong with it and awesome price.
Like for the price of a babyface you could get a UR816C. Not bus powered though.
Steinberg are last ones besides RME with in house driver development (=longer support).
So I only buy those two (and behringer when I need something trashy that I definitely don't love)

 

When it comes to converters or any analog and or digital signal path thingies I am a pure masuerement bitch.
We are musicians and/or technicians, so we don't have to use terms they use to sell of the shelf components in marble cases to denstists and lawers. What is the scientific parameter behind depth, image, focus? jitter, noise, linearity, non-linear distortion? all of those?
I'm sorry, but 80ies Hifi-magazin buzzword bingo really triggers me

 

sounds pretty ignorant to me, the same way that talking about measurement while dismissing them sounds

 

And there’s a reason why I’m a seasoned engineer with over 20 years of experience and multiple plaque yet you’re talking about hifi stuff.
You sir need to grow up very soon… I don’t care about keyboard warriors you’ll have to prove it to me and you aren’t built like that

 

Thanks again! Yeah I find the hilo clips great. Makes stuff sound very loud.

it‘s just that the hilo is a 2 channel input interface while the galaxy has 32 analog in and outs. It would be great if i could record into my mixer thru direct outs and get the best conversion while also summing out and printing thru a summing mixer in a later stage.
So just curious about the galaxy. I know some very big engineers print thru the goliath

 

Yes, 32ch vs 2 is huge. I have over 26 I/O of analog but of course don’t use everything in every session so I still use a patchbay and also use a liaison. But I’ve been looking into the flock patch I think that’ll work perfect for me.
My business partner and I were speaking with our vintage king rep yesterday and this fool wants to buy a neve genesys32 or at least an 8424 and I’m like um no. New atmos build is running me dry and you want to get a a 33k combo that we truly don’t need you just want to have a neve console, nope we can do a side cart with a neve equipment or neve summing mixer and not spend 30k!
My Amex won’t be paid off this year so an additional 30k in debt isn’t ok with me lol

 

yeah consoles are so damn expensive. Better off just getting some good summing box and a few outboard pieces if you dont absolutely need it imo.

I'd love to hear a shootout between the amari/galaxy and the goliath if you have the chance. Thanks!!!!

 

Perhaps during the week as my workload is dropping. Yesterday mastered a 14 song album with the producer and artist in the room and when I expected a 3-4hr session turned into 7.5-8 smh. Still have a little ear fatigue right now smh