RME User Forum

There is a new firmware for the RayDAT available. Changes in version 5: ADAT 3/4 and MIDI I/O 1/2 have been swapped. The input receivers mute when no signal is found. Available for both Mac and Win.

The manuals of the HDSP-AES 32 and the HDSPe AES have been updated.

Hello,

the Windows driver 3.069 includes two interesting additions. First the Post fader mode of TotalMix, moving a fader in Input or Playback row with right mouse button held, is now also available by a MIDI command, sending MIDI note hex 0x45 (C4). This equals F16 on the Mackie Control. On the Behringer BCF2000, hold Shift 2 (Encoder groups lower row left) and hit the button left of it (the last of the 16 unlabeled keys).

Second TotalMix now supports the Faderfox TM1, a 6 fader remote control, small, easy to use and totally adapted to TotalMix, so that all functions that one usually needs in the studio are easily available. This includes everything in the right side panels of TM and some more. It's greatest plus is the direct TM compatibility, layout and the small size. No motor faders, so the well-known BCF2000 does not get direct competition. Please don't bother us or Faderfox with further questions about this unit, more information later. The unit will most probably not be available before 2009, and that is really everything you need to know at this point.

Lots of new drivers and firmware on our website:

- HDSP and HDSPe series to 3.074

- Firmware updates for HDSP MADI/AES-32/9652 and HDSPe MADI/AES/RayDAT, Win, Mac Intel and Mac PPC.

Driver 3.079 includes some significant changes which - just this time - I would like to explain in detail.

- Reliable stop of an ASIO thread even in difficult situations. When an ASIO application crashes then usually the driver should notice this and stop playback. This did not work in certain situations. Timur came to Musikmesse to give us a step-by-step example on how to always cause a crash that fails. And indeed, we did everything correctly, just had to use a different function within Windows to finally and reliably identify the current process where the driver has to react on. This also affects the Fireface driver, a fix will come soon.

- Process management of multiclient ASIO did not work as expected on some computers. We have lots of industrial users that write their own software. In this case they ran into a problem that starting a second ASIO app caused ongoing distortion on the first app. They did send us the software and it worked perfectly on our computers. So finally they sent us their computer, and lo and behold the error was there and could be fixed by (similar to above) some changes in how to identify events. So while this error seems to be very seldom it also affects the Fireface driver and a fix will come soon.

- Incompatibility of the driver to cards with PLX (PCIe to PCI) bridge fixed. Some of our industrial users have multichannel AD-cards or special video cards. As soon as they added the AES card the other products failed. The reason was some left code in our driver from the early days of the HDSP AES-32, where we experimented with a PLX Bridge (a product we later never used). Shit happens...

- Settings dialog: Added password protected storage of the current settings for the next reboot. In broadcast environment a fixed setup for easiest and most failure-free operation is desired. But even these users sometimes have to add material from a source that can not be synced (DAT, CD-Player). So they will - for a short time - change the clock setting. Now to make sure that the next day, no matter who uses the workstation everything is in the original state, this new option makes sure that the desired setting is used every time you reboot the computer. This feature makes sense not only in broadcast, IMHO.

- Settings and TM: Experimental extension for operation of up to 6 cards. Selection in TM by left mouse click with held shift key. While we do have lots of customers with miserably performing computers that find no other place to get rid of their frustration than this forum, we do have lots of customers with stellar DAW systems as well, that use 3 MADI cards in 96 kHz mode and ask for a fourth one. Therefore we extended the Settings dialog to handle more than 3 cards correctly. TM's Unit selection is with shift-click, so a max of 6 cards can now be used (theoretically).

- TotalMix: New skin and new icons, Settings dialog: new icons. This driver now includes Terry Gorle's DC skin for TotalMix. I have been working with Rob Sinistral on new icons, and they found their way into both tools as well. We now have icons even in 256 pixel size for Vista - check it out!

The Mac OS 64 bit transition is in full gear, so to say. After the Fireface UC we now provide a fully supported driver for the whole HDSPe series - version 2.69. Some comments are necessary:

We tried hard to make it compatible to older OS, but this seems to be impossible. So the new driver operates from 10.5 on (and this already cost us some hairs that got pulled out). Users of 10.4 have to continue to use the old driver 2.67.

The HDSPe PCI and ExpressCard require a firmware update to version 18 to use this driver. So FIRST update the firmware via the Flash Update Tool, don't worry as the new firmware is downwards compatible, then update to the new driver.

Indeed we would recommend to even deinstall the old driver before updating (after flashing) as described here:

http://www.rme-audio.de/forum/viewtopic … 681#p23681

2.69 comes with a new mechanism to automatically load settings and mixer as soon as a card is found in the system. That has caused some problems in the past, these should be solved now by using a so called Agent. The HDSPe Agent will be installed to /Library/LaunchAgents during the driver installation.

The Settings program has been modified to the latest improvements made in the FF UC driver (DDS removed, sample rate setting which is the same as in Audio MIDI Setup added, plus some 'under the hood' changes)

TotalMix finally uses the new bitmaps, and no longer occasionally crashes on startup.

Sounds like some work done? Definitely. And more to come...

The HDSPe MADIface (Express Card) has been updated to v 15. The firmware update solves some mysterious input detection and lock problems reported.

And here comes another update to firmware 19 for the MADIface, sorry.

HDSPe MADI FX: We got aware of certain motherboards/chipsets that did not work reliable on the record side, for example Intel H55. Therefore we had to change the card's internal PCIe buffering. V 86 required a lot of internal changes in the FPGA. To be on the safe side the older fimrware 84_16 is still available on the website, so if you need to return here is the link:

http://www.rme-audio.de/download/fut_hd … win_84.zip

http://www.rme-audio.de/download/fut_hd … mac_84.zip