An interview with Matthias Carstens from RME Audio Germany
by Hans Van Even* - 16th July 2001

Hans : Hello Matthias, thanks for taking some time to join us for this interview . When did RME start making audiocards, what's the story behind RME ? Where's RME situated and how many people work for RME ?

Matthias : RME was founded in 1996 by Ralf Männel and me. Our first product was the DAM-1. There was nothing like this on the market, so we thought it might be good idea to sell it to other 'technicians'. At the same time I was in contact with another developer who had designed an ISA digital I/O card in 1995, and now started to update it with a PCI interface - which resulted in the first RME card ever, the DIGI24. In march 1997 I personally presented both products at the Frankfurt Music fair, on an area of 1x1 meter. Well, I can't complain, as I got it for free. The company that gave me this space then became our distributor, Synthax near Munich/Germany.

RME is a german company, divided into a developer team (5), the hardware manufacturer (40) and the german distributor (8), who also handles the world wide distribution. Meanwhile we have 2 more companies based on RME, X-VisionAudio US (US distributor) and X-VisionAudio UK (british distributor).

Hans : Is it true that RME made (and still makes) soundcards for other companies like Steinberg and SEKD ?

Matthias : Yes. Our Digi32 series was also available as Prodif32, Prodif 96 and Prodif Gold. The Digi96/8 PST and Hammerfall are also available branded as Steinberg cards. Furthermore we make a special variant of the Hammerfall for the Maya Centauri, a broadcast codec of the latest generation, used world wide. Got TV ? Heared Hammerfall :-)

Hans : RME has an impressive amount of audio cards, interfaces, AD/DA convertors, ...

Matthias : ...unfortunately...

Hans : ...Did you ever think of making DSP based ( for effects & softsynths) cards like those from Creamware, Digidesign, Soundscape, PARIS, etc. What's your vision of the future between Native vs DSP based recording ?

Matthias : We are discussing our stuff on a daily basis. But we never thought of making DSP-based cards, for a simple reason: build it today - and tomorrow it's outdated. DSP cards suffer from the same effect as computers, the only way to get more power is to buy the manufacturer's latest version, with more or newer DSPs.

Therefore we agreed that the native vision is the more user friendly way to do it. Computers will be updated anyway - but the native hardware can stay.

Hans : You worked hard the last two months on the release of the Hammerfall DSP cards, both for Cardbus and PCI interface, can you tell us a bit what's the difference between these cards and the initial Hammerfall 9652/36 cards ? Will those cards replace the current hammerfall cards ?

Matthias : The Hammerfall DSP is NOT a typical DSP card (so what I said about native vision is still true). The DSP part is used only to solve the realtime monitoring problem, which has been a major plague for all users without mixing desks. Additionally, as we don't use a fixed DSP, the Hammerfall DSP is the most flexible audio interface ever, as we can change its functionality completely by a simple driver update. The rest of this year will show you what I mean ... sorry, I can't tell you more at this time.

The third big difference to the original Hammerfall is the new DBU technology, Dynamic Bus Utilization. While the old Hammerfall always transferred all channels (generating a constant load of 9 MB/s on the PCI bus), the new hardware only uses what's really needed. So if you do a mixdown on SPDIF and have only two playback channels active, the HDSP transfers only 352 kByte over the PCI bus.

We expect this to give major performance improvements on critical systems. In fact the tested Asus notebooks (see our Tech Info about Notebooks) would not have worked at all without this new technology. On the other hand : On an optimized audio computer you won't find any difference though (we tried really hard...).

The HDSP System is in a different price range than the standard Hammerfall and will not replace it.

Hans : More and more people seem to be interested in audio recording on laptops, and with your new Hammerfall DSP Cards RME fulfilled a wish for many people. What are your recommendations when buying a laptop (notebook) for use as a DAW ? As one can't assemble a laptop like a desktop computer from
custom parts , which brands do you recommend ?

Matthias : Questions like these (and thousands more) are answered in our Tech Info series about the HDSP System and Laptops . It's too much to explain it here, so please have a look. Personally I don't have a favourite at this time. All notebooks we have tested are far away from universal dream machines - and what the industry would be able to offer. I really would like to see a PIII 850 system with i815 chipset at 133 MHz front side bus, PC133 2-2-2 memory and ATI graphics card - but this one doesn't exist, for no reason ...

Hans : How is it possible that even without special ASIO or WDM KS (kernel streaming) drivers, the Hammerfall cards can go as low as 1.5ms with just MME drivers in Win2000 ? I personally use a Hammerfall card with SONAR, and I'm pretty impressed with its performance and just MME drivers .

Matthias : As far as I know we are the only company which completely develops the whole hardware in house, from PCI interface to the ADAT ports. All others rely on third party items, be it the PCI interface, the DSPs or even the basic drivers. In fact many products today are based on only one (always the same) chip, and therefore can't be improved anymore by the manufacturer who uses this chip

The Hammerfall's pure ASIO concept was a first in the industry. I must say that we too were very astonished to see how good it can work (Hans van) even under MME ;-)

Hans : RME is known to have one of the best driver support in the soundcard industry, who writes these drivers, is this just one person ?

Matthias : Yes, and this is propably the main reason for the quality: it's the same guy that develops the hardware. A second reason is the short ways of communication inside RME. No other company has its developers surfing in the web. Normally if you report a bug to a company, one has the impression it never reaches them. I'm pretty sure this is the case with many companies. At RME the developers themselves look around for reports which might be based on a bug - and immediately try to fix it. This is true for all our products, not only the cards.

Hans : Lots of people hope RME will release WDM KS (Kernel Streaming) drivers for the Hammerfall and Digi 96 cards soon . When should we expect WDM drivers for these cards ? Can you tell us at this point if they are going to give us better performance and latency than the current MME drivers ?

Matthias : We are observing the WDM thing all the time, and work on ideas how to implement it not only in drivers, but also as 'WDM in Hardware' for the HDSP system. But to be honest, WDM has no priority at this time. I think it is acceptable to have WDM KS drivers later, as long as our Hammerfall W2k drivers proove to be more compatible, more stable and more flexible, but not less powerful then the WDM drivers of many other companies.

Additionally many users have a wrong view on WDM KS. At this time it does NOT give better performance than ASIO. And it will NOT give lower latencies, because ASIO too is already working at the border built up by Microsoft, the 1 ms interrupt latency. As long as Microsoft doesn't change this basic behaviour of Windows, we will not see better performance at many tracks and low latency. Doing a multi-track project including effects and Plug-Ins will require at least 6 ms latency for reliable operation, be it WDM or ASIO as driver standard

Hans : I do understand that WDM drivers don't seem to give better performance than MME drivers for the Hammerfall card, but how about your other soundcards, is the MME performance as good as with ASIO drivers (ex. DIGI 96/8), so users can get the same latency under SONAR as Cubase ?

Matthias : I hope so. The new MME drivers for the DIGI96 series will show what's possible. Unfortunately they have been delayed, because we are still working on the Mac drivers of the Hammerfall DSP, and did a lot of updates recently.

Hans : The current audio cards use a PCI or Cardbus interface . The PCI interface is there since a while, do you have an idea of what could be the successor of this interface for audiocards ? Is there a limit in the actual computer technology RME would like to see addressed in the future ?

Matthias : The current limitation of PCI is bandwidth. Most computers are fitted with 32 bit slots, and the harddisk controller (both SCSI and E-IDE) also use this PCI bus. So if you want to stream a lot of tracks those data will put a double load on the PCI bus, from harddisk to I/O card. This bottleneck can be widened easily by using 64 bit PCI slots, but look around where you find those...

Hans : Is it too early to talk about new projects at RME, or could you give us an idea what we can expect from RME next year ?

Matthias : We at RME are not only developers, but also active musicians. That means we are constantly confrontated with ideas for new features and devices which could find its niche in the market. So you can be sure there will come a lot more from RME. But please understand that we have to keep our ideas until we have the devices ready.

Hans : RME makes also professional AD/DA convertors, can we compare the quality of the ADI-8 Pro with the Multiface card ? Do you use the same convertors on both interfaces ?

Matthias : No, in that case the Multiface would have been much too expensive for most costumers. We use the latest AKM codecs for the Multiface (AK4528). The sonic quality of those is very good, but the major point of the Multiface is hidden inside: it uses a switching power supply, which delivers +/- 15 Volts to the analog I/O circuitry. This allows us even with a 9 Volt power supply or even a lead battery to send and receive professional levels, balanced, at a minimum distortion and even on low impedance loads. I am sure that the Multiface will convince every user from the very first minute - like the Digiface does already now.

Hans : Do you have any wishes for future technology on DAW based recording, something you think that's really missing right now ?

Matthias : With the upcoming Pentium4 machines it finally should be able to use the CPU to cook coffee, directly at the place where you need it. Thanks to the internet connection the computer will order new coffee powder as soon as it reaches a critical level, and the cupholder - well you already know where to place the cup, don't you ;-)

Hans : Many thanks for this interview Matthias .

*Hans Van Even is a composer/guitarist & graphics designer, you can contact him at : This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it & www.hansvaneven.com