RME Firefire series on Linux

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sjzstudio
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RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by sjzstudio »

Does anyone know what stage the driver side of the RME Firefire series is at. I mainly mean 802 / UFX II / UFX + devices. (UFX + is a USB3 device). All are Class compliant equipped.

I noticed that ALSA has made some driver developments for these.

EDIT:
I mainly mean how it would be possible to get Totalmix FX features on the Linux side. The RME discussion forum has some discussion on the subject. But apparently the manufacturer is not very willing to bring Linux support for their devices. Is it that the user base just isn't enough. At least for a multi-channel professional Audio Interface. Hopefully this will change in the near future.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by buonamorte.records »

Hi, I think I'm going to buy the ufx+, do you have good news? :D
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by sjzstudio »

As far as I've tested, the RME 802 works with AvLinux MXE correctly (At home using AvLinux). Totalmix Fx features are not enabled. I also get UFX + for my studio, which is so far with a Windows system.

The intention is to switch to Linux in the studio as well, because I thought I would leave Windows on a trip here. Windows 11 will not be experienced by me.

The biggest thing, at least for me, is getting Totalmix Fx for Linux, or some workable alternative to it. I need it mainly for doing headphone mixes and low latency monitoring. I often wonder if any community would be willing to make software that would make these features available to all Linux users.

There is some discussion on the RME forum, but there seems to be a rather indifferent attitude towards Linux audio.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by WforWoollyMammoth »

As far as I know, at least the Totalmix reverb and delay are just bundled software. You would get similar functionality just by using any low-CPU reverb on Linux together with JACK or inside a DAW like Ardour. There's nothing special about those effects sonically.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by khz »

sjzstudio wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 12:43 pm The biggest thing, at least for me, is getting Totalmix Fx for Linux, or some workable alternative to it. I need it mainly for doing headphone mixes and low latency monitoring. I often wonder if any community would be willing to make software that would make these features available to all Linux users.

There is some discussion on the RME forum, but there seems to be a rather indifferent attitude towards Linux audio.
That would indeed be so desirable if RME would fully support the (USB/Firefire/...) interfaces under Linux - among other things Totalmix with the effects.
There helps only in the forum again and again ask for it and hope that it becomes sometime reality.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by sjzstudio »

Would it help if we Linux people go to the RME forum to write feedback. "We Linux audio users most politely ask that you take us seriously and start supporting Linux in your products. Thank you." :roll: :roll:
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by Jamesf »

sjzstudio wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 5:06 pm Would it help if we Linux people go to the RME forum to write feedback. "We Linux audio users most politely ask that you take us seriously and start supporting Linux in your products. Thank you." :roll: :roll:
We've done that. There's even a Linux subforum on the RME site - they're more supportive than they are dismissive.

Their answer makes sense from a business perspective: we might be passionate, but people who make music with Linux are a tiny fraction of the market of people who make music. On top of that, RME are a high-end vendor, so they don't get the high-volume market for cheaper devices that Presonus or Focusrite do. It actually doesn't make business sense for them to go any further than class-compatibility mode, because the support costs would swamp any revenue they'd make, let alone the development costs.

They do play nice with open-source developers, afaik, and their idea of following the spec is to actually stick with the spec and not play cute word-games around it.

It's a little frustrating but, on the other hand, latency from RME devices in CC-mode is pretty darn good. bbfpromix is a good-enough replacement for Totalmix, too, so I'm not convinced we're missing out on much.
I'm slow, but I get there eventually.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by Jamesf »

sjzstudio wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 12:43 pmThe biggest thing, at least for me, is getting Totalmix Fx for Linux, or some workable alternative to it. I need it mainly for doing headphone mixes and low latency monitoring. I often wonder if any community would be willing to make software that would make these features available to all Linux users.
bbfpromix covers the mixing side for Babyface interfaces. Mr Bollie seems to have disappeared, unfortunately, but I gather that package is available for the main distributions.
It may be possible to extend it to cover other interfaces as well, but I have no idea how much work would be involved in making that happen.
I'm slow, but I get there eventually.
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Re: RME Firefire series on Linux

Post by Be. »

I posted some thoughts on how to make a replacement for TotalMix FX on Linux in another thread.
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