Which D/A Converter?

[JFreak]

UAD is native now.

Anyway everyone has their preferences, but if budget is fixed it is ultimately money who is talking. Whatever meets the spec now, you know...

[BScout]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

RME UFX+ part deux with just USB3 would be fine. They could do Thunderbolt 3/4 but I kinda suspect that RME has not forgiven the dummkopf behavior of Intel.

RME is not doing thunderbolt anymore (period) for any product -- heard from official sources.
Reason why is Intel has stopped manufacturing thunderbolt.

[Sardi]

Originally Posted by BScout

Reason why is Intel has stopped manufacturing thunderbolt.

What exactly does that mean?


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[BScout]

Originally Posted by Sardi

What exactly does that mean?

Intel has abandoned thunderbolt. They were the major supplier for thunderbolt controllers/chips (seeing as they mostly developed it.) The Goshen chipset is the last from Intel. RME made a business decision. There’s literally no benefit for audio interfaces (other than silly nuts easily glamoured by marketing) for thunderbolt over USB3/4 which is more steadily supported. And USB3 can already support 386 channels with no greater latency. USB4 will support more if there’s demand.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by BScout

RME is not doing thunderbolt anymore (period) for any product -- heard from official sources.
Reason why is Intel has stopped manufacturing thunderbolt.

I think that is a misstatement on what is happening. The problem RME had is they chose to use old Thunderbolt 1 (or 2, same real difference) interface chips which Intel stopped manufacturing. There is a very large difference between Intel no longer manufacturing Thunderbolt (i.e. Thunderbolt 1 chips) and no longer manufacturing Thunderbolt 3/4 chips... which they are still doing. Titan Ridge (6000 series chips) and Maple Ridge and Ghosen Ridge (8000 series chips) are current live Intel products. They are in high demand, and not in stock from semiconductor resellers, but they are orderable. Yes some early Titan Ridge have been discontinued, I think largely to focus on RoHS compliant versions, so be careful googling that.

Improved Thunderbolt 4 and fully featured USB 4 (which includes Thunderbolt), both of which Intel is pushing, required Thunderbolt, and even with Thunderbolt integrated into recent Intel CPU you still need the stand alone Thunderbolt 3/4 chips for peripherals vendors to use, and there are multiple Thunderbolt 3/4 chips available now as current products. These Thunderbolt chips are manufacturing in batches, and there are still ongoing global silicon supply chain problem. And at any time it might well be true that "Intel is not manufacturing some chip *right now*, but you tell the status of Intel chips from their public available database that clearly tells when a chip has been discontinued. e.g. https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...ontroller.html

RME likely should have chosen Thunderbolt 3 for the UFX+ if they really wanted to do Thunderbolt, possibly they might have not gotten good advice from their supply chain vendors, and sure they might have been squeezed by global supply chain problems.

For the near future Thunderbolt 3/4 is not going anywhere. Both good and bad... not going away and not going forward anytime fast. The roadmap for Thunderbolt is just not impressive. And we have PCIe 5 systems here today, and slow old Thunderbolt 3/4 is only 4 x PCIe 3 lanes. Fine for audio, etc. but not fine to keep up with future storage, networking, or graphics etc. It's Intel's technology but Apple has tied themselves to it which makes all this weird/interesting.

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Y'all can have my Fireface UFX+ when you pry it from my cold dead hands, same goes for all my other RME gear. Just such wonderful stuff from a great company. It really should be fine for revised UFX+ to just have USB 3, I expect/hope for a USB3 box with MADI and AVB. They do all that already with other USB 3 boxes. So just no reason for them to adopt Thunderbolt and put themselves though more supply chain hassles.