I thought I heard something of this sort…or maybe it was just my own passing thought some months ago 
Or maybe it was that they reminded me of RME products somehow, like the design???
Rme had a few interfaces years ago branded steinberg or nuendo… can’t remember which as it has been a long time… I think it was an adi8 and there was a 2ru unit too. That’s all I remember.
Ah thanks Tom, yeah I think maybe that was what I may be vaguely recalling…that is, seeing an interface by Steinberg that looked near identical to an RME interface…and I may have read something about putting the Steinberg their name onto an RME manufactured device. Dunno if the current interfaces by Steinberg are manufactured by RME…?
Just trying to keep up a little with interfaces.
Hello,
some older Steinberg interfaces were manufactured by RME, yes. Audiolink 96 and Nuendo 8 I/O (the ADI 8 named by Tom - gosh, that dancing cow 
), for example. You can still find some info online, i.e Sound On Sound.
The current line of Steinberg interfaces is manufactured by Yamaha.
Have a good week-end!
Thanks Fab, the fact that RME may be involved (was involved as is the case) is a feeling of brand confidence, although I feel confident about Yamaha products too. I’d think Yamaha prolly has ‘other’ manufacturer’s do the actual building of products and put their name on it, rather than having their own in house manufacturing plants…?
Just been eyeballing some upper line Steinbergs interfaces lately.
In terms of drivers and latency RME is in COMPLETELEY different league
+1
Oh Yes! 
^ Yeah, I was looking at the RME Fireface 800 on line last night @ $1,799.00 … I’ll take TWO!
A few years ago, after spending way too much time and money trying to get other interfaces to work the way I wanted (The E-MU 1010 came closest, before Creative destroyed them), I decided to get the RayDAT PCIe card with 4 ADAT connectors. I’ve benefited from the brilliant RME drivers since then, even though I’ve changed mic pres and other devices several times. I have a basic, stable driver layer and can chop and changed the analog bits as needed.
This has definitely paid for itself by avoiding wasted time tuning inferior interfaces, and in my experience, RME are way ahead of the rest.
The Steinberg Audiolink 96 was a rebadged RME Multiface, by the way.
Ah yes, the Audiolink 96…just had a look at some images, THAT is the one I saw a long time ago that made me think about Steinberg/RME and this thread …
My memory is eroding …I swear to GAWD…this morning I could NOT recite my A B C’s for about a minute! 
I better record some song idea’s before my end 
I think you just started one!
Try this one on for size.
‘Bb’
My memory is eroding
‘C’
I swear to GAWD…this morning
‘Dm’
I could NOT recite my A B
‘Bb’
C’s for about a minute!
{‘-’}
One amazing thing about RME is that they’re still providing updated drivers for even the oldest hardware they produced. The Multiface/Audiolink 96 had a PCMCIA card which you could put into an PCI adapter for a desktop PC; there are PCIe adapters available now, and the RME drivers will still work with that on Windows 8.
Recently RME released V4 of their TotalMix FX (the control bit of the driver, the bit you see when you want to adjust levels, routing etc.) and it works with even their oldest hardware; it’s like having a new interface at no cost.
In my opinion, while RME gear may seem expensive, if you calculate in the cost of the time you spend messing around with drivers, motherboards, CPUs, RAM etc., not knowing where that audio glitch is coming from, then RME soon becomes the obvious choice.
Just my opinion based on a few decades of frustration.
I have an RME FIreface UFX and a Steinberg UR 824. The 824 I use only as Adat extension for the UFX.
But what is interesting: The REAL latency of the UR824 with 128 samples is bigger than the RME with 256 samples and with the RME I can go down to 48 samples with the UR824 below 256 is not reliable…
I’ll have to try it
Oday, an explanation - I had been looking at PDF’s in the Index section of around ‘T’ and I wanted to get to ‘Q’ so I scrolled around back & forth and couldn’t recall where ‘Q’ falls within the alphabet and so I thought I’d recite from the beginning damn it! Well, I went something like this …
“a b c d e f g, h i q x w y” a few times over What the? I was losing my mind in frustration, all the while being laughed at by my other half. When I get really bad it’s nice to know who’s on my side 
Well, I persevered I’ll have you know!
@ Mr & Folk - I hear ya, my buddy has had an RME Multiface ever since he got SX3 when it came out…both still going strong! And actually I see the RME Fireface 800 can be had for around $1,199.00 
Yes, it does seem to me RME is among the absolute best all around.
Not simultaneously I gather?
sure simultaneously. Its connected via Adat to the RME. The Yamaha driver I only loadet to test. After seeing the results i switched back to the RME driver.
This is exactly what I do with my RayDAT … a MOTU 828MkII (FW) has it’s drivers loaded but I’ve deleted the ASIO registry setting so Cubase can’t see it; the only reason to load the MOTU drivers is because I use the MOTU CueMix application to control the I/O, but everything comes via ADAT into the RME. I’ve got other ADAT and S/PDIF devices as well, all go via ADAT to the RME so I only have one (excellent) driver to deal with.
Hold the horses! I hear what you’re both saying but I may be dumb, learn me something here. Ok, so you both use RME interfaces. How is it possible to piggyback one audio interface with another audio interface with just ONE RME driver, without using ‘both’ audio devices own specific drivers? …which you of course can’t Is digital audio special that you don’t need it’s drivers and can use ‘part’ of the Steinberg/Motu along with the RME? Can another other part(s) of the Steinberg/Motu device be used, or just the digital I/O’s?
So the be clear, the purpose of both the above, is to extend the RME’s digital I/O abilities correct? How or what purpose are you using the Steinberg/Motu devices, or what’s connected to THEM? (besides the RME) what exactly are the connections & configurations? Can other audio interfaces be piggybacked in this way? Do the Steinberg/Motu units work as a stand alone mixer or something?
Well, in my case with the RME RayDAT, it has no analog I/O at all … it’s purely digital, the only inputs and outputs are ADAT and S/PDIF, so I add whatever analog I/O I want, usually by means of 19" rack kit … for example, if you want lots of cheap line inputs, add a few Behringer ADA8000’s. Most mid-range kit offers ADAT I/O, for example Focusrite and MOTU. You don’t have to load the drivers for the additional I/O because they function as stand-alone devices (but check before buying as there are a few devices out there that can’t be used without a computer).
So ultimately Cubase only has to deal with one driver to have access to (in my case) 32 channels, which can be any combination of mic, line or any other device that offers either an ADAT or S/PDIF output.
Yes.
Analog input signals. The devices are being used as A/D converters.
Absolutely, as long as they have ADAT or S/PDIF* outputs.
The MOTU 828MkII does anyway.
- If using S/PDIF or AES, the device needs to have either an equivalent input or a word clock input and be capable if being a sync slave – unfortunately that rules out e.g most guitar pedals, PODs etc.
I use the Steinberg because it has good preamps and because of the dsp guitar amps for monitoring.
Thanks for the detailed answers Mr. Wow I didn’t know what you & folk do was even possible, nor that there were ‘any’ computer sound card/interfaces that could be used as ‘stand-alone’ devices either. I take it, any card than can be used by themselves would specifically say it can be used without a computer, or say ‘stand-alone’ somewhere in it’s documentation (?).
Interesting, I think many of us could use extra I/O at times. Currently, I have & use Aardvark Q10’s & Aardvark Aark 24 cards…and since I can use up to 4 of their devices within the same computer (but limited to 3 really by my PCI slots) I can have a lot of different I/O already. But I also have a Tascam FW-1082 which is currently not getting any use, and only has one set of s/pdif I/O that can be connected to any of my Aardvarks…I wonder if they can be combined? I’m assuming that the Tascan FW-1082 can be used as a stand-alone device (?) and that I could very well use it as a mixer and send it’s audio into my Aardvark sound cards as well, which is something I thought about trying before. The Tascam 1884 (I don’t have) has even more types of I/O.