Reply To: Understanding PCIe Interfaces

[Nick D.Participant]

The RME HDSP is just a sound card, you will need preamps and AD/DA converters of some sort. There is benefits to going this route, such as this card can never be outgrown. I have mine for 6 years and bought it used. it also allows you to buy preamps and converters as you need them or your budget increases. the down side is obviously you have to buy everything separately as this is not a typical audio interface. if you have preamps already then you just need converters. On the cheap side the Behringer ADA8000? I think has good converters, although im not a fan of the preamps, but the newer ones may have the "Midas designed" ones. This will at least get you started. The downside is that this card only does 24 channels on ADAT at 48K so if you want higher sample rates, you will lose half of your channel count and need an additional card. if you have a bunch of outboard gear its really nice to have all the I/O available for patching, compared to an interface that may only have a couple available outputs.