Fireface 802 : Fantastic Interface with a couple of shortcomings.

I decided recently to upgrade my interface from an Apogee FW Duet to the RME FF802. I did as much research online as I could, and everything pointed to this unit. 'Unboxing' was easy, getting started, less so. I give RME credit for including a nice, large written manual, though it is unfortunate that the manual leaves much to be desired. It is clearly not written by a native speaker, and should've included clear, step-by-step examples on how to get the basic in/out routings up and running. Basically, I had to do this by trial and error, but I got there in the end. My only gripe with the unit itself is that it has no hardware pot to control the main-out volume. To do that, RME wants you to buy one of their (optional) remotes. So, I've taken one star off for these

Notwithstanding these issues, the FF802 is fantastic piece of gear, and lives up to RME's reputation. The sound is clear, the stereo field very well-defined. I immediately noticed the contrast with my Duet, which is supposed to have fantastic AD/DA converters itself, but the FF802 easily beats it. The mic-pres are very transparent, and plugging a guitar into one of the Nutrik inputs on the front yielded a very clear and punchy guitar sound, even without going through an amp sim.

What was most impressive to me was the improvement on latency. My electric guitar felt a lot more responsive than it had with the Duet, making it a joy to play direct to the computer again. I was also able to run some very CPU intensive plugins with Logic Pro X at the lowest buffer setting without any crackling or other problems. The FF802 isn't cheap, but it is worth the price. Designed and manufactured in Germany, it has the quality you would expect. I would not hesitate to recommend this audio interface, but if you aren't the most tech-savvy, be prepared to have to put some effort into getting it up and running properly.