RME Ships PCI Express Based Hammerfall Card

Jul 14, 2008

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The DIGI 9652, commonly referred to as 'the Hammerfall card', is without doubt the product that made RME known for speed, compatibility, reliability and professional operation. This triple ADAT card began selling in 1999, was replaced by the HDSP 9652 in 2002, and is now available as full-blown PCI Express version with a greatly extended feature set — the HDSPe RayDAT.

This 72-channel 192 kHz ADAT/AES/SPDIF PCI Express card provides no less than 4 x ADAT optical I/O (up to 192 kHz via S/MUX), one SPDIF and one AES/EBU I/O (192 kHz), and two MIDI I/Os. With its unique PCI Express core, the new Hammerfall achieves significant performance gains in multi-track audio and low latency operation, guaranteeing smooth operation with all 72 channels active.

RayDAT includes TotalMix, RME's unsurpassed DSP based real-time mixer/router, with hardware calculated level metering and complete MIDI remote capability, either via Mackie protocol or dedicated MIDI commands. All 36 inputs and 36 playback channels can be routed and mixed independently, including SPDIF (RCA) and AES/EBU (XLR), which are simultaneously operational due to separated hardware and record/playback devices.

The card is equipped with SteadyClock™, RME's own clock technology, combining professional features like maximum jitter suppression with full varipitch capabilities and software controlled sample rates. SteadyClock ensures a perfect clocking to any digital input signal, a dedicated word clock I/O is usually not necessary. If required, a word clock module is available as option.

HDSPe RayDAT also supports the optional TCO Module for time code support and word clock / video synchronization, and the optional TEB expansion board for TDIF I/O.

The included Windows software DIGICheck turns the HDSPe RayDAT into a Spectral Analyzer, provides professional level meters for 2, 8, or 36 channels, offers Vector Audio Scope, Global Record Function and various other audio analysis tools.

RME provides a unified driver for Windows 2000 up to Vista 64, which allows simultaneous operation of up to three RayDATs or a RayDAT with any combination of up to two HDSP or HDSPe cards. As is typical for PCI Express cards, Mac PPC computers are not supported. For x86 (Intel) machines with Mac OS X, a unified driver is available as well.

For more information, visit their web site at www.rme-audio.com.