Yeah! I’m rockin’ the M2 as a backup to my RME interface.
One thing to note, my MacBook Pro M1 audio out is pretty much up there, and will drive most headphones compared to older Macs. Depends what Mac you have.
1 Like
Just reading that both use ESS Sabre DAC but the Duet has a ESS Sabre 2 DAC. For what it’s worth I couldn’t tell any difference between my RME UC and the Groove but I’ve got tinitus and I’m 51, so take that how you want 
1 Like
my back hurts just thinking about my ears so I feel you.
2 Likes
Hah the joys of getting old. Interesting in that I do have slight tinnitus that comes and goes but I was experiencing a bad spell for ages in my right ear, and my missus (who’s an ACP) had a look with one of her ‘devices’ and I had impacted wax on my ear drum. Got it cleaned out and it went immediately!
2 Likes
That’s incredible, super lucky! when I get the right bass frequency in headphones, one of my ears (inner ear) flutters in a very odd way (I can physically feel it moving) - aside from other hearing related issues, it’s quite a thing. Makes mixing fun though.
2 Likes
Yeah very lucky… it’s worrying at times but I’m really careful with levels and headphone usage these days. I think stress affects mine more, but I feel I can manage. The worst time was when it was materialising at night as a really low hum, and it drove me insane (and my missus). I kept getting out of bed listening at the wall… I thought next door had the vac on 
2 Likes
This may belong in the UFO’s and Disclosure thread 
2 Likes
one of those is certainly on the menu for a future purchase
1 Like
hadn’t heard of that one, reminds me of an IK irig, will check it out too thanks
1 Like
yeah apogee have always sounded good to me
1 Like
really I thought your audio interface made an impression on loopback recording?
I have no idea, but does internal resampling even touch the audio interface other than playing the result?
Or is it a matter of you need the audio interface to support high bit and sample rates so that the ableton session runs at higher rates?
The Rode AI-Micro is great, but it’s key selling point in the synth world is it can do both stereo in and headphone out in a tiny tiny package. If you just need a DAC for output, there’s possibly higher quality compact options.
I picked up an SSL 12 for this, and a few other things. It works well with my M1 MBP, but possibly overkill for your application.
2 Likes
I think some interfaces might make the routing easier, or are set up in a way which guarantees this will be bit-perfect, but I would be surprised if there is a meaningful (audible) difference.
I thought it did, but I might be mistaken
@Scyphozoa, now I’ve got the bug and I need to find out for certain 
The only notable difference I can think of would be dealing without a decent ASIO driver on a PC, otherwise on a Mac rendering would be the domain of the CPU.
Nope! Sound cards (also on the PC) can have acceleration for some game bells and whistles.
I mean there are certainly sound cards like UAD offer that have onboard DSP (and I believe RME also has some minor FX dsp) but aside from custom plugin types and specific chips, general purpose CPUs are used for rendering audio.
Doesn’t sound like your use case would get any better for the added space and cost!
2 Likes
yep I’m on a Mac, so loop back recording or resampling won’t pass through the interface?.. I learn something everyday
2 Likes
Certain interfaces do have their own internal loopback features, but if you have other means of loopback or are using a specific software there’s no benefit.
I mean do you mean any very specific scenario with “loopback recording or resampling” that wouldn’t apply to any general audio/DAW processing?
The processing (again assuming you’re not speaking of custom DSP which you probably would have called out) is performed on the CPU and only touches whatever audio chipset is onboard or with a 3rd party interface for output when the number crunching is complete.
6 Likes
no
2 Likes