RME Ships Hammerfall Digital Audio Card

The Hammerfall control panel

Project Hammerfall, one of the first ASIO 2.0 compatible hardware units, tested, and approved by Steinberg, is now shipping. The card provides 3 ADAT optical inputs and outputs, one coaxial SPDIF input and output (AES/EBU compatible), a word clock input and output and a 9-pin ADAT Sync input.

In combination with Steinberg's Cubase VST 3.7, which includes the newest ASIO 2.0 technology, the Hammerfall offers a stable, fast and reliable, sample accurate synchronization. Hammerfall's exclusive 'Zero CPU load' technology and a high-speed, burst FIFO buffered busmaster interface, result in unsurpassed performance. On a usual 300 MHz Pentium PC with busmaster EIDE hard drives, a user can expect 24 tracks of simultaneous recording. The same system is able to play back 24 tracks simultaneously with a latency of 3 ms!

The hardware supported Enhanced ZLM (Zero Latency Monitoring) is used to provide ASIO Direct Monitoring. The card may be slave or master, the input signal will always be passed through without crackling, directly by the hardware, to achieve real time monitoring. Thus, Cubase can finally work exactly like a normal tape machine. The user can set the latency to higher values for a more secure operation, without getting problems in monitoring at punch in/out.

Hammerfall also includes RME's SyncCheck. This technology helps prevent incorrect hardware setups where devices generate, receive, or lock on clocks, but in reality use the wrong ones. SyncCheck checks the clocks between themselves and the clock used by Hammerfall, and displayes 'Sync' in case they really are in sync, else 'Lock' or 'No Lock'. This feature is very useful and a great help in setting up such a complex and flexible hardware in real world studio environments.

Project Hammerfall also supports 96 kHz operation over ADAT optical interfaces, directly in hardware. When choosing 96 kHz as sample frequency the tracks available in ASIO automatically drop down to 12 ADAT and 2 SPDIF. The hardware multiplexes the samples, so one channel of 96 kHz data is spread on two 48 kHz channels on the ADAT optical interface. The user doesn't need to know what's going on. Everything works automatically and needs no special setups or settings. The 96 kHz mode will be supported soon by a special 96 kHz version of RME's ADI-8 PRO, an 8-channel AD/DA-converter with ADAT optical and TDIF interface.

Windows MME drivers are expected next week and available on RME's website. The ASIO driver supports operation of up to two cards. The price in Germany is 1098 DM, which equals US$600.