Hercules RMX Sound. Worth it buying Audio 2 NI?

[DJHAL]

Hi there everybody,

I am starting at the DJ Hobbie and are excited. A Friend of mine gave me as a present a Hercules Rmx, and I bought a Traktor F1, and have it hooked up to my Home Stereo. Sometimes I hear the Sound specially poor in defined bass. I Use the RCA to the amply I bascily have two questions:

1) Is it better to us a Jack to RCA converter to get the sound out of the RMX to get more quality (BTW, my RCA cables are hight quality)?

2) Or is it worth it to buy an NI Audio 2 sound card? Is it much better than the internal of the RMX? Has someone made a test? Od if so, is it possible to get the Headphones over the RMX, or has it to get plugged to the Audio 2 sound card?


Thank you a lot!!!! And happy DJing!


Dj Hal

[deevey]

1) Is it better to us a Jack to RCA converter to get the sound out of the RMX to get more quality (BTW, my RCA cables are hight quality)?

Regardless of the connectors they are wired the same.

2) Or is it worth it to buy an NI Audio 2 sound card? Is it much better than the internal of the RMX? Has someone made a test? Od if so, is it possible to get the Headphones over the RMX, or has it to get plugged to the Audio 2 sound card?

I had an RMX for a long time and never felt the Soundcard lacking in the actual audio reproduction or volume dept, but yes the Audio 2 would be a better card for less noise - the RMX is a lil "hissy".

You could use combined soundcards e.g. ASIO4ALL or Agrregated soundcards on a Mac, IMHO its not worth the grief.

Seeing as your issue was with the bass though, Bass can start to get muddy depending on what software you are using and if you have keylock turned on a track you are reducing or enhancing the speed on quite a bit, also check if you are on High Quality if you are using Traktor. I'd check this out first before deciding you need a new soundcard is really needed.

[Saurus]

god no... If you're spinning on a hercules rmx, you should be worrying about upgrading that, don't worry about your sound card.

[sss18734]

god no... If you're spinning on a hercules rmx, you should be worrying about upgrading that, don't worry about your sound card.

An Audio 2 is a great purchase regardless of what you're using. It's dirt cheap, is a much better card than just about any built-in cards, and provides you with a backup when you upgrade your gear. I still have mine.

[deevey]

god no... If you're spinning on a hercules rmx, you should be worrying about upgrading that, don't worry about your sound card.

Jeeze get off your high horse for a second will ya. You seem to have a hate for virtually every other controller out there anyhow.

There is nothing at all wrong with the RMX, I had one for a Long, long time and its built IMHO BETTER than a VCI, sure it doesn't have touch sensitive wheels and the buttons are a bit clunky, but its a solid lump of a unit.

There is NOTHING in that price bracket with the features and robustness for the same money (under $200 nowadays) .... and the OP got his as a PRESENT - why don't you make some useful suggestions rather than just dissing what other people already use/own/are happy with ?

To the OP, the Audio 2 is cheap and handy to have as a backup card anyhows - On a home stereo (most of them anyhow) you probably wont notice a huge amount of sound quality difference between the RMX and the Audio2, if you are playing on a decent club system it does pay to have a nice sound card.

[DJHAL]

The funny thing is that while I am mixing at home, and recording it, the quality is ok, but in my opinion poor. Its difficult to explain. But for me it seems that the deffinition os poor. It sounds like it is too compressed.... I don´t know how to explain. When I play back the recorded file, over the optical out of the mac, over my home stereo AV reciever, the sound is MUUUUCH better. Could it be possible that the mac sound card is better?
Thank you. But I am thinking of purchasing the audio 2 card.

[mdcdesign]

The funny thing is that while I am mixing at home, and recording it, the quality is ok, but in my opinion poor. Its difficult to explain. But for me it seems that the deffinition os poor. It sounds like it is too compressed.... I don´t know how to explain. When I play back the recorded file, over the optical out of the mac, over my home stereo AV reciever, the sound is MUUUUCH better. Could it be possible that the mac sound card is better?
Thank you. But I am thinking of purchasing the audio 2 card.

No, that's almost certainly not possible considering how Macs use what are essentially crappy Realtek/Cirrus HDA chipsets. I'm willing to bet you've buggered something up in the driver configuration; make sure you've got the Core/ASIO drivers installed properly, and if you've having sound issues with the RMX, try increasing the samples slider in Traktor.

I've got an RMX, a Reloop Contour, and I've had various other devices over the years, as well as had a friend bring over an NI Audio 8, and even on the audiophile setup I have here, there's no appreciable difference between the sound quality on all the devices. Not to mention with anything less than a 24/96 source file, you're not going to HEAR a difference anyway, so for DJing purposes they all do basically the same job.

Your main concern with regards to audio interfaces for DJing is with latency, and the Hercules RMX is pretty fantastic latency-wise. Not to mention it has balanced outputs (the 6.5mm "stereo" jacks at the back), which let you go directly into a soundboard, bypassing the club's mixer. The Audio 2 doesn't have that capability.

Oh, and with the RMX you can also theoretically run a timecode setup, although not necessarily with Traktor. Works fine on Torq and VDJ though

[makar1]

Optical out will be digital so should be bit-perfect, there's no D-A conversion so no loss of quality from the source material.

Maybe the RCA outs of the RMX aren't as good as the balanced outs, maybe the RCA inputs of the OP's AV receiver are off (phono preamp?). I really can't think of any settings that would reduce overall quality of the sound.

[mdcdesign]

maybe the RCA inputs of the OP's AV receiver are off (phono preamp?).

This is a possibility... without seeing his gear there's no way to tell unfortunately

I really can't think of any settings that would reduce overall quality of the sound.

Well having the samples slider in Traktor too far to the left, depending on how powerful your system is and how much load its under, can lead to audio glitches which may be interpreted as "low quality" sound.