RME makes some very good stuff if you are looking at the mid-proaudio level. It is a distributed and "reseller" item, so there will be considerable mark-up. That’s not bad, but expected with many item. There are some things that the Gustard has which the RME does not have:
- Two separate fully linear power supplies
- Multiple crystal clocks for different sampling rates (i.e. 44.1/88.2/172.4 vs 48/96/192). Extremely high quality clock for main system CPU.
- Fully discrete analog output sections (that are balanced as well)
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While the RME is not bad, it uses a wall-wart swtiching power supply, in addition to several other things. I’m sure it will work fine, but I think the Gustard is definitely on another level.
