It’s very rare for me to have a technology product - especially one for review - that
I would say is truly “over my head.”
In fact, I could “review” most products I’ve made videos on after only having spent
5 to 10 minutes with the product and not be too far off from my final review conclusions.
That’s just how I roll.
But today’s product - the RME Babyface Pro USB audio interface caught me off-guard with
how simple it seemed up front but how complex and powerful the product really is.
I started off with the product being way over my head, and I still don’t have a mastery
of everything it can do, but I’m finally ready to provide a review of it for you, from
the perspective of a YouTuber, podcaster, and voice over creator.
Let’s give this a shot.
This is the RME Babyface Pro - a professional USB audio interface.
However, compared to the previous audio interfaces I’ve reviewed from FocusRite, this interface
is on a whole different level of complexity and capability.
Physically, this interface is a beast, it screams build quality.
Most of it is basically a block of solid aluminum, with a lighter meta for the bottom shell.
On that bottom, there’s 4 tiny rubber feet and a threaded screw mount for mounting in
any kind of production environment.
It’s not much bigger than my FocusRite Scarlett 2i2 interface, though it weighs more than
twice as much.
The sides are lined with the hookups for the 12 input and 12 output channels - including
4 analog inputs via XLR and 1/4 inch connectors for mics, line-in, and instruments, an optical
SPDIF connection, as well as MIDI I/O. There’s outputs for the XLR, 1/4 inch and SPDIF, as
well.
With this plethora of inputs and outputs, there’s a DC power jack in case you’re
using this interface with a low-power computer that can’t provide enough power over USB
- the power brick is sold separately - as well as as USB 2.0 A to B output.
Oh, and they have 2 different headphone outputs - a 3.5mm for normal headphones and a 1/4
inch output for high-impedance headphones.
That’s a LOT of inputs and outputs, and the Babyface Pro can handle ALL of them running
at once with no interference and no problems.
The audio is passed through both via analog and digitally with no interference or quality
changes, and everything can be adjusted via a computer or the interface itself.
Speaking of which - this bad boy is compatible with just about anything!
While there’s some crazy intense software that you can use to configure the interface,
it requires no proprietary drivers and can work with Windows, OS X, Linux, and even devices
like the iPad.
And if you do want to utilize their robust software platform to control the mixer, their
TotalMix FX software allows you to basically treat the interface as a giant hardware mixer,
controlling the levels, routing sources to the various inputs and outputs for a variety
of recording environments, live monitoring via the headphone output, and even live processing
of the audio!
You can add live effects to your microphone or other input sources in real-time via the
DSP mixer - such as a parametric EQ, delay and reverb, without putting much strain on
your system.
There’s a lot more to the processing side of things via the SteadyClock internal clock
and FPGA programmable gate array circuit…
thing.
This is where this gets a little over my head as I mentioned in the intro.
It can do a LOT and adapt to the demands of a variety of studio environments, but I can
only cover it from my amateur home studio perspective.
If software isn’t your thing, the LED-backed visual levels for inputs and outputs, as well
as the adjustment dial and surrounding buttons allow you to do a lot of adjustment and on-the-fly
settings from the interface itself.
I used a bit of both, but I ended up relying on the physical buttons and dials the most
while using this interface.
Overall, I had a BLAST using this interface, I hooked up a $11 dollar wireless mic - video
on that mic soon - my main RE20 mic, and then I hooked it up to my big post-processing rack
(video also coming soon) and I never ran into any issues.
The quality is amazing, and I never had any driver disconnect issues like I ran into with
my FocusRite interfaces.
This
has potentially been the hardest review I’ve done thus far, as I had to spend a lot of
time just learning my way around the product.
I tried going in blind (aka without reading the manual) and it took me over an hour just
to figure out how to get live headphone monitoring going.
BUT regardless, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with the RME BabyFace Pro.
It’s an amazingly capable and stable interface, and despite it being a fraction of the size
of my giant Behringer mixer, it could probably replace it if I learned my way around it enough.
I hope you enjoyed my review of the Babyface Pro USB audio interface.
Product links will be in the description below, as always.
Be sure to smash the like button if you enjoyed it, don’t forget to subscribe for more awesome
tech videos, and I will catch you next time