As the winner of 11 Tony Awards, Hamilton—a musical about the life of American founding father Alexander Hamilton, with music, lyrics and the book by Lin-Manuel Miranda—has been a success.
There’s a tremendous amount of talent and excitement in this show and, to ensure the best possible audio quality, interfaces from RME—distributed by Synthax.—are an integral part of the show’s production.
Drummer Andres Forero and sound engineer Justin Rathbun are actively involved in the music performance and audio production for Hamilton. Forero plays eight shows each week and, when he not playing, he’s also keeping a close eye on the overall sound. For this, he uses two RME Fireface UFX audio interfaces at front of house. Equally noteworthy, he also has both a Fireface UFX in his home studio and, when he travels, he uses RME’s Babyface Pro. He discussed his fondness for RME equipment.
“If you’re someone like me who doesn’t live in audio geek land, it’s so great to have these RME products that you just plug in and they work,” says Forero. “The RME gear is very accessible and the lack of latency is a huge deal for people like me. Since I travel quite a bit doing a lot of remote drum clinics, the RME Babyface Pro’s portable capabilities are terrific.”
The RME Fireface UFX offers a wealth of features, including USB and FireWire connectivity, support for 60 channels of audio, digitally controlled preamps, reference class converters, and full 192 kHz operation. Equally notable, the unit provides an integrated digital recorder—known as DURec – Direct USB Recording—for all inputs and outputs directly to USB memory devices such as USB thumb drives or hard drives with up to 2 TB capacity via the unit’s front USB port.
“For a show like Hamilton,” Forero explains, “the sheer number of channels and the connectivity the interface offers are invaluable. One unit alone provides 60 channels of audio by way of 30 input and 30 output channels using a combination of analog and digital I/O. So when you have two units like we do at front of house, you can really begin to appreciate the capability of these interfaces.”
“Audio quality is a vitally important consideration in my work and both the Fireface UFX and Babyface Pro are exceptional in this regard,” he continued. “Both interfaces sound crystal clean and natural so the music sounds exactly as it should. Between the audio quality, the connectivity, and the lack of latency, the RME equipment is really hard to beat!”
Forero is also very fond of the service and support he receives from Synthax. “Richard DeClemente of Synthax’ Florida-based office is one of the finest human beings I’ve ever met,” Forero says. “How he dealt with me, how he treated me; I was sold before I heard anything about RME’s gear. You really couldn’t ask for a more responsive company.”
Before turning his attention back to the activities of the day, Forero offered these parting thoughts, “For both in my work with Hamilton and the other projects I’m involved in, I consider RME’s Fireface UFX and Babyface Pro interfaces exceptional. With great sound, rugged build quality, and first-class support, you couldn’t ask for more.”
