Interoperability, Audio Interfaces & Class Compliance
Over time I've had many different types of audio interfaces starting with an ISA Sound Blaster 16. I've never really had a brand allegiance until 10 or so years ago when I had my first real major failure with a pro interface with the Antelope Audio Orion Studio Synergy Core. After that costly mistake, I switched to RME and have been RME only ever since. Not only does RME provide the lowest latency with the most robust and consistent driver/firmware support, but in recent years they have made class compliance a priority on almost of all of their interfaces. That makes them ideal for use in linux.
In the USB1 & 2 days class compliant anything was really hard to come by. And anything much more complex than a keyboard and mouse required drivers, many of which would be published for a couple of years and then development abandoned. That pattern obsoleted and junked a lot of good music hardware, printers and scanners for several years. Further divide was created by Apple championing FireWire instead of USB. Eventually with the introduction of USB3 the performance and stability gain of FireWire was superseded around which time Apple introduced Thunderbolt. From my perspective, this contributed to what felt like an intentional interoperability divide between PC & Mac users, to the detriment of all computer users in general. You might ask why do I consistently criticize MacOS for interopability issues?
Simple, because interoperability is antithetical to enshittification. When companies agree to a set of fundamental standards for hardware they agree to fair competition, and the winners are the users and the public at large. When they don't, all users suffer at the cost of some company trying to smother its competition. Think of the antitrust lawsuits that Intel eventually lost to AMD https://www.amd.com/en/legal/notices/antitrust-ruling.html. This anticompetitve behavior led to the dominance of Intel for 15 or so years during which time they inflated the values of their hardware while stifling innovation. Once AMD was allowed to compete, particularly in the mobile market, they swept past Intel in the next 10 years. We are inured to capitalism at this point, and in this system certain inherent balances provide the benefits thereof. That is to say you must allow market competition to thrive with enforceable antitrust to balance out the profit motive. The symptom of that system working in the tech sector is interoperability. Class compliance is true interoperability for USB.
While class compliance lagged the adoption of USB standards it finally culminated at least in part based on the demand of iOS devices needing to run without drivers. Now in 2026 linux users are able to reap the benefits of it's maturation. It's important to note however that just because the device itself is class compliant does not automatically mean it works 100% in the end. Watch out for vendors advertising class compliance on audio interfaces only to discover you cannot configure anything or you can only use 25% of the channels. A demo of the Arturia AudioFuse Studio was one such total disappointment.
To date, I have over time accumulated an RME Babyface Pro FS, an RME Digiface USB and an RME Madiface XTII. I know it's overkill, but I combine these with preamps, ADAT modules and a couple of Ferrofish MADI input devices to allow me to simultaneously multitrack anything in my studio. These will be the devices I use to interface with linux and discuss/demonstrate on this blog. I will not be using any onboard PC audio devices.
Also there has also been a strange trend among groovebox makers to make their devices fully functional class compliant audio interfaces in addition to all of their other functions. I was surprised that this was how the Ableton Push 3 Standalone was implemented, but I cannot deny that it is very useful and convenient. Also the Elektron Tonverk is an audio interface. I have used on several occasions Elektron Overbridge to route audio through an Analog Heat Mk2 because it has such great sounding subtle distortion. Overbridge does not work in linux and likely never will but I will explore using the Tonverk as the audio interface as well. It just lacks the ability to connect directly to the eurorack modular setups, where for instance I can connect two BoredBrain Optx V2s (https://www.boredbrainmusic.com/shop/optx-v2-2) directly to the RME Digiface USB for 16 channels of DC coupled class compliant IO as well as a preamp for multichannel outs.
I should also point out that while I am very biased towards RME I have also begun using a Schiit Gunnr (https://www.schiit.com/products/gunnr) as a DAC for travel and gaming. It is also class compliant and provides much better headphone gain as well as tone control.