I’ve always been extremely satisfied by RME’s Matrix and its versatility, allowing me to avoid the use of a patchbay and mix hard and soft signals without any difficulty. So I was curious to see what the SK48 could offer in terms of routing. Well, once more, TC has done a great job. The left column is informative (real time monitoring of active inputs, Pads, 48V and clock lock) and offers optical format settings as well as clock settings when the SK48 is used in standalone mode. The Output section is at the heart of the interface routing capabilities.

For each output (Main, Phones, Line Out, S/P-DIF and ADAT) you have a pull-down menu which allows you to select the signal source, among the interface inputs, the DAW signals or Mixer signals (Main, Aux Mix and Reverb Send). Furthermore, each pair can send different signals to the same stereo output (perfect for headphone monitoring). Thus I can send the SY99 in each of the four ADAT ports of the KSP8 without unplugging/plugging their respective cords, or route Logic signals in the same KSP8. One of the advantages over RME is that each I/O is clearly identified (you can even give user names to the outputs).

TCNear also allows you to choose between three speaker systems (A, B, C tabs), with individual routing for each source, and also perfectly handles multichannel systems (5.1 to 7.1), with independent volume and delay parameters for each output and a Bass Management coming from the TC/Dynaudio AIR systems (several crossover frequencies, high- and low-pass, levels).

Some shortcomings and bugs: the software reacts after a short delay when setting parameters with the mouse. And it is a real CPU hog: resizing, window changes, vu-meters animation and other actions result in CPU spikes. These annoyances remind me of the graphic issues encountered with the first release of Logic 8, before 8.0.1 solved them. So there’s may be a chance that they can easily be fixed. Access to Add Channels can become impossible if you mute the Monitoring Mixer (but it’s not systematic) and it’s sometimes hard to change the sample rate or the clock source. You’ll go faster if you change these two parameters in Audio & MIDI Setup (changes are instantaneous). It would be nice to have a Mono monitoring mode and that Master Volume settings could be removed from the preset saving.

To sum up: we have a complete and hi-resolution mix and internal routing solution, complete handling of multi-channel with bass management and up to three-speaker system routing capabilities. You’ll hardly find another interface as complete as this one, which saves you, as a result, the cost of additional gear...