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Post by Omicron9 on Jun 21, 2020 9:17:48 GMT -6
Greetings, RGOers. Do any of you have any experience with the MOTU 8pre-es? If so, what were your findings? MOTU 8pre-esMany thanks, -09
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Post by Johnkenn on Jun 21, 2020 10:53:30 GMT -6
I had one. It sounded good. Thought the routing was a little difficult to understand. There should be a thread on it somewhere around here...didn’t find it from a quick search though.
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Post by indiehouse on Jun 21, 2020 11:17:36 GMT -6
I had one. It sounded good. Thought the routing was a little difficult to understand. There should be a thread on it somewhere around here...didn’t find it from a quick search though. I have an 828ES and a 16a combo. If you’ve never used Motu routing before, there is a learning curve. I’m still trying to figure it out and have to relearn things from time to time. I don’t really use the preamps much. I think they’re ok, maybe a little noisy? Same with the headphones. They’re ok, too. Nothing spectacular, but then again, you’re not paying for spectacular. You’re paying for working class. Which is what I find the Motu stuff to be.
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Post by ml on Jun 21, 2020 13:08:04 GMT -6
I have an 8a and I hate the routing. I’ve been considering switching to the apollo x6 or the new symphony desktop.
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Post by Johnkenn on Jun 21, 2020 13:39:15 GMT -6
I have an 8a and I hate the routing. I’ve been considering switching to the apollo x6 or the new symphony desktop. I switched just because I wanted to be back in the UA footprint.
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Post by indiehouse on Jun 21, 2020 16:18:30 GMT -6
I have an 8a and I hate the routing. I’ve been considering switching to the apollo x6 or the new symphony desktop. I switched just because I wanted to be back in the UA footprint. Honesty, I see myself back with an Apollo X. I feel guilty about paying for the ability to print plugins, which I won’t use as long as I have hardware.
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Post by Omicron9 on Jun 22, 2020 8:37:25 GMT -6
Thanks, everyone. I searched before I created the new thread and also couldn't locate anything. One key point here: I'll only be using this for tracking, not mixing. Does the routing difficulty only apply to mixing? I'll be tracking using Reaper, and I'd like to think that I can just do a 1-to-1 input mapping (ch.1 on MOTU = track 1 in Reaper, etc.). Very simple needs here.
Thanks again, -09
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Post by Guitar on Jun 22, 2020 8:54:48 GMT -6
I don't want to be a total party pooper, but my only MOTU interface experience was with the newer M4. It had distortion on the monitor outputs. I decided to move on rather than try a replacement. I've heard of other folks having various issues. Don't want to overstate it but some of them, can be a little dodgy.
On a nice note, I have a MOTU MIDI Express midi interface that has been wonderful for many years, and I bought it used. It's a trooper.
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Post by tasteliketape on Jun 22, 2020 9:03:11 GMT -6
I have two Motu units 16a and 8a . I had a problem with the 16a with four days till out of warranty, Motu support looked up my registration for me as I had lost the receipt and replaced for free. When I added the 8a I called with routing questions and they just took over my Mac and did the routing for me . There support team has been really awsome for me .
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Post by Guitar on Jun 22, 2020 9:09:08 GMT -6
That's true for me also, someone reached out to me directly from MOTU about my issue also. Great support from them, if you do have any issue.
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Post by din on Jun 22, 2020 9:36:44 GMT -6
I have the 16A and 828ES combo. I'm quite happy with them. The routing is no doubt a bitch to learn, but the good news is that it's actually super powerful and flexible. The best part is the zero latency monitoring. I could never go back to recording with latency and messing with buffers and all that bullshit.
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Post by indiehouse on Jun 22, 2020 18:12:42 GMT -6
I have the 16A and 828ES combo. I'm quite happy with them. The routing is no doubt a bitch to learn, but the good news is that it's actually super powerful and flexible. The best part is the zero latency monitoring. I could never go back to recording with latency and messing with buffers and all that bullshit. Yep, pretty much this. Though I haven't messed with recording with DAW latency in years, ever since I got my hands on a silver faced Apollo way back when. Doesn't pretty much everyone making interfaces have some sort of latency free solution these days?
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Post by the other mark williams on Jun 22, 2020 18:25:26 GMT -6
I have the 16A and 828ES combo. I'm quite happy with them. The routing is no doubt a bitch to learn, but the good news is that it's actually super powerful and flexible. The best part is the zero latency monitoring. I could never go back to recording with latency and messing with buffers and all that bullshit. Yep, pretty much this. Though I haven't messed with recording with DAW latency in years, ever since I got my hands on a silver faced Apollo way back when. Doesn't pretty much everyone making interfaces have some sort of latency free solution these days? I think so, unless they're intentionally not including an internal DSP mixer as a selling point for a particular interface, a la Presonus Quantum. I believe it is theoretically possible to make native latency lower if there's no DSP mixer involved. I could be wrong about that, though.
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Post by Omicron9 on Jun 23, 2020 8:37:57 GMT -6
Thanks for all the helpful responses; much appreciated.
The MOTU routing: does that only come into play at mix time? I'll only be using this for tracking.
TIA, -09
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Post by Guitar on Jun 23, 2020 8:45:24 GMT -6
Yep, pretty much this. Though I haven't messed with recording with DAW latency in years, ever since I got my hands on a silver faced Apollo way back when. Doesn't pretty much everyone making interfaces have some sort of latency free solution these days? I think so, unless they're intentionally not including an internal DSP mixer as a selling point for a particular interface, a la Presonus Quantum. I believe it is theoretically possible to make native latency lower if there's no DSP mixer involved. I could be wrong about that, though. I think eliminating DSP routing/mixer/fx saves about 1 ms or 1.5 ms in total RTL. So yeah, that's what Presonus is doing to get on par with the PCIe interfaces that are the fastest and most efficient of all. Something like an Apollo, or a Clarett, MOTU, etc, is going to give you direct monitoring, cue mixing and routing stuff, but it will be a longer total latency to and from the DAW, due to the processing time of the hardware DSP required for these tasks. Sort of "choose your poison," I guess.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 23, 2020 9:52:49 GMT -6
The MOTUs are awesome. Get one with real line ins so you don’t send everything through bleh chip pres. The DA is pretty muchthe same in all of them, very good, right below the Symphony SE in detail but no Apogee sound, and the AD varies in detail but is a little worse than the DA and kinda warm but that’s not a bad thing. The drivers are great and right below RME on USB but 44.1 and 48 kHz are slower on windows than Mac. The pres themselves are meh chip pres but are less nasty than RME’s and the WTF Focusrite chip pres. The conversion is much better than the RME rack mounts as it should be if you open up each and see what’s in there. The MOTU digitally synthesized clock is also much better than RME’s. The thunderbolt is more reliable than the USB on computers that support it but it’s nice to have both ports on one interface. Monkey, the M2 and M4 are USB port powered so all of your computer power nastiness is going to get into it. They also don’t use the FGPA of the AVB network interfaces and run everything off of an Xmos microcontroller like a ton of crappy usb gear. They’re just not charging you 270 bucks like SSL because SSL sold out to China. Even the Babyface Pro has problems from the USB power. The typical user of the the bus powered interfaces tends to using them as a portable setup and doesn’t care, super low end, or honestly pretty fucking deaf. RME themselves said there is no sonic improvement from their switcher and they were right because their switchers are cheap pieces of shit. They don’t want to pay 40-50 bucks wholesale for the good floor warts and think using a good power supply doesn’t matter
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Post by gwlee7 on Jun 23, 2020 9:58:55 GMT -6
Thanks for all the helpful responses; much appreciated. The MOTU routing: does that only come into play at mix time? I'll only be using this for tracking. TIA, -09 You won’t really use the MOTU routing at mix time unless you are using its outputs to connect to some hardware. And that would be set and forget once you get it set the way you want it. I recently purchased the 828es and the routing is taking some “figuring out” but no more than when I was learning Apollo’s Console tracking. To me, the motu so far has been an upgrade from my Apollo Twin.
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Post by indiehouse on Jun 23, 2020 11:04:44 GMT -6
I think so, unless they're intentionally not including an internal DSP mixer as a selling point for a particular interface, a la Presonus Quantum. I believe it is theoretically possible to make native latency lower if there's no DSP mixer involved. I could be wrong about that, though. I think eliminating DSP routing/mixer/fx saves about 1 ms or 1.5 ms in total RTL. So yeah, that's what Presonus is doing to get on par with the PCIe interfaces that are the fastest and most efficient of all. Something like an Apollo, or a Clarett, MOTU, etc, is going to give you direct monitoring, cue mixing and routing stuff, but it will be a longer total latency to and from the DAW, due to the processing time of the hardware DSP required for these tasks. Sort of "choose your poison," I guess. If I'm direct monitoring, what do I care how long the latency is to the DAW? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something I've never considered before. I usually have my session mix pulled up, route my overdub track to my DAW, but mute it and direct monitor the source.
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Post by Guitar on Jun 23, 2020 11:31:33 GMT -6
I think eliminating DSP routing/mixer/fx saves about 1 ms or 1.5 ms in total RTL. So yeah, that's what Presonus is doing to get on par with the PCIe interfaces that are the fastest and most efficient of all. Something like an Apollo, or a Clarett, MOTU, etc, is going to give you direct monitoring, cue mixing and routing stuff, but it will be a longer total latency to and from the DAW, due to the processing time of the hardware DSP required for these tasks. Sort of "choose your poison," I guess. If I'm direct monitoring, what do I care how long the latency is to the DAW? Just want to make sure I'm not missing something I've never considered before. I usually have my session mix pulled up, route my overdub track to my DAW, but mute it and direct monitor the source. In your case, it doesn't matter. In my case, I use a lot of virtual instruments so it does matter. There are solutions for every workflow, and every price point. There are no wrong answers, people just need to find the interface that "they" need. My personal need is virtual instrument playback performance, high amounts of plugin processing in a project. I use a hardware mixer for "true" direct monitoring. So that's where I'm personally coming from. Latency is actually zero instead of "near zero" with a DSP cue mixer. In practice, this is not something to worry about. If I had the cash for a high end RME box, or say an HDX system, that would likely be "even better" than the Quantum, but my personal price point puts me on Quantum. Like I said, there's a horse for me and a donkey for you, and a cow for someone else.
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Post by subspace on Jun 23, 2020 12:45:59 GMT -6
Thanks for all the helpful responses; much appreciated. The MOTU routing: does that only come into play at mix time? I'll only be using this for tracking. TIA, -09 The "routing difficulty" is just that every physical input and output gets routed through the digital mixer built into all the AVB interfaces, which is mostly just used for tracking. Up to 48k, any AVB interface can provide up to 7 discrete stereo cue mixes on top of the main control room mix for 'near zero-latency' monitoring. Seeing all that on a routing grid intimidates some but you just route 'analog input 1' to 'to computer 1' and it works like any other recording interface for multi-tracking.
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Post by stratboy on Jun 23, 2020 12:50:48 GMT -6
I have two Motu units 16a and 8a . I had a problem with the 16a with four days till out of warranty, Motu support looked up my registration for me as I had lost the receipt and replaced for free. When I added the 8a I called with routing questions and they just took over my Mac and did the routing for me . There support team has been really awsome for me . I had the same combo. Loved the price/performance and support. If you have to use the routing matrix, it is a bit non-intuitive, but if I can figure it out, so can you. MOTU has very helpful articles in their knowledgebase and there is the in-person help as well if you are really, really stuck.
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Post by ml on Jun 23, 2020 13:24:48 GMT -6
Thanks for all the helpful responses; much appreciated. The MOTU routing: does that only come into play at mix time? I'll only be using this for tracking. TIA, -09 Once you get your initial routing setup you prob won't need to mess with it again if you are just tracking only. Personally I don't find the motu to be as stable as my old RME. Sometimes I have to reboot my Mac until it shows up in devices. I've also had it freeze a bunch of times while changing sample rates. I have mine connected via TB2, haven't tried usb.
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Post by Guitar on Jun 23, 2020 13:44:23 GMT -6
The MOTUs are awesome. Get one with real line ins so you don’t send everything through bleh chip pres. The DA is pretty muchthe same in all of them, very good, right below the Symphony SE in detail but no Apogee sound, and the AD varies in detail but is a little worse than the DA and kinda warm but that’s not a bad thing. The drivers are great and right below RME on USB but 44.1 and 48 kHz are slower on windows than Mac. The pres themselves are meh chip pres but are less nasty than RME’s and the WTF Focusrite chip pres. The conversion is much better than the RME rack mounts as it should be if you open up each and see what’s in there. The MOTU digitally synthesized clock is also much better than RME’s. The thunderbolt is more reliable than the USB on computers that support it but it’s nice to have both ports on one interface. Monkey, the M2 and M4 are USB port powered so all of your computer power nastiness is going to get into it. They also don’t use the FGPA of the AVB network interfaces and run everything off of an Xmos microcontroller like a ton of crappy usb gear. They’re just not charging you 270 bucks like SSL because SSL sold out to China. Even the Babyface Pro has problems from the USB power. The typical user of the the bus powered interfaces tends to using them as a portable setup and doesn’t care, super low end, or honestly pretty fucking deaf. RME themselves said there is no sonic improvement from their switcher and they were right because their switchers are cheap pieces of shit. They don’t want to pay 40-50 bucks wholesale for the good floor warts and think using a good power supply doesn’t matter Yeah, power supply noise would have been something I would have dealt with, if necessary, if the M4 had actually worked in the first place. To me, it was a benefit. I record sometimes away from the main room so of course I am "obsessed" with small footprint rigs that only get used once or twice a year. The Steinberg UR24C was "close" but it was, unfortunately, kind of gross sounding during mixdown. I had to do a lot of "fixing" to the basic tones. M4 was a non starter with the hardware issues. I guess that leaves me with the SSL 2+ as the last frontier, which is fine. I'll try one eventually. Or I'll just use the UH7000's that I own, or the Zoom recorders, or the Sound Devices gear. I guess the problem has been solved but it's still fun to try new gear.
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Post by EmRR on Jun 24, 2020 19:57:44 GMT -6
The routing is nothing strange, it’s very much like Dante. It IS hard to evaluate at a glance, especially if you built a setting then ignored it for 6 months. Or didn’t exhaustively label it all. Or save that setting. It’s all flexibility really, which involves complexity. Build what you need. Then while it’s fresh build and save some other things you might envision needing.
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Post by sam on Jun 25, 2020 16:55:02 GMT -6
Weird so many people had issues with the MOTU routing. I use my 16a as a total set it and forget it rig with pres and a patchbay, and I honestly think I launched the MOTU software once since owning it.
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