MOTU 828x

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I'm planning on changing my audio/midi interface and am thinking of this:

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/828x

I like the fact that it has plenty of analog inputs, Thunderbolt interface and can function offline as a mixer - plus the Cue-mix fx and mixer look very powerful. Anyone had any experience with these?

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aMUSEd wrote:I'm planning on changing my audio/midi interface and am thinking of this:

http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/828x

I like the fact that it has plenty of analog inputs, Thunderbolt interface and can function offline as a mixer - plus the Cue-mix fx and mixer look very powerful. Anyone had any experience with these?
I don't have experience with the 828, but, I have three MOTU audio interfaces and, I think 3 or 4 of their midi interfaces. There are things that I don't like about them, but, I've not found anything that I like better.

Cuemix is powerful, but it seems to confuse a lot of people. I use it a quite a bit. The built in scope, spectrum analyzer and tuner are also super handy.

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That's not so plenty of analog inputs, just 8 line level inputs and 2 mic/instrument inputs. Fireface 802 has 12 line level inputs and 4 mic/instrument inputs. No Thunderbolt, but that's simply not relevant if you don't intend to chain 3+ interfaces together. Fireface 802 works perfectly either with USB or Firewire.
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi

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Yes but Fireface 802 is considerably more expensive, and Thunderbolt would be useful to me as it means there's no sharing of USB ports and much better bandwidth.

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Oh, I had no idea 828x is so cheap. That's great.
I'm not sure what you mean by sharing of USB ports. There's really no bandwidth issue with USB 2 and a single audio interface. In any case, I'd still use Firewire, I even use it with my microATX PC. But anyway, for the price, the MOTU interface definitely seems like the best thing to get.
"Music is spiritual. The music business is not." - Claudio Monteverdi

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I'd not use Firewire again... I killed my last audio interface by inadvertently hitting the power switch with the computer on...

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Shy wrote:Oh, I had no idea 828x is so cheap. That's great.
I'm not sure what you mean by sharing of USB ports. There's really no bandwidth issue with USB 2 and a single audio interface. In any case, I'd still use Firewire, I even use it with my microATX PC. But anyway, for the price, the MOTU interface definitely seems like the best thing to get.
If you're using a computer with a limited number of USB ports and you have more than a few USB accessories, you might have to share your USB port(s) that your audio interface(s) is(are) plugged into with other devices.

If you have a thunderbolt port that's otherwise going unused, then you don't have to even think about how your audio interface is going to make use of your USB ports.

Also, while the fireface 802 looks like a great interface, the standalone features of the MOTU stuff are genuinely useful, if you need them. I've paired my ultralite with my Boss VF-1 and a small powered speaker for a nice portable guitar/vocal rig. The features of cuemix make it very easy to provide compression and some reverb for the vocals. If someone else wants to plug another powered speaker and mic in I can provide them with their own distinct mix. If I want to capture this, it's trivial to plug in a laptop without disturbing the settings and capture all of the inputs directly. The value, for me, comes from the fact that you can provide different mixes to each of the outputs. It's not a game changer, but it's a feature that I use a lot in small ways.

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I really liked my old motu 824, but was too cheep to buy another pci card when mobo standards changed. Sounded good as best I could tell with no obnoxious problems. Even after I couldn't use it with modern puters except buying another card, the old guy is real handy standalone for routing optical 8 channel connections, optical to coax spdif or vice versa, and if I ever need extra inputs in the future, can increase the focusrite pro 24 number of analog inputs from 4 to 12 by going from the old 824 optical outs into the pro 24. Unless motu has begun falling off their game, they make nice useful stuff.

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FWIW, The extra bandwidth from using Thunderbolt (vs USB2) is moot.
Thunderbolt has much greater bandwidth, but with that amount of I/O, you're nowhere close to saturating the USB2 bus.
The extra bandwidth from the bus won't yield lower round-trip latency... or increased performance at a given load.
Liken the scenario to a car that tops out at 100mph. Doesn't matter if you're on a two lane highway or an eight lane highway, your top speed is 100mph. All that said, MOTU audio interfaces are rock-solid and offer low round-trip latency.
If RME is out of budget, MOTU is a great choice.
Jim Roseberry
Purrrfect Audio
www.studiocat.com
jim@studiocat.com

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Got a 828x, use it on Mac and PC.

On PC I had some initial troubles getting it to work with usb. It's picky on what device shares the root hub. Didn't work with machine on the same mainboard root hub for example. Also there was a firmware bug sending loud spikes out adat B5/6 on just opening/closing CueMix fx, or changing sample rate for example. Firmware v1.05 fixed this, but it's no more available on motus site...

Never had an issue on Mac though.

Cuemix fx is nice to have, however I find it quite limited and cumbersome to use, but that's kind of subjective.

My main limitation with it is: you can NOT record an input dry in your DAW, while processing this input with cuemix fx EQ/Dyn for headphone mix! Simply not possible and in my opinion quite a huge design flaw. Also, the manual isn't really clear about this and states you can "record either dry, wet, or dry with a wet headphone mix", which isn't true, as far as I understood it before buying.

You have to work around it by using physical loopback, which cuts available input channels and routing possibilities, as there are only 8 mix busses assigned to the available 28 physical outputs...

Software is in my opinion kind of picky, too. The 828x doesn't adapt to external clock, you allways have to manually adjust sample rate to the external clock, so best use it as your main clock source.

It is a very flexible interface, sounds quite well, but has its flaws and limitations you need to be aware of!

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I'm real dumb about modern usb, firewire, thunderbolt. Have given up on programming mac though I still web browse and assorted stuff on my mac pro. Well, actually have about quit programming any platform.

Anyway, only a year or two ago when I was still following the apple core audio developers mailing list, there were sometimes scary questions and answers among the guys writing device drivers.

It was none of my biz and I didn't pay close attention-- But as best I could tell, with some USB interfaces, it was not uncommon for the input side to be working on a different clock than the output side, with slight rate slippage between them. So if one were tasked with keeping both sides running in rock-solid synch, it was some software hoops to jump thru.

As long as everybody jumps thru the hoops perfectly, then what does the user care?

Maybe things are different as of this moment, but it didn't make me enthusiastic about getting a many-channel usb interface, though the little ones work fine as best I can tell. But if every driver writer and software writer is smart enough to make no errors, then USB ought to be fine. :)

Just an old geezer rambling. :)

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A bit cheaper and with excellent converters is the USB2 Steinberg UR 824 (I would prefer it over Motu).

I remember a video review in German about the 828x... There is small difference in the round-trip latency between Thunderbolt and USB2 and with his tests the best sample buffer was 64 samples, so the smallest latency without dropouts 1,4ms @44,1Khz (he tested this on a Mac)

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Jim Roseberry wrote:FWIW, The extra bandwidth from using Thunderbolt (vs USB2) is moot.
Thunderbolt has much greater bandwidth, but with that amount of I/O, you're nowhere close to saturating the USB2 bus.
The extra bandwidth from the bus won't yield lower round-trip latency... or increased performance at a given load.
Liken the scenario to a car that tops out at 100mph. Doesn't matter if you're on a two lane highway or an eight lane highway, your top speed is 100mph. All that said, MOTU audio interfaces are rock-solid and offer low round-trip latency.
If RME is out of budget, MOTU is a great choice.
Thanks - I was wondering if Thunderbolt would improve latency - all the adverts claim it does - but I think you are probably right, extra bandwidth doesn't equate to better latency. tbh the recent fisaco with Apple blocking off a decent upgrade path for us MacMini users, plus reports of NI Kore not working well if at all under Yosemite, is making me reconsider - it might be wiser not to go for something that uses a Mac interface but maybe for a hybrid Firewire/USB interface like the Ultralite. In fact in terms of features the Ultralite seems to do most of what the 828 can do - just a bit less io but still enough I think and probably a better size too for my setup.

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Last edited by samsam on Sun Oct 26, 2014 12:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

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OK after all that went to the music store this afternoon and did a face to face comparison of the 828 and a RME Fireface and the Fireface won :) Bit more expensive but I got a good deal.

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