Buying a new MOTU interface

[Shooshie]

Just a few days ago, I was commenting in another thread about how my MOTU 896 may be 12 years old or more, but it just keeps on working. The subject was about the new Mac Pro, and how we're going to have to get new devices to replace our PCIe-424 cards when we move to the new computers, since they don't take PCI cards. They do accept a Firewire to Thunderbolt converter, so we can keep using our Firewire drives. I felt lucky that I have a great Firewire drive.

Tonight I turned it on and it would not boot up. Rather, it would not settle on a sample rate. I tried all kinds of things to get it to finish its boot process, but I couldn't get it to work. You reset those old boxes by switching the voltage switch back and forth several times, and I tried that. I tried a lot of things, some of which are not very intuitive, but I thought they'd work. No dice. The box is done.

So, I'm looking at replacements. Here is my process of elimination:

1) I want to stay with MOTU.
2) I cannot get another PCIe-424 device; it has to be Firewire to stay compatible with Thunderbolt in the future.
3) I need pre-amps and phantom power for remote recording, without hauling half my studio along with me.
4) I want the highest quality A/D and D/A converters, clock chips, etc.
5) I need at least 8 inputs and outputs

That really leaves only one device: the same one that broke, only it its updated form. That's the 896HD.

So, the question to you all: does anyone have anything to say about this box? Good or bad? The original 896 has been a joy to work with. It lasted at least 12 years without a hitch. I've left it on sometimes for weeks on end without shutting it off at all. I'd like to know what better converters or clocks would sound like, but I really don't want to leave the MOTU domain. Maybe a Black Lion mod? Or are there other brands who always have their drivers updated and working perfectly, who will make me forget MOTU? That's a long shot; I really like CueMix and the built-in effects for building tracking templates for people who need to hear their part in real time with certain effects. I'm looking forward to that. My 896 was not able to use the effects.

Comments would be appreciated.

Shooshie

[mikehalloran]

The 896mkIII Hybrid is out, has the latest CueMix FX and has both FW and USB. Sure, it's USB 2 but that has been pretty robust for MOTU mkIII interfaces and will be supported by Intel for a long time. The FW port may have the 800 jack but its still FW-400 like all other MOTU FW interfaces.

If the 896 follows the lead of the 828, it will get a TB port to replace the FW. The 828 gained nothing in the "upgrade" except the ability to connect TB without an adapter. USB is unchanged. The 828x lost a port and cannot be daisy-chained. I was told that this was done to save money. Anyway, there's no reason to believe that the 896x will be any different.

I think that the 896mkIII is a bit of a no-brainer here. Too bad that they haven't announced the 896x yet. The 828mkIII Hybrid dropped in price last January when the 828x was announced. Hmmmm.... I need to pick one of those up before they're all gone.

There is no advantage to FW or TB over USB as any MOTU interface takes so little bandwidth to do its thing. Those who argue that there's a latency difference are incorrect unless the USB bus is overloaded - could happen only with multiple USB interfaces I was told at NAMM. I asked. MagicD has also posted this in one of the threads.

[Tonio]

I'll be watching this thread since I'm still using a 1224. Same dilemma about TB or FW interfae on top of a new machine, since I'm stuck in OS X 10.6.8 on a MAC 1,1. Then all the ext hardrives needed.

Looking at the 828x manual, and as Mike says no daisy chain, allthough you can use multiple 828x's via multipe ports, or at the end of a chain.

[Shooshie]

The 828x is all TRS ports, if I'm not mistaken. While I do have the cables for TRS connections, I prefer the XLR ports. Maybe there's no difference in sound degradation, but my TRS cables are already run, and I'd rather stick to them if I can. [edit: oops... I mean XLR]

Also, even though people in the know tell me that USB 2.0 is just as good as Firewire, I just can't shake the thought that it's a half-duplex system. What if you have 8 ins and 8 outs, all going at once, as I'd have recording remotely and using 8 headphones for 8 CueMix mixes? Can USB 2.0 really handle that? All signals must take turns getting through, just like a 2 track railroad mainline that has to rely on a local interlocking tower operator to cross a 1 track bridge. Only one train at a time. Firewire, on the other hand is full-duplex, which basically gives the bridge (in our train analogy) the same number of tracks as the main line. In other words, signals go both ways at once.

Anyway, it's a moot point at this time. I think I've made up my mind to get the 896mkIII. Like Mike Halloran said, it's a no-brainer. But I'm still and always interested in comments on this subject.

Shooshie

[Tonio]

I 'd rather go for XLR connectors myself, and welcome the 8 pre's. Although I'd rather use my outboard pre's, having 8 extra would never hurt.

FYI 828 does have hard wired sends for side chaining, though I suppose you can do that in cuemix? Perhaps 828 is more of all packed in one with MDI connectors, and the front panel is more about the cuemix fx controls w/ small meters vs 896's larger meters and straight forward
front panel. Seems like a lesser 828 w/ a added 8pre board occupying the 2nd rack space.
I'm sure the AD/DA and analog internal works are similar.

But seems you've made up your mind Shooshie, I'm still open... or just undecisive

[bayswater]

Can USB 2.0 really handle that?

I was asking that a lot, so I did a simple spreadsheet that multiplies sampling rate X bit rate X channels, etc, including a multiplier for the number of times a bit has to travel from disk to computer to external processor etc, and takes into account that the practical bandwidth of any protocol is less than the hardware capacity. It's amazing how much you can put through a USB 2 port.

Here's an interesting new interface using USB 2.
http://www.soundonsound.com/news?NewsID=17053

[Shooshie]

I 'd rather go for XLR connectors myself, and welcome the 8 pre's. Although I'd rather use my outboard pre's, having 8 extra would never hurt.

FYI 828 does have hard wired sends for side chaining, though I suppose you can do that in cuemix? Perhaps 828 is more of all packed in one with MDI connectors, and the front panel is more about the cuemix fx controls w/ small meters vs 896's larger meters and straight forward
front panel. Seems like a lesser 828 w/ a added 8pre board occupying the 2nd rack space.
I'm sure the AD/DA and analog internal works are similar.

But seems you've made up your mind Shooshie, I'm still open... or just undecisive

Not made up so much as left with no choices. What I need is what the 896mkIII has. After reading your post, I looked at both the 8Pre and the 828x again. Even together they just aren't what I need. I want a simple box with XLR inputs and outputs. I want the TRS optional outputs, but XLR is what I use mostly. It's got optical and digital inputs/outputs, and it's got outputs and knobs on the front panel. Big meters. Preamps and 48v and outputs all in one box. Perfect for the road. I don't carry a rack; just this and a MacBook Pro. And a half dozen mics or so.

So, I think the choice has been made for me. If there was an 896x, I'd much rather have that to be ready for Thunderbolt, but as Magic Dave said, it is compatible with Firewire, so that'll work.

Thanks for the inputs and outputs, folks.

Shooshie

[Shooshie]

Ordered 896mkII from Sweetwater minutes ago. Tim confirmed my order. It'll be here tomorrow.

Thanks for the I/O

Shoosh

[Tonio]

Congrats Shooshie, I'm sure the 896 will satisfy your needs.

[Shooshie]

Congrats Shooshie, I'm sure the 896 will satisfy your needs.

I sure hope so. Replacing failed stuff is very low on my list of priorities. Things should just last for decades, IMO. I used to have an early 1950s refrigerator that we didn't replace until about 2005. It's in my garage now, and still runs. The only reason we needed to replace it was because the shelves and hardware kept breaking off, after 50 years or so of continuous use. We had a van that lasted 25 years. That's the kind of stuff I like! With computers, it's sort of the opposite; we like the newest stuff, because everything else is designed to work with only the latest computers, so you have to keep upgrading. But most of my rack gear is between 12 and 25 years old. That's changing now. Sheesh.

Shoosh

[HCMarkus]

Shooshie, that old 'frige may be costing you a pretty penny in energy... just sayin'

[Shooshie]

Shooshie, that old 'frige may be costing you a pretty penny in energy... just sayin'

Only when it built up a layer of ice. But I keep it unplugged now, except for emergencies when these new refrigerators suddenly require repair. That's ironic, isn't it? A 60 year old refrigerator has never needed repair, and it's the one that saves the food when the new ones go out, which has averaged about once every two years.

[Shooshie]

Following up on the MOTU 896mkIII:

It came today, and there were a couple of little issues. I had to run new Firewire cables, of course, because everything now uses the 1394b port, which is the 9 pin port of Firewire 800. That's fine with me; I was having to use a conversion cable before. Now I can have straight 800 cables from Unibrain, which makes the best Firewire cables I've seen.

Next, getting it into my rack proved problematic; this box is about ⅛" larger in every direction than any other rack-mountable box that I own, including the old 896. I built my desk with close tolerances, but I left a quarter inch between each box for ventilation. I had to chop out a notch in the pegs that separate the boxes to make room for this big lug. Even the ears that screw into the rack were wider; I ended up having to let it overlap the box next to it, and just used longer screws to hold it in place.

Lastly, I quickly learned that the volume of this thing is substantially louder than the old 896. That sounds uninformed or something; I just know I'm overlooking something, or maybe there was something about the old box that I never got to set up properly, but I had to turn this box down to about -20dB at first, and after some internal adjusting I got the volume up to -12dB (with source volumes reduced substantially) I suppose I just need to attenuate my speakers. Well... I'll get to that eventually. It's always a mystery getting an entire audio chain balanced from the first input to the last output and the actual monitors. What with microphones, pre-amps, Audio/MIDI Setup, MOTU Audio Setup, the internal values within the box, CueMix (with several level settings that can affect final output, Effects, not to mention the Mac's levels, and a gazillion settings within Digital Performer, it's truly a wonder that we get clean audio at all coming out of these darn things.

But all that aside, I really like this interface. I haven't tested the quality of the audio yet, and that will take some time, but I'm pleasantly surprised by the evolution of CueMix. This thing has a lot of features, and it's almost like learning a new mixing board. Bear in mind that I haven't owned a box that could utilize the effects in CueMix. My old PCI-424 stuff could use the meters, oscilloscope, tuner, and so forth, but not the things that alter the sound. My 896 could not use CueMix at all. All that stuff changed directly after I bought these boxes back around 2001 and 2002. They were "legacy boxes" almost from the moment I bought them.

The FX in the mkIII include the MOTU dynamics plugin, but also the LA2A leveler. Also included are the famous MOTU Masterworks EQ, an adequate reverb (adequate for feeding an artist their sound for recording monitoring purposes, not for HiFi sound), and all sorts of meters, FFT analysis, spectrograms, waveform views with individual, split, or overlapping displays, tuner, and more. In short, one gets a lot of mileage out of the 896mkIII's "zero latency" monitoring and analysis options.

All the knobs on the front panel do multiple tasks. The recording input levels knobs (one per channel) also have push button functions to turn on 48v phantom power, to add an input pad, and possibly something else I haven't figured out yet. There is a light for TRS; I assume it just shows green when you have a TRS plug inserted, rather than an XLR, maybe to remind you not to turn on the 48v phantom power. I preferred the old toggle switches, myself. It takes a good 2 seconds per channel to turn on phantom power, and it won't respond to multiple buttons at the same time, so forget about cheating and using 8 fingers to get them all going at once.

However, on the positive side, you can turn on 48v in CueMix. I assume you could hold down Command or Shift and get them all on at once. Indeed; I just tested that. Command-click gives you a stereo pair, while Shift-click will turn on all 8 at once. Good to know; those knobs weren't going to cut it.

There is also an L/R swap which I could have used countless times over the past 12 years or so. There's nothing like getting all your cables run, thinking you've done it all right, only to find out that somewhere you switched out your L/R, and it's coming at you reversed. I guess it's better to find it and correct it, but sometimes in a pinch it sure would have been nice to have just one button. Well... we've got it now.

The meters are 10 bands tall. That's not exactly a "big" meter, but it's better than the 2408 and 828 with their pitiful 4-band meters. Still, I like the 19 band meters on my 1296. 48 bands would be nice, but... ok... 10 bands it is.

There is a lot under the hood that I'm not utilizing. ADAT, Word Sync, DDS Clock, AES/EBU, optical I/O, and such... it reminds me of how much I've simplified my work over the years. I haven't used SMPTE in a decade, though I was using it regularly back in 1992. I've only used digital and optical connectors when I've had to connect to big boards in studios, and that's been a while now. Now I'm just a little operator recording small ensembles and making masters. Of course, I've got better mics now, and I think I'm doing better work, but my other equipment has slimmed down, and I have far fewer headaches due to hardware and software protocols. Anyway, at least I know that the big-league stuff is accessible if I need it, which I hope is not the case for a while.

It's an interesting box. So far, without any real hardcore tests of the audio, I can say that I like it a lot. (What I've heard sounds good, but that's not the measure of an audio interface.) I already have a Firewire to Thunderbolt adapter for this, so if/when I get a new Mac Pro, this will slip right into action; no need for a new interface, unless they sneak around and cut off all access to old formats like Firewire or USB2. Magic Dave said they were able to daisy-chain a bunch of these Firewire units into Thunderbolt with an adapter, and they had plenty of bandwidth for all the channels of input and output. I think we'll be ok. It appears to me that you can buy these without worry about future compatibility.

It'll just take a while to really know whether the audio is on par with the rest of the features on this box. If so, well, I guess this is the future for MOTU boxes until the X (Thunderbolt) starts to replace all the previous formats.

Pardon the length,
Shooshie

[Shooshie]

I just remembered something very interesting about the 896mk3. It has V-Limit, which allows for inputs as much as +12 dB over without clipping. Beyond that it clips, but that's a lot of headroom. I wonder if it degrades the sound at all to use it with V-Limit engaged? I haven't tried it yet. If it retains high-quality audio, it could enable a little hotter recording without worry of clipping (I'm just thinking a "little" hotter), and then you'd have it in 32 bit float, which is the format of all internal audio on the 896mk3. From there into DP, and you're still at 32 bits, and it's all sounding very interesting. If you don't push it too far, can it really be a bad thing? I can't wait to see what happens.

Shoosh

[Shooshie]

I've got a question for someone who has been using multiple Firewire interfaces from MOTU. A while back, there was as discussion here about CueMix and the Firewire interfaces. It seems that each device had its own CueMix interface, and they were not joined together as they are in the PCI-424 interfaces. Not having multiple (working) Firewire interfaces, I can't test this.

There is a page in the 896mk3 manual (page 27) which implies that if you link multiple Firewire interfaces together through ADAT optical, it would join them together as one expanded interface in CueMix. The diagram shows a computer connected to an 896 via Firewire, and a 2nd 896 connected to the 1st via ADAT optical.

Unfortunately, the wording is vague. The text mentions expandability this way without a computer, but it doesn't say if it works WITH a computer. The diagram implies that it does. So... two questions:

1) Do Firewire daisy-chained interfaces still use separate CueMix interfaces?
2) Has anyone ever tried connecting two or more Firewire units via optical and found that CueMix accommodates them all as a single expanded unit?

Shooshie