PLEASE!!one centralized location for in depth PDF product manuals

[madmetal]

New here so what better way to introduce but with a pet peeve.
BTW I am an old 828mk11 fw and other various door stop user for 20 some years. Now I r a gee whiz (2)828es on avb network.
My rant 1: Somewhere in the past 20 years, people forgot how to right documentation. All these little YouTube are cute and somewhat helpful, but....
Scenario
So, I (you), get jammed up on something, try some off the seat pants button clicking and really screw up your matrix or whatever and nothing works. So now your in a real good mood!!
A) Now lets search all over the internet, decide who is valid info or some idiot claiming to be
B) trying to watch a video and work on the product, remember all that was said (possibly not in your native language) or blew over the detail you were interested in. Take notes and draw pictures. Try it, Wash, rinse and repeat.

Yes, I am old, I am get crankier everyday, and getting pretty good at forgetting stuff...and I LOVE PRINTED REFERENCE MATERIAL.

MOTU - please document all this thats in videos and post it. You guys have charged me\us a good sum of dollars..you owe all of us, easy to find multi format documentation that best suits the end user, not you what suits your bottom line. Also love the coming soon links under your help section...been waiting 5 years for some of those buses
Cakewalk is free yet they have and maintain an up to date pdf.

Rant 2: implement an undo tool bar selection for the web interface...its not that hard to code
Rant 3: If you advertise make sure it works straight out of the box or document it. TB on windows comes to mind - "oh you have to take a shot and purchase random company x cables to get to our product to work"
Rant 4; outdated protocols. Its 2022 tb1 and 2, usb 2 Seriously??? These protocols are close to retirement and yet that's what used on your "flagship"
Rant 5: new people who's first post are rants - but i think I'm feeling better now

[stubbsonic]

Um. Welcome?

[cuttime]

??? https://motu.com/en-us/techsupport/manuals/ ???

[mikehalloran]

Its 2022 tb1 and 2, usb 2 Seriously??? These protocols are close to retirement and yet that's what used on your "flagship"

First off, Welcome?

Next. We have no affiliation with MOTU. We are users helping other users. Not our "flagship" anything. Unlike MOTU, we know where the bodies (current drivers for older gear) are buried at motu.com. MOTU does not give you this info but we will. There are current drivers for your 828mkII — I have mine running over Monterey on an M1 Mac—it's FireWire so there are three adapters in the chain but it works as new. The RTL leaves a bit to be desired, see below.

The central repository for Motu manuals is here:
https://motu.com/en-us/techsupport/manuals/

The RTL (round trip latency) difference between the slowest Fast USB 2 interfaces introduced since October 2019 and the fastest Thunderbolt 3 units offered by a couple of companies is the same as moving your ears toward or away from you monitor speakers by 14" or so. Look up the specs, factor in the speed of sound, do the math and you'll see this is correct. Your older 828 is slower but not unuseable with a low buffer on a fast computer.

If you look around, there are very few TB3 interfaces in the marketplace. Why? Two reasons: the first is that there's no real advantage. The other, more compelling reason is the slow adoption of TB3 on PCs —weird since Thunderbolt is an Intel protocol but they charge licensing fees for it. Thunderbolt 4 gives PCs the advantages that Mac users have enjoyed for the last five years and lets Mac users connect multiple TB3 devices to a single port—it's no faster, though.

USB 4 boasts TB3 speeds but is less expensive and does not require Intel certification, allowing the use of much cheaper components. I expect that the next NAMM show will announce a slew of USB 4 and a few more TB3 interfaces. Marketing departments will be screaming the speed increases in ms because that's what they do — still won't be faster than 14" closer, however. The speed of sound is very slow.

[HCMarkus]

MIke, I have a complaint: I play piano with posture like Glen Gould, hence, my ears are very close to the piano strings. Until I switched to TB, that 14" was KILLING me.

OP: Welcome to the forum! I like your idea of "Undo" for the routing matrix, for sure! But for now, I'd recommend getting really confirmable with "Save As".

I will say that I set my 828Es up several years back, and haven't had to muck around much with routing ever since. Best advice: Consider your studio requirements, Plan Very Carefully and Execute. Then leave it behind and focus on music making.

[madmetal]

Thanks to all for the welcome and level set...i promise to behave, well sort of kind of to the best of my abilities. Good to know those who know where the bodies and drivers are buried. Big reason i moved to the es was the lcd on my 828 was going out, lots of noise on some of the inputs (yes i cleaned etc). Also the power up was throwing errors. Trying to fix 20 year hardware was beyond me. I figured the TB was all marketing bs but figured as long as i was buying new, may as well swallow hook line and sinker.
A current dilemma I am wrestling with is most economical way to get 8 preamps on the routing matrix for my drum set. The Motu solution is way out of budget for me, I came across a used Focusrite Scarlett 18I20 which has the needed 8 preamps. My thought is to use adat to connect the Scarlett to the motu. I must say i am not a big fan of the solo's which i have used more as a sound card monitoring thing however the reviews of the 18120 sounded like it was a good match for drum recording.
I am a little suspect that drivers may get into conflict as well as if the Scarlett will passively slave to the 828es.
Any thoughts or experience or better part of the forum to post to?

[mikehalloran]

MIke, I have a complaint: I play piano with posture like Glen Gould, hence, my ears are very close to the piano strings. Until I switched to TB, that 14" was KILLING me.

You mean that we have to put up with your incessant chatter on your recordings of the Goldberg Variations, too?

I am a little suspect that drivers may get into conflict as well as if the Scarlett will passively slave to the 828es.
Any thoughts or experience or better part of the forum to post to?

I addressed this question in the other thread you started. Don't know if I answered it but best to keep that thread separate.

Oh yea, your 828mkII is dead enough to replace.

[HCMarkus]

MIke, I have a complaint: I play piano with posture like Glen Gould, hence, my ears are very close to the piano strings. Until I switched to TB, that 14" was KILLING me.

You mean that we have to put up with your incessant chatter on your recordings of the Goldberg Variations, too?

It is an electric piano (it must have strings in there somewhere, right?), so I mute the mics, Mike.

[James Steele]

MIke, I have a complaint: I play piano with posture like Glen Gould, hence, my ears are very close to the piano strings. Until I switched to TB, that 14" was KILLING me.

You mean that we have to put up with your incessant chatter on your recordings of the Goldberg Variations, too?

Ha! I can remember listening to his recordings in class and hearing him wheezing in the background.

[cuttime]

MIke, I have a complaint: I play piano with posture like Glen Gould, hence, my ears are very close to the piano strings. Until I switched to TB, that 14" was KILLING me.

OP: Welcome to the forum! I like your idea of "Undo" for the routing matrix, for sure! But for now, I'd recommend getting really confirmable with "Save As".

I will say that I set my 828Es up several years back, and haven't had to muck around much with routing ever since. Best advice: Consider your studio requirements, Plan Very Carefully and Execute. Then leave it behind and focus on music making.

Yeah, but how's your humming?
https://youtu.be/aEkXet4WX_c