Will MOTU AVB interfaces ever be back in stock?

[MartinBaird]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the long out of stock status of most MOTU AVB interfaces? Any thoughts on when we might see them available again? I currently have two 828es boxes which I really like.

Thanks for any input.

Martin

[mikehalloran]

MOTU keeps advertising so I expect that we will see them again. I asked on recent support calls and the answer was, "we don't know".

MOTU will let you register a piece of used gear not registered to another and take the support call if a current model. I did this recently with a used micro lite to get it working over Sonoma (side benefit: my MTP AV USB worked when Support and I were done). I would bet that if there was a hardware failure, I wouldn't be covered.

[nk_e]

I went in for AVB in a big way (for me anyway) with several MOTU interfaces, an AVB switch, and an LP32. I’ve had the hardest time setting it up, but that is completely on me.

Anyway I came across a couple of interesting articles that make me wonder about AVB’s long-term prospects:

https://audioxpress.com/news/state-of-a ... l-products

And

https://www.gearnews.com/dante-aes-50-a ... t-for-you/

The gearnews article is notable only for this quote really

Unfortunately, industry adoption of AVB has been minimal, with perhaps only Presonus and MOTU building their audio networking gear around AVB. At the time of writing, it’s an uncertain future for AVB in pro audio. Many manufacturers who originally championed AVB are now offering Dante interface solutions for many of their existing AVB equipped product ranges.

I don’t see MOTU licensing Dante anytime soon, but it might make acquisition of new stock or further development less of a priority…

[James Steele]

Yeah, hate to say it but it may be that AVB might go the way of the BetaMax. The article started that Dante even has lower latency than AVB. Seems all it would take is the company behind Dante to lower the licensing royalties by a little bit to put the nail in the AVB coffin?

I don’t know. It remains a good solution for me within my studio, but from what I’ve seen out in the “real world” on large events, etc. it’s all Dante. Without wider adoption it seems fair to wonder about the future of AVB.

[James Steele]

I just realized my BetaMax comparison is ironically flawed. From what I understand, Beta had a superior transport mechanism but Phillips (?) charged less to license VHS than Sony did for Beta, so VHS was more widely adopted and became the dominant format for consumer videotape recorders.

[HCMarkus]

This was posted over at Gearspace:

Hi everyone, Travis from MOTU Support here. We’re excited about the new version of the 828, and we appreciate you all sharing your feedback on this thread. As always, you can feel free to reach out to us directly at MOTU.com/techsupport.

Also, I’d like to mention that regarding AVB development, MOTU is still committed to AVB and the extended functionality that it offers.

Time will tell, but this does not sound like a statement of surrender.

And then there's this:

https://www.presonus.com/en-US/mixers/n ... 00101.html

[James Steele]

And then there's this:

https://www.presonus.com/en-US/mixers/n ... 00101.html

Yeah. That’s good. If there’s a way to make AVB “speak Dante” that’s a good thing.