I've been using MOTU gear for a while (used to post on here as "Marci" but forgot password, and no access to that accounts email addy any more hence this account) so I'll give you a brief history, which'll hopefully explain why I'm so damn pleased about this, and hopefully reassure you all that MOTU hardware does work properly every once in a while!
We've had an 896 (original) for years. We once tried 16ch using a Behringer AD jobby and suffered pops and drop outs and found it generally unuseable no matter what PC we ran it from (everything from old AthlonXP2400+ based thru to current Intel QuadCores), using VST3.5, SX3, and Studio4. Went thru everything that the rest of you go thru, buying PCI Firewire cards, tweaking Windows *yawn*. We gave up on it and resigned ourselves to 8ch only for ages.
2 years ago, I got a pair of 8PREs and a new spanky quadcore pc to run them from that had everything necessary to do it according to common belief (correct firewire chipset, recommended mobo chipset, demonic raid array blah de blah) in the vain hope that with newer MOTU hardware I'd stand more of a chance. WindowsXP tweaked according to all the usual methods (SP1 firewire stack, DEP disabled, ACPI disabled). Daisychained the 2 with firewire and, irritatingly, the 2nd unit would always drop out and reset it's samplerate with monotonous regularity. Tried it on various PCs, an Intel iMac, and even tried our 2x QuadCore X-Server with various driver versions, but always had the same problem. Linked the 2nd unit on ADAT optical, and that worked fine. So I finally had 16 inputs, but no access to the 4x analogue outs of the 2nd unit. Small celebration ensued. The 896 was relegated to the mobile-recording setup with a laptop, and the 8PREs took up it's space in the studio.
We then took one 8PRE and linked it up to the 896 by ADAT, and the 896 to the PC, so we could have 16in 8out to use some external processors. That worked fine too. So for 18 months we've been doing 16ch recording and mixing with ease... other than the 8PRE on ADAT needing plugging in on Firewire to turn on it's ADAT outputs everytime it had been unplugged from the mains before it'd behave properly over ADAT. The 2nd 8PRE got relegated to the mobile laptop rig.
To summarise, irrespective of PC or Mac, XP or Vista, old hardware or new hardware, driver versions, firewire chipsets etc, we've NEVER had 2 units daisychained with firewire and had it working to a useable standard, and we've only ever had the hardware to accomodate 16 inputs if linking with optical.
This weekend, we had to record "Off the Wall", a PinkFloyd Tribute, at a theatre in Barnstaple.
The last time we recorded them a few weeks ago at Burnley Mechanics, we used the 896 and an 8PRE but a squished XLR plug got stuck in ch7 on the 8PRE and we had to destroy the connector-lock to get it out, and we also noticed we hadn't got any signal on that channel for the entire gig so figured it was bust. Hadn't had any time to have a look at it, so took BOTH 8PREs with us to Barnstaple to investigate this seeing as we had a night in a hotel in advance and not a lot to do. It turned out ch7 was fine so the FoH engineer must've accidentally turned off the AUX or group feeding that channel at the Burnley Show. So, for shits n' giggles in the hotel room the night before the gig, we tried a few untrieds, ie: all 3 at once, with one unit daisychained...
8PRE to the laptop, the 896 daisychained on firewire and 8PRE#2 to #1 over ADAT. That DIDN'T work... kept getting dropouts on the 896. Swapped the 896 and 8PRE#2 round, and the 8PRE kept dropping out and flipping back to 44.1khz momentarily. Grrrr.
So we then tried as follows:
8PRE#1 > Firewire > 896
8PRE#2 > Optical > 896
896 > Firewire > Vaio Laptop
(For reference, the Vaio is a Core2Duo 75xx I think, 2Gb ram, running Vista with all SPs and latest dirge from WindowsUpdate, Cubase Studio 4 with latest patches, 3.6.7.4 drivers, completely untweaked stock install of everything, along with all the crap on the Vaio - rFactor driving sim and all the other usual stuff as it's a day to day machine, not dedicated studio machine. We had all MOTU units running at 48khz, 24bit, buffers set to 256)
To our amazement, we got all 24 channels absolutely perfectly... and hit record and left it running for an hour. NO dropouts or glitches or pops or crackles or clicks... and a 24ch multitrack of 2 sound guys getting rather drunk in a hotel room whilst watching Led Zep's "How the West was Won".
Got to the gig and decided to run it exactly as that. Ditched our usual dedicated recording laptop, and just ran the Vaio with everything as above. Disabled the antivirus etc so it wouldn't be scanning on file read/write, and turned off Spybot and all the other security related apps that were unnecessary, and set it to "Max Performance" mode in Power Management, but that was all. Left Bluetooth on, Wireless on etc.
Hooked it all up to the MH4 FoH console's Directouts and got... nothing. Arse. Mightily annoyed we immediately started restarting the MOTUs, hooking each one up individually by firewire to check all was OK. Turned out that the directouts on the desk weren't sending anything at all (*phew* - nothing to do with us or our gear - but reminder to not be an idiot and next time one gets no signal, go plug a 58 straight onto the core to eliminate the desk first). Fortunately the MH4 consoles also have a split-out on every input, so popped the core into those instead, and sure enough, everything showed up! Recorded the soundcheck, and got it all perfectly with no issues... just a distinct lack of the FoH guy's EQs and anything he'd run on inserts, but meh... we can recreate those easy enough from photos we took of the board and notes of his gate and comp settings.
So we went for it! Recorded the entire show... and everything worked superbly... 3hrs of multitrack altogether including the soundcheck, with each of the 2x sets lasting 1hr20mins. We hit stop between the sets to save disk space.
All I've gotta do now is get 2x cameras worth of HD Footage edited up, and mix the 24ch multitrack and lined up to the video and we're done!
So, the general moral of this post: don't lose faith with your MOTU gear and pursuits of multitrack goodness. It's doable!
The footage and recording from Burnley a few weeks ago is online (altho only 1x HD Camera manned, and an SD camera unmanned on stage) at http://www.youtube.com/mmragb/ with no time spent on the audio mix particularly... We'll be taking Barnstaple footage and blending it all together with Burnley footage as we avoided reproducing any camera positions and shots, and then we'll go to town on the audio! DVD by Christmas ready for the 10th Anniversary Tour next year!
My next mission is going to be 32ch...
[SOME RANDOM 8CH AD] > Optical > 8PRE#1 > Firewire > 896
8PRE#2 > Optical > 896
896 > Firewire > Vaio Laptop
...and also to remember - the MH4 has automation. If we're recording a gig thru it, whack a MIDI cable in as well and record the console's fader moves etc then remap that to Cubase's mixer so we can capture any live mix work with out having to go post-fade on the audio outs and risk an engineer not putting a fader up on cue and us not being able to correct it!
