Replaced 2 896HD's with 2 RME Fireface 800's and all is good

Echo4Sierra · Post by **Echo4Sierra** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 10:22 am

I bought 2 Motu 896HD's and spent a month trying o get them to synch up. Tried every trick in the book. Recommended firewire cards, wordclock, sp1, etc....

Well, I finally said screw it and returned them and got myself 2 RME Fireface 800's. Worked perfect right out of the box. Don't have to exit from Sonar to change rates and they are in synch at all times. I am able to get 1.3 ms latency in Sonar recording all 16 analog inputs at the same time at 96/24. They sound better and the ad da converters are awesome.

Another thing......RME Support is 100 times better than MOTU. They actually know what they are talking about and they respond!

Not really talking trash about MOTU, but let's get real. Why settle for crappy when you can get something as good as the FF800?

Post your MOTU horror stories here.

synterx · Post by **synterx** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 9:39 pm

man, you got some guts. I wouldn't waste my time posting a message saying I bought someone elses products, and basically telling everyone else should as well. You spent an extra $1000.00 on the Firefaces, that's a bunch of money for most people...and how many people sync 2 of anything together? I have one MOTU interface, and it has been absolutely flawless for 2 years. I will stick with MOTU. Your experiences may not be the same for other users, just a thought.

john jeffers · Post by **john jeffers** » Wed Dec 07, 2005 10:50 pm

Yeah, well so far my experience trying to sync two 896HD's is turning out the same way, so I'm interested to hear about the RME's. It might hurt, but I'll spend the extra $1000 if I can get a product that works as advertised.

And by the way, lots of people sync multiple devices. It's kind of hard to record a whole band, or even a single large drum kit, with only 8 inputs.

alphajerk · Post by **alphajerk** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 5:46 am

yeah, ionly 8 inputs kinda blows for most tracking sessions. if i went the 896 route, i would have to have 3x of them running for at least 24 inputs. this is really sucking because of apples current rudeness of leaving out any legacy ports on their G5's and motu not announcing, or even hinting they are coming up with a PCIe solution. so i am looking at FW convertors now... of course, im looking at apogee's [which i traditionally havent cared for] and other companies which cost a bit more than $1k extra for them...

i dunno, i feel like the 896's are a step back even from my 1296 which isnt THAT great... its certainly usable, but if i am going to drop cash i want an improvement.

i dont think its out of line for someone to post this information....

Timeline · Post by **Timeline** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 2:47 pm

Well, I got my seecond fireface yesterday and when monioring input
im getting clicks. It's NOT clock error. It's firewire and DP related.

Nuendo works.

Try putting a 50hz tone into one of the inputs and monitor with both FFs, 16 channels onlline.

You need audio to hear what i'm talking about.

Let me know what happens.
P.S. Agg Dev does not help.

Echo4Sierra · Post by **Echo4Sierra** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 3:01 pm

I'm not trying to stir up a hornets nest. I simply wanted to let other Motu users who seem to be experiencing similar problems of a solution that worked for me. The firefaces are more expensive, but if you are trying to build a pro sounding studio then purchases of this caliber will occur from time to time. Just save you money like I did and you can buy a couple of FF800's and be happy like me.

Synching multiple units is required when you want to be able to record more than 8 tracks. All motu units seem to work fine when running alon, Try hooking 2 of them up together. To my experience and many others, they just don't work well together. Some peope have spent major dollars on external clock generators to get them to work. The FF800's have a great wordclock built in and they work flawless without the need to purchase other synch equipment.

Other issues that plagued me when working with the Motu units:

Drivers - The drivers are just not written well. Setting up sessions that use different resolutions is very tasking and just plain stupid. Having to open, adjust, close, reopen, adjust, close and then finally open Sonar to begin your tracking session is what I am talking about. The FF800's have drivers that enable you to change resolutions within Sonar without having to do all the runaround.

Customer Support - Calling Motu for support is an adventure in gettting the run around. They could have just simply told me that what I was trying to do would require an external clock source, but instead they had me try 4 different firewire cards, 2 different sets of firewire cables, flipping the red 110/220 switch on the side of the unit multiple times (I laughed at this one), and then they suggested I send the units in to get them looked at. I couldnt do it. Some people havent seen their units for over 5 months. Rather than wait I just changed to the FF800's and all my problems are solved.

Quality - The AD DA converters in the Motu 896HD's are inferior to the FF800. The buttons and overally solidness of the FF800 is way better than the 896.

The Sound - The Fireface just flat out sounds better than the 896. With the stability of the internal clock, the AD/DA converters and not to mention the pre-amps. The FF800 is just a much better sounding interface.

I only paid an extra $500 to change from the 896HD's to the FF800's. It was well worth the extra expense. Especially if you consider having to buy a good external clock generator to get the 896's to work would cost you at least $500.00.

If you want a less expensive solution for recording 16 tracks simultaneous, then you could get 1 FF800 and a Mackie Onyx. This will give you 12 Pre-amps 1 line input when running the onyx into the adat lightpipe.

have fun gents. this will be my last post at this forum. I'll be hanging out at the RME forums to discuss other tidbits of goodness.

peace.

mothra · Post by **mothra** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:03 pm

Dont let the door hit you on the way out!

Timeline · Post by **Timeline** » Thu Dec 08, 2005 4:17 pm

)Funny!

He's on a PC too. I get the same •••• on the Nuendo board talking about DP. They hate us there so I enjoy seeing it go the other way once in a while.

They're not sure what to do with me because i bought both. It confuses the hell out of em.

Someday maybe it won't matter, s o m e day, I hope.

timpreager · Post by **timpreager** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 9:07 pm

I'm also experiencing the same problem with my 2 896's. Can't get them to sync. It used to work on my old machine, but once I upgraded to a Dual-Core system, I'm now having these problems. Got myself a AMD X2 on Asus A8V Deluxe board. I've heard there is quite some problems with the VIA chipsets so just trying to look through all the forums to see if I can find a solution.

Tim

AMD Athlon 64 3800+ X2 (Dual-Core)
ASUS A8V Deluxe
2x512MB DDR PC3200 Corsair
20GB Quantum Fireball System Drive 7200
2x250GB Seagate SATA150 7200
2xMOTU 896 on onBoard Firewire
Nuendo 2.2 b33
Windows XP Professional SP1

Timeline · Post by **Timeline** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:34 am

Hi tim,
Right, DP has a problem for sure,

This problems can be handled though by setting up and using Aggravate Devices in Mac MIDI Setup.

OPen MMS and use pull down menu to select Agg Dev. Select both or all of the IO's. Then, in Machine setup of DP select only Agg Dev and reroute all channels to the ins and outs you need.

I suggest using a new template.

A;so make sure you have enough buffers setup. Like 512 in machine setup.

Let me know how it goes.

mothra · Post by **mothra** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 7:56 am

Umm, psss. Tim is a windows user..
They dont have AudioMidi Setup or Aggregate Devices..

Timeline · Post by **Timeline** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 8:14 am

Oops. missed that.

timpreager · Post by **timpreager** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:09 am

Darn, I was getting excited when I started to read your post, until I got the Mac stuff. My biz machine is a MAC, so I'm thinking of trying to install Nuendo on here and see if I get the same issue or not.

Not sure if that will help me with figuring out why it's not working on my PC.

I keep forgetting that this is a MAC forum, although I have seen many PC discussions too

Thanks,
Tim

mothra · Post by **mothra** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:39 am

No no no.. This isnt necessarily a Mac forum. MOTU supports both Operating Systems with their hardware so youre all good and in the right spot..
Now if you were in the DP forum, well then you should worry hehe.

Honestly though, it does seem that MOTU's devices work alot better with Macs then PC's, FOR THE MOST PART (have to put that in or someone is gonna cry WHAT ABOUT MY DUAL 213098Thz G5 QUAD CORE THAT DOESNT HAVE PCI-XZY12000 3.0 IN IT)..

Is the onboard Firewire chipset made by VIA as well??
This was where some PC FW related problems stemmed from was using something other than, I believe, a Texas Instruments firewire dealie..
Also problems regarding Win XP Service Pack 2 as well..

Just do some searching, youll find plenty of Windows related posts to help out and hopefully get it resolved for ya.
Not sure if Nuendo will solve the problem.. Most of the issues seem to be related to either Windows itself, the firewire chipset, or MOTUs driver (although cant think of too many complaints with MOTUs stuff, most of it is the previous), so not too sure what Nuendo would do for ya..

timpreager · Post by **timpreager** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 1:36 pm

Mothra,

Thanks for the info, I'm going to head out today and see if I can find a TI or Lucent FW chipset board. For some reason they seem hard to find.

Tim

MOTUnation.com

Replaced 2 896HD's with 2 RME Fireface 800's and all is good

Replaced 2 896HD's with 2 RME Fireface 800's and all is good

No guts, no glory