MOTU got back to me and suggested I update my graphics card drivers to try to resolve the issue. Too little too late, I ended up going with a RME Fireface 800 and I am returning the 2408.
I hope inthe future they work out the issues because like I said before I was really beginning to like the 2408. It seems like it works good for some PC users and others have nothing but problems.
MOTU still has some excellent products but I don't think they are up to speed on the PC side yet... I have a MIDI express 128 that I love I am rather sad the 2408 didn't work out.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03/articles/motu.htm
This is the first time I've had the chance to try out some MOTU audio interfaces, but I was keen to do so, partly because as Mike points out in the main text they have attracted a reputation of being problematic when used with PCs. My first visit was to the MOTU web site to download the latest PCI-424 PC drivers, and although the impression is given that there are multiple drivers available, in fact a single 1.7MB file supports Windows 98SE, ME, 2000 and XP, and the latest version 1.02 drivers dated 26th March 2003 were already on the supplied CD-ROM install disc.
Unusually, you have to run a Setup.exe file before installing the PCI-424 card, as Windows apparently doesn't perform a full install via Plug and Play (for instance, Windows 98 at one stage declared it to be a "PCI Early non-VGA Device"). I did this under Windows XP, opting to install the ASIO, WDM-MME, and GSIF drivers, but subsequently had to power down and up a couple of times before the card was correctly recognised, and then had to power the 24I/O down and up as well before this was detected, whereupon MOTU's PCI Setup Wizard utility (designed to detect what I/O devices are connected to the PCI-424) crashed my PC part-way through the procedure ••” a very rare occurrence!
I took great care to ensure that the PCI-424 had its own unique interrupt, and during the next few hours I tried cleaning the PCI card's contacts, re-seating it in its slot, swapping Audiowire cables and switching to the 2408 Mk3 and HD192, but apart from the HD192 being momentarily recognised and then crashing my PC again, it was no go. At this point I gave up and contacted Musictrack for a second opinion, and they suspected that the PCI-424 card might be faulty.
Sure enough, the replacement that arrived the next morning performed perfectly first time, but I did notice that the offending card had a revision 1 circuit board, while its replacement was revision 3 ••” I advise anyone buying a second-hand MOTU system to check this carefully before parting with any cash. Now that I could recognise the various I/O boxes I performed some critical listening tests, and was well impressed with what I heard using the ASIO, GSIF and WDM drivers. Cubase and ASIO were still working well down to 1.5ms latency, although after running Sonar's Wave Profiler I only managed a 23.2ms effective latency with the WDM drivers.
I then used Rightmark's Audio Analyser to perform some tests using the MME-WDM drivers, but once again ran into problems, only managing to complete a few before it dropped out with an error message. However, those that did finish were impressive, with a flatter frequency response than any other card I've tested to date, particularly at the bottom end where it was only 0.2dB down at 4Hz, and comparing the MOTU 24I/O box blind with my Echo Mia card I could easily pick it out as having much lower jitter (I could hear a lot further into reverb tails) and a tighter bass end. I measured dynamic range for the 24I/O at 24-bit/44.1kHz as an excellent 106dBA, but unfortunately I didn't manage to successfully run any other 24-bit tests at higher sample rates.
Motu's PCI Audio utility for changing sample rate, buffer size, and so on also gave me considerable problems, often leaving my PC permanently running with 100 percent CPU overhead even after I closed it down, and I never did get the MME-WDM drivers to function wholeheartedly, having to switch to Direct X ones to run the MOTU I/O units simultaneously with my Echo Mia under Cubase SX for comparison purposes. After a total of at least 12 hours' testing, two PCI-424 cards, and three different MOTU I/O boxes I threw in the towel, and can only recommend that PC users tread very carefully. Like many other PC musicians, you may have no problems installing and running MOTU products, particularly with the ASIO and GSIF drivers, but do make sure you can get a full refund if you run into problems like mine. This is most definitely a case of caveat emptor! Martin Walker
A big selling point for me:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec04/a ... reface.htm
RME have always had possibly the best driver support of any range of audio cards I've ever come across, with regular updates and consistent reliability, and this extends to the Fireface. As it's a fairly new product, RME were continually posting new driver updates throughout the review period, including Mac OS X-compatible drivers towards the end. Occasionally, newer drivers will require you to flash the Fireface's firmware as RME add new functionality (such as Windows XP SP2 compatibility ••” see 'Firewire 800 Compatibility' box), although this takes just a few moments with the software updates downloadable from RME web site. Like the HDSP 9652, the Fireface features Secure BIOS technology, meaning that even if the firmware update fails, rebooting the Fireface will restore the old firmware so that you can continue to use the unit or try the updating procedure again.
The Fireface's drivers offer multi-client compatibility with ASIO 2.0, MME and GSIF 2.0 driver models for Windows 2000/XP users, and Core Audio and MIDI support for Mac OS X users running at least 10.3. GSIF 2.0 (GigaSampler Interface) is the latest driver model used by Gigastudio 3 (Gigastudio 2.5 used the GSIF 1.7 model), and, as with previous versions of GSIF, offers extremely low latency by operating at a kernel level. One of the new features of GSIF 2.0 is kernel-level MIDI support, so the Fireface's MIDI ports can now be addressed at a lower level by Gigastudio 3 for improved latency, and RME were actually the first developer to support GSIF 2.0, with suitable drivers having been publicly available even during the beta-testing stages of Gigastudio 3.
The multi-client nature of the drivers allow ASIO, MME and GSIF applications to be used simultaneously (it's even possible to run multiple ASIO applications at the same time) so long as each application runs at the same sample rate and doesn't share the same audio channels with another application. This latter limitation can be overcome by RME's included Total Mix system (described in the main text), which allows you to reroute or mix a playback channel to a different physical output.
(just joking- that one was a bit too rude, even for me)
. Who knows if all this madness could've been avoided if I had just gone with an RME interface in the first place. Sonica assures me it could have. 