896HD high failure rate?

srslab · Post by **srslab** » Wed May 09, 2007 4:08 pm

We have had 1 828mkII and 2 896HDs fail in the past 6 months all with less than 10 hours of use. Has anyone else experienced hardward issues like this with the 896HD?

This probably explains why the sync is not working in our previous thread.

Hard2Hear · Post by **Hard2Hear** » Fri May 25, 2007 2:27 pm

Not 896's but Ive had a couple 828's die during initial testing in the past couple weeks. Wondering about QA these days.....

srslab · Post by **srslab** » Fri May 25, 2007 2:37 pm

support is definately lacking..it has been about two weeks now and hardly a reply from their support...no RMA issued yet *sigh* and losing money by the day.

user123 · Post by **user123** » Fri May 25, 2007 4:20 pm

Well, I just got my RA number I'm happy to say. I'm going with a lexicon product called lambda.

No more MOTU.

srslab · Post by **srslab** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:01 pm

I was quite happy with Sonar 4 - 6.2 and using Motu hardware but based upon the poor quality of the 896HD and support we are going to most likely switch to the ProTools HD system.

Jidis · Post by **Jidis** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:07 pm

user123,

Not to make things seem hopeless, but Lexicon doesn't have the greatest history on long term support in the DAW world. I've got two of the Core2's, which showed up shortly after their Core32 or something else was discontinued, and they killed them soon thereafter, stranding people at Windows98 & Mac OS9. I will say, both cards work fine to this day, but with DAW I/O boxes and cards, you ideally need something which will not only hold up "hardware-wise" over time, but whose developer will continue to admit that they actually made it, and provide periodic updates for any new host chipsets or OS's which may show up after they've released something else.

Take Care

PS- You weren't the one who posted yesterday about not being able to return a dead UL were you? The post sort of disappeared and it would be nice to know if it had a happy ending.

srslab · Post by **srslab** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:11 pm

I had that problem with M-Audio...bought their Delta 410 and they wouldn't support XP64 and will not work with mpowered protools even though they say supports delta cards...hmm

Then there is Tascam's FW-1884 which still has buggy XP64 drivers but took 2 years before they even had a beta driver.

It is definately a good idea to see how the hardware manufacturer keeps up with drivers and legacy hardware.

user123 · Post by **user123** » Fri May 25, 2007 5:25 pm

Yeah that was me and yes I was getting a hard time from guitar center for an RA number. I called them and spoke with somone and they helped me out. He said they have had problems with software piracy and returns and they thought I wanted to just heist the software. I explained what the problem was and what I wanted and he made the lexicon recommendation.

I've been really frustrated with this thing and someone didn't like my tone in my last post and I can understand.

I'm a Sr EE and have built my own gaming PCs for the last decade so I know how to troubleshoot fairly well. It just wasn't working and I suspect the drivers just suck.

Thanks for the comments. The lexicon is a fraction of the price of the MOTU and it will do everything I need it to (which isn't much lol).

billruys · Post by **billruys** » Fri May 25, 2007 10:19 pm

Oh, boy. Don't get me started. I have been stranded by sound card makers a number of times. The Gadget Labs Wave 8*24 comes to mind. Great card, but their drivers always stank, and they went out of business.

One of the reasons I recently went with MOTU is the fact that they seem to be here for the long haul. And they were way ahead of the game in regard to Vista drivers. I have a pair of Delta 1010's which are paper weights now, as I can't use them in Vista. M-Audio seems to be way behind the eight ball. I can't see them staying in business if they don't get Vista drivers (32 & 64 bit) out very soon.

Hard2Hear · Post by **Hard2Hear** » Wed May 30, 2007 11:09 am

srslab wrote:I was quite happy with Sonar 4 - 6.2 and using Motu hardware but based upon the poor quality of the 896HD and support we are going to most likely switch to the ProTools HD system.

Wow, big jump. What, around $1500 for the 896 and Sonar together... $6-7k for just a HD1 card, decent converters tack on 4-7K. For ten times the price you would think you're getting better quality. Thats just not an even comparison.