Moderator: James Steele
It's because I've been misunderstood and misinterpreted in this thread!
Wow! Did we read the same review? LOL I didn't get that impression from the original post. The reviewer talks about being a public beta-tester, about how the sound quality of Apogee gear is superior (even the $500 Duet), that Logic's convo reverb is better, and he even acknowledges real problems with the interface that demonstrate that it's not acceptable for serious pro use just yet. I would expect MOTU to be a little more tight-lipped than that! If that's the best they can do, they need a new PR guy!earldrum wrote:Maybe this review is nothing but a MOTU planted public relations review??? I came to this conclusion because the "spin" has not stopped for 2 days now! Can we move on???
No... the guy when to some effort to make a rather useful and valuable post and it didn't jibe with your opinion, so you brand him as a MOTU employee writing this on the QT or a MOTU lackey. MOTU doesn't need to write fake reviews on this site... that's just silly. Why not post about your own experiences rather than attack the original poster's credibility without any evidence to backup your charges??? A novel concept, granted.Mojofilter wrote:I suppose some clarification of my comment is needed here. When I mentioned that my post was purely opinion and needed no objectivity I simply meant that it was not based on any knowledge of the mk3 (although I do own one), and that the review seemed slanted only to mask mk3 anomalies. I certainly expected a rebuttal from the original poster, but in no way did I intend my response to be perceived as careless effrontery. My apologies.ltemma74 wrote:Mojofilter - Your observations about the original review are valid. Especially in light of the reported bugs. However, you shouldn't demand objectivity from others if you are not prepared to hold yourself to the same standard. It's a bad look. Even around here. And this is one ugly-ass crowd with all the gremlins, trolls, monkeys and hobbits...
Hmm... where have I heard all of this before?James Steele wrote:No... the guy when to some effort to make a rather useful and valuable post and it didn't jibe with your opinion, so you brand him as a MOTU employee writing this on the QT or a MOTU lackey.... Why not post about your own experiences rather than attack the original poster's credibility without any evidence to backup your charges??? A novel concept, granted.
No problem metakinetics; it's the Unicorn way.metakinetics wrote:...I do appreciate those with a positive attitude standing up for me a little bit, as I spent a considerable amount of time writing the review in the interest of trying to help out the audio community...
The last comment is what flagged your review for me in the first place. Previous comments such as, "...a remarkable piece of engineering," and "You will hardly believe your ears...," are well and good in the 'pros" section of the review, even though this is the kind of opinion that cannot be quantified or substantiated. However, we no sooner got to the "cons" section and we read "generally wonderful" and "high value." It's been my experience that when an interested reader sees the word "review" he or she expects it to be relatively free of glistening adjectives and unsubstantiated opinion, both of which are contained in that sentence, and both of which have unintentionally (?) titivated and adorned the mk3 like Christmas ornaments. It's at this point that your review lost credibility and began to read like it was the effort of someone with interest in MOTU, Inc., and not the product itself.metakinetics wrote:I went ahead and took a leap of faith and bought a MOTU 828mk3, with some reserve about being a public beta tester, but feeling brave nevertheless. The fellow at Guitar Center was happy to extend my return policy from 14 days to 30 days due to the possibility of dissatisfaction, which sealed the deal for me. I've spent some time playing with it and I feel qualified to do something of an in-depth review as a full time audio professional, so that prospective buyers can make a well informed buying decision. I am using it with a brand new iMac Intel 2.4GHz 24" computer and Logic Studio, Adam A7 monitors in a well treated room. I am using driver version 1.4.7 with firmware 1.05 and boot-loader 1.01.
All in all, the 828mk3 is a remarkable piece of engineering. There are a lot of features crammed into this one unit rack space device, and it takes quite a few hours of tinkering to understand how they all work. The new DDS clock gives the A/D and D/A conversion a serious upgrade from the previous generation of multiple I/O rackmount devices in this price range, and is comparable with the new JETpll clock on the converters of the M-Audio Profire 2626 and PreSonus Firestudio. These new advancements in converter clock technology finally make great A/D and D/A conversion a standard feature in the sub $1000 price range, which is cause for much rejoicing in the audio community. You will hardly believe your ears when you hear the difference on truly great quality monitors or headphones!
Finally, we can all afford to have converters with jitter less than 250 picoseconds peak-to-peak. This is still not real 20-bit performance with 120dB of dynamic range (that would require less than 25ps peak-to-peak!), but is very, very good sounding for digital audio nevertheless and worlds beyond any built-in computer audio output. The sound quality in terms of jitter is comparable with and in some ways better than the jitter present in the well-respected TC Electronic System 6000. The difference in sound quality between units like the 828 and the Apogee Ensemble or RME interfaces is now much, much smaller than it used to be, and for most people on anything of a budget will not be reason enough to shell out the extra $500-$1000. The main difference you see in that extra $500-$1000 is in the quality of the microphone preamplifiers, which does not matter for everyone, particularly those hooking up a few hardware synths to the inputs.
Using high quality headphones and monitors, the difference in clarity and stereo separation between the 828mk3 and my M-Audio Fast Track Pro is quite evident. Most of the outputs (with the exception of the dedicated headphone output, see below) have a noise floor too low for me to hear. The device in general sounds excellent, and while perhaps not quite as good as an Apogee Duet, Ensemble or dedicated rackmount converter, its the best you're going to get with this amount of I/O unless you shell out almost three times as much for an Apogee Ensemble, which has somewhat better-sounding converters, but even then you get a bit less I/O and no DSP. For $750 you get 12-built in inputs and 14 built-in outputs with the expansion capability for 16 more.
The built in DSP EQ, compression and limiting is quite good, finally making it possible to record at high gain levels without riding the gain knobs, and with no artifacts! The compression is much better sounding than your average rackmount analog compressor/limiter used for vocal tracking. The EQ is very transparent and musical, and the reverb is versatile and very useful for sweetening a monitor mix, though not nearly as good as a nice Lexicon or convolution reverb plugin like Logic's Space Designer. The LA-2A modeled leveling amplifier is good enough to use for mastering, which is a godsend, and sounds very close to the UAD card plugin emulation.
No device is perfect however. There are, as was to be expected, a few minor issues with this generally wonderful and high value device.
These are known problems by MOTU, and ones that are still being experienced by a number of people. If you had read the forums before you posted your review (which you should have, if you didn't) you would have observed that random bursts are not caused by having additional devices attached to the 1394a port. Some are caused by WLAN cards, some by DVD drives, running Half Life 2, and some causations are completely unknown. This, whether intentional or not, is taken as an obvious shift of responsibility from MOTU to the user. Also, you didn't remove the additional devices from your firewire port for the review to determine if that measure corrected the problem.Outputs are definitely on the hot side, which has been noted by several users. They would no doubt blow out my speakers if I ran the device and my Adam A7 monitors on the "0dB" settings. I experienced output this hot on my Edirol FA-101 card, however, which leads me to think that perhaps this is less of a technical flaw than a simple engineering decision. There is something to be said for making a device of this dynamic range with as hot an output as possible. It maximizes the usability of the outputs for processing, mixing out of the box, and live sound, even if it requires over 30dB of total attenuation when used in the typical studio setting to get it down to safe hearing levels. After all, if a device is capable of over a 100dB of dynamic range with THD taken into account from jitter, it should be able to produce over a 100dB signal! To give you an idea of the output level, I was still getting quite audible sound out of my A7s playing a mastered song with their gain set to -60dB and the output of the MOTU set to 0dB. This makes sense, as the signal I was getting from the monitors was about 40dB. The dynamic range of many other sub $1000 sound cards is only about 80dB, so it makes sense they would be 20dB quieter at maximum volume. Even with fairly weak amplification, this device can produce levels that approach the threshold of pain, so be warned!
I was also experiencing intermittent drop-outs in audio while playing with settings in the CueMix FX software, accompanied by very high-pitched (over 5KHz) sustained beeping noises that were not so terribly bad to my ears but probably would make dogs run away in terror. These phenomena accompanied by odd readouts on the metering display indicating that the ADAT outputs were active when they were not. I did a lot of research before buying this unit, however, and figured it may have had something to do with additional devices (e.g. hard drives, etc.) plugged into the firewire chain.
So just how does one achieve "trouble-free" operation? By your own admission there are unresolved issues with the mk3, and you have stated that you are experiencing these problems. Had you resolved them by the time you wrote your review? And if so, would you be willing to share with us just how you accomplished this? Also, regarding the high-pitch bursts, is this contradiction: "You will not be able to make use of any other firewire devices on your computer at the same time you are using this unit if you want to experience trouble-free operation." "I did a lot of research before buying this unit, however, and figured it [high-pitched (over 5KHz) sustained beeping noises] may have had something to do with additional devices (e.g. hard drives, etc.) plugged into the firewire chain." This essentially renders your empirical tests flawed and seemingly biased.Despite the second port on most firewire audio cards and the extra firewire 800 ports on most new Macs, it is not usually a good idea to plug anything else into any other firewire port anywhere, whether via daisy-chain or another port on the computer. Unplugging my bus-powered firewire 800 drive altogether confirmed my suspicions, as the problems quickly vanished. It seems like the unit works fine as long as nothing else is plugged into any other firewire port, which may be of some concern to people with external firewire-only hard drives or other firewire cards. You will not be able to make use of any other firewire devices on your computer at the same time you are using this unit if you want to experience trouble-free operation.
The only incurable annoyance? What happened with the aforementioned anomalies? Are they fixed? How can we get our mk3's to the same level of operating condition as yours? Again, whether intentional or not, this plays-down and smooths-over the known problems with the unit. Although, some credibility returns as you admit that the headphone problem is a peculiar flaw or inherent in the basic design.Others have noted that it is impossible to separate the main headphone output volume from the main XLR output. This is true. However, listening to the mix and recording using two sets of headphones without having to turn off the monitors is still possible. Simply connect the monitors to the balanced TRS outputs 1-2, switch the main outs to the XLRs and the default outs to 1-2.
The only incurable annoyance is a high pitched, fairly quiet but definitely audible constant whining noise in the dedicated headphone output. This noise is not present in the (MAIN) headphone output. Checking other devices, I discovered quite a bit more noise coming from the built-in output of my iMac using the same pair of headphones, but no such noise at all coming from my M-Audio Fast Track Pro. I was not able to get rid of it, as the output makes the noise even when it is not connected to a computer. It seems completely unrelated to the level of the output and does not respond to changes in the setting. It is not noticeable when listening to music. I am not sure if others have experienced the same issue, but it is worth looking into. Perhaps it is a flaw with my particular unit, or perhaps it is inherent in the basic design of the output, I am not sure. One way or another I can always us the (MAIN) headphone output. I will try to find another unit and see if the noise is an isolated problem, and if so, will probably return it for an even exchange to see if I have better luck with the next one.
Fair enough.All in all, I am pleasantly surprised by the sheer volume of value in this unit. It is very expandable and seems fully capable of being at the heart of a professional studio.
Hi, Monkey Man. This is my first experience with a MOTU product so there's no real history of how I might expect them to handle these issues. My only contact with them thus far is to technical support concerning the firmware upgrade. I was able to solve the problem with the help of some fellows here, but the service ticket remained open for ten days, or so. Upon closing the ticket I did ask how many hours of opportunity they needed to address the issue, but to that I received no response.Sounds like it might be an idea for potential purchasers to hold out and see what MOTU does to address the issues.
Do you think it'd be naive to assume the most obvious problems will be smoothed out before too long, given that these issues seem too obvious and inconvenient for MOTU to be able to justify dragging its feet on them?
Take one the substance of the review, then, like you just did. What I objected to was the accusation that this review was planted by a MOTU employee pretending to be an end user, etc.Mojofilter wrote:It••™s nice to know that I••™m entitled to my opinion, but not really. And just make sure the delivery is vanilla and sugar-coated.
James Steele wrote:Take one the substance of the review, then, like you just did. What I objected to was the accusation that this review was planted by a MOTU employee pretending to be an end user, etc.Mojofilter wrote:It••™s nice to know that I••™m entitled to my opinion, but not really. And just make sure the delivery is vanilla and sugar-coated.
I don••™t mince any words and I don••™t want to revisit the argument. There was no blatant accusation made or "branding," only an inference based on the bias of the writing id est ••œthis thing reads like (and wreaks of) an ad drafted by a MOTU associate or paid endorser.••No... the guy when to some effort to make a rather useful and valuable post and it didn't jibe with your opinion, so you brand him as a MOTU employee writing this on the QT or a MOTU lackey.
