MOTUnation.com

Hi all,
Been a long-time user of MOTU equipment and have built several large touring rigs based around Firewire 828 MKII's over the last few years - never had a failure, they've been extremely reliable.

Swapped my studio 828MKII for a MKIII about a year ago but didn't keep the MKIII due to a constant high pitched noise that the output stage was generating - swapped it for a USB2.0 828MKII, this has been very reliable ever since.

I now find myself needing to build a touring rig for a new client and between audio tracks and virtual instruments (all running in Ableton on a current gen MacBook Pro) I'll need a total of 14-16 outputs (at 24-bit 44.1khz).

Anyone else running such a setup - my other option is M-Audio, but it seems somewhat convoluted in order to configure multiple units.
The other question is Firewire vs. USB - I've seen various info re certain USB ports of the MacBook Pro's being prone to audio glitches etc.

I have 2x 828MKII's (Firewire) that I can use to test my potential configuration but these are currently on tour with a client & wont be back for a week, so any info in the meantime would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Geoff.

See if I can wake this post up...

Did you have any luck joining two 828's?

Looking into this myself here but can't find any information on the process..

Cheers,

Rick

If you're using DP, isn't it just a matter of Ctrl/Cmd/Shift-clicking to select more than one device under Hardware setup?
Whether they then need to be clocked externally from the same source or not, I do not know...

I think he said he was using Live.

I don't tour, but in my home studio when I am not working with DP I run three 828mk2 and a single 828mk3 as an aggregate device (all firewire into the mac pro). I set up the mk3 as the master. No real problems, but I do have to be specific in the order I turn the 828s on...otherwise it seems they register out of order with MOTU Audio System and then the aggregate device assignments in AudioMidi get scewy (or vice versa) and the channel assignments in the DAW are all messed up. As long as I turn them on in sequence, things are fine.

You could also run one into the other via ADAT. I've done that too. As long as you have the clocks right and you are comfortable using CueMix, it should work fine. I actually run an old M-audio FW410 into the mk3 that way.

YMMV. I've never tried taking this stuff on the road.

See if this helps

Audio MIDI Setup: Play audio through multiple output devices at once

If you have several stereo output devices, you can have audio play through all of them by creating a multi-output device. For example, when you add two devices to a multi-output device, audio sent to the master device will also play through any other device in the stack. To get started, open Audio MIDI Setup.

In Audio MIDI Setup, click the Add button (+) in the Audio Devices window, and then choose Create Multi-Output Device.

A new multi-output device appears in the list on the left side of the window. To rename the device, double-click it.
With the new multi-output device selected, on the right side of the Audio Devices window, select the Use checkbox of each device you want to include in the multi-output device.
To set the master device for the multi-output device, choose an output device from the Master Device pop-up menu.

Great stuff.. Thanks all!