MOTU 8M issues

[dt1000u]

I previously posted about switching to PT after 32 years with Performer/DP. But the reason I initiated this change was because of the MOTU 8M. I purchased it from Sweetwater for $1495 and I was excited to have their latest hardware with improved A/D converters, etc. Well, the first thing I noticed was it took 1.5 minutes to initialize. Everything else worked fine and the unit sounded good. I heard a friends great recording and asked him what equipment he used and he told me the Apollo 8. Intrigued, I bought one and noticed immediately that it took 5 seconds to initialize. I was a bit disappointed that I had to remap the inputs and outputs in DP to match the Apollo, but it worked fine and there was ZERO latency. Also, with Unison, you can run live input plug-ins with the option of printing or not. So, I decided to sell the 8M that I purchased 6 months prior on eBay. Know how much I got- $600. I was mad that I took such a big hit on what I thought was part of the new MOTU flagship line. Apparently, not many others thought so. Thus, I took the plunge into PT just to check it out because I've resisted for this many years and the last thing I wanted to do was learn a new DAW. The first thing I noticed was that PT was able to see the Apollo's I/O configuration and I didn't need to remap anything. I wasn't surprised since I had seen this with other I/Os and even software like Melodyne, which catered to PT users but was not optimized for DP for quite a while. It's now 1.5 years later and I work 98% in PT in what I consider to be a very stable system that never crashes and with many features I find very useful and in many instances more elegant than DP. I will still continue to do MIDI work as much as possible in DP. PT is not for everyone and I didn't think it was for me, but I've changed my mind. Click+drag to highlight adjacent windows for editing is worth the price of admission.

Dave Tucciarone
Honolulu
2-time Grammy winner