828x : One awesome piece of kit

Having used my trusty MOTU 896HD for over 10 years, I thought it was time to update, since I have a new Mac with Thunderbolt. Wow!

This unit sounds great; an improvement over my previous model - the difference soundwise is marginal, but perceivable. Note; I really only use the line inputs for recording modular synths and drum machines, so I can't really comment on the pre's on the model, as I have yet to plug a microphone in. To be honest, if I was using this in a studio situation (vocals, guitars drums etc.) I would probably add a pre-amp expander; you'd need more physical inputs anyway.

Talking of expansion, I was thrilled to realise that my old trusty 896HD does not have to go to the dump or eBay. It can, with the addition of a £3 optical cable, be used as a satellite to the 828x, giving me another 8 channels :)

Now, this is brilliant! Basically the MOTU Cue Mix software will see the satellite as an extra 8 ADAT inputs on optical, and will offer all the tasty trimmings of said software to my old hardware. Of course, any of the MOTU models with optical will do this, so the 828x is brilliantly expandable.

The Cue Mix software can be pretty invisible if you are working with your DAW, but it adds some really nice features (that you can add in the background without using DAW resources) such as EQ, Reverb, Compression. You could for example, use the Cue Mix / 828x to provide some nice mix glue on the final output, without straining your PC or Mac. Additionally, these features let you walk away from the computer completely if you need to take the interface out to a recording session - all the features are available with the MOTU running as a stand alone piece of hardware.

The quest for low latency is one we're all after. Well, believe me, running the 828x on Thunderbolt is nothing less than stunning. under 3ms. How does that grab you? That's with a large-ish (24 tracks) Cubase 8 project, lots of plugs, compression & EQ on everything, Kontakt, synths, etc. I got it down to something silly near 1.5ms with running just audio. I know, I know, it is a system wide thing - but with the old 896HD I could never achieve much below 6ms in a useful setting. So this is a massive improvement - the drivers are razor sharp.

For the price, this is a true winner. Loving it. QED.