MOTU 828x

Having used my Motu Ultralite for more than 10 years with no problems at all.Now I decide to change my interface and I bought Motu 828X and I am very happy.The well known built quality of Motu ,flexible mixer easy to use, with great sound.Value for money.!

My core interface

Using 3 MOTU interfaces : 24 Ai, 828x and 8 Pre.

The 828x is the center (reference clock source) connected to 24 Ai with BNC cable and to 8 Pre via Optical ADAT cable.

It woks perfectly right. My Logic Pro X is seeing the 56 IN's and 54 OUT's which provides a great flexibility for various recording situations in the studio.

Expected a better solution

UPDATE: After buying expensive RME RayDat PCIe, this Motu is finally usable! Will contant Motu salesman about it, so he can stop his PR.

The latest driver is 2 years old meaning they don't support it anymore. In DAW I use 48KHz, when playing a sound in Windows it will go back to 44.1KHz. If it cannot switch from any reason, I get BSOD !! (blue screen of death). They say it is USB 3.0 compatible, but the interface is USB 2.0, so you won't get a better speed when using USB 3.0. It is a pure marketing bs. Thunderbolt on Windows: I would have to throw away $1000 investment in motherboard+CPU and buy a new one (another $1000) just to have Thunderbolt PCIe adapter.

Cannot switch sampling frequency onboard on the interface through knobs, it tells me to use a computer. The interface settings on computer won't load if any application is using the soundcard (it does not have to play a sound at all). So switching a latency or sampling frequency can be pain a lot of the times.

This soundcard is overrated and unsupported nowadays. Buy something cheaper or something more expensive, not this one.

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.

Very good product

I upgraded to this product from the MOTU 4 Pre for the extra inputs and Thunderbolt. Bit of a shame about the lack of Thunderbolt I/O but for my purposes I don't require any daisy-chaining action.

Also slightly annoying that there is only XLR main outs with TRS jack option but that's not exactly a deal-breaker.

I have no use for the internal preamps currently as running my own pres in the signal chain but when I need to capture some more musicians which would cause me to extend beyond the 4 outboard mic pres I'm sure the onboard mic pres will suffice (if the 4 Pre was anything to go by).

For the purists, the converters may not be top notch but I'm looking into purchasing a mic pre with light pipe outs so that another unit can carry out the conversion.

As with my previous MOTU product, rock solid reliability.

a good starting point for some

So after long debate and a load of research i decided to go with Motu because of its reputation of making hard waring , sleek looking , feature packed good sounding interfaces and as an added bonus for some they are USA made which is a rarity in this day and age especially in the 828x price bracket.

I found that it worked with protools 10 as well as cuebase and that it ran with only a few bugs that were fixed with updates.

I found the ad/da on the unit to be above others in its price bracket such as the focusrite scarlet range etc and that the pre amps were of an okay standard, nothing spectacular but solid . The soft limit is a great feature when, for example recording a dynamic sound without clipping e.g. kick or snare drum.

The dsp mixer took a little getting used to but is good and flexible enough to get the job done in the end and the dsp effects are a great feature and save cpu!

unbelevable connection rooting

This is an amazing sound card/ mixer, witch can be used as main recording input device and at the same time act as you main mixer in the studio, for practicing or just connecting you media devices without worrying if your computer is turned on. expansion options are unbelievable and the price is incredible for what you get.

The CueMix FX make setting up the 828x so easy that little to know knowledge is needed to make a simple but good setup for individual in/out put very fast.

being both Thunderbolt and USB makes it easy to use on more then 1 computer.

It's one of the best investments I made over several years