MOTU M4 Reviews

Unbelievable Value

Great sound, great headphone preamp, great metering, great construction, theres not a thing to complain. Watch Julian Krause's youtube review to get all the info.

I would pay a bit more for adat in/out, but the value as it is right now is OVER 9000.

9.9/10

Good stuff for the price

It's a bargain for the price. Sound is clear, build is very good. I understand perfectly why it's almost always out of stock, everyone wants a piece.

Great soundcard!

I went from my Scarlett 2i2 to this. This is miles ahead. The drivers are much better and stable. Cant recommend it enough.

great sound

good sounding dac and preamps. My only slight downside is it is powered off the laptop, means that it is a battery drain live.

Great built quality

I use it primarily for podcast recording. Works really smooth with Windows 10.

Pros>

-solid metal body

-on/off power switch

-input monitor mix

-USB C power only

-quality knobs

-separated headphones amp

Cons>

-VU meters seems to be slow

Overall>

Great quality/price ratio for a budget studio.

Great audio interface but with it's cons

This interface is basically only choice I can make on market when I was looking for

Type-C usb powereded + Midi I/O + 2 stereo out + 2 stereo in configuration.

And I must say - MOTU made great hardware job on that one!

PROS:

- Rock solid, i'm not afraid to take it in my backpack.

- LCD screen is very neat and nice to watch

- Love knobs and combo jacks!

- Sound quality is great

CONS:

- Line-In range input on rear panel (channels 3,4) is NOT complying with conventional +4dBu. Instead it's somewhere around +12dBu. If you plug FX unit or anything else that has +4dBu output to that input, you will hear get very weak signal, somewhat 8dB below full range. Hence, in Ableton, even adding +6dB from mixer panel won't get you full range. And you cannot adjust it.

Losing two stars for me at this, because I have to plug in line-level devices to channels 1 and 2 and set gain with knobs instead.

Fried USB-C port in 2 weeks

As great as it may be as a product, it is all overshadowed by the fact that there seems to be a quality assurance problem I discovered, as well as others: the back USB-C port used for powering it up fried for no reason after having used it for about 2 weeks or so. Haven't even got the chance to plugg in an instrument, just headphones. Now I have a useless (but shiny!) brick

Great U.S quality built

At this price range it's hard to beat the M4, especially for a device coming from an U.S. manufacturer (this is not a Made in China product!).

My full review can be read here: >

Pros:

- 60dB of gain is more than enough, even the SM7B should work fine;

- pre-amp noise is quite low, maybe not as low as the Clarett 2Pre, but definitely not something that can be heard with ease;

- the ESS DAC chip really shines, so who needs a rather cheap audio interface without noise on its outputs and with a very low THD then this should be the one;

- the OLED VU-meters are a great addition here, probably the only interface adding such VU-meters on this price range;

- case and all knobs are metallic/aluminum, so quite nice to touch;

- all input gain & output volume is digitally controlled, this means there's perfect channel matching;

- no pops in the speakers when powering ON/OFF the interface;

- power button on the back;

- needs no external power supply, it just relies on computer USB power (tested on Win and MacOS and works flawless);

- powerful dedicated headphones amplifier (works even with AKG K701);

- full-scale TRS input plugs that bypasses the gain controls (directly connected to ADC).

- loopback virtual interfaces (made by the Windows drivers) really helps when need to record what you're listening to your computer (could be anything from a Whatsup call to listening music or to audio dubbing a video recording).

Cons:

- VU-meters are a bit slow, but the upper red light peaks are helping a lot when clipping occurs;

- 48V buttons are too close to the XLR mic plugs, when unplugging the mics I tend to press the 48V buttons with my big rounded fingers.

Early days but performing well.

I spent a lot of time looking for a good affordable USB interface. Most of the reviews I read on other popular brands all mentioned issues with problematic drivers, USB noise and glitches etc. This MOTU M4 hasn't crashed or dropped out on me yet, the drivers went straight in and work with Reaper and Omnisphere. The sound quality is excellent and the drivers are fast and stable giving me low latency for my soft synths without using a lot of processor power. I have a moderate mobile setup using a Microsoft Surface Pro 6 running Windows 10 Pro. This only has one USB socket on it so I've connected the MOTU M4 on it and I've used the MOTU M4 MIDI din sockets to connect my other mobile gear. I suppose I could use a USB hub but I am concerned this migh cause problems. I like the way I have it but I might try a USB hub one day to see what happens. The loopback feature I will be trying next as I like the idea of doing some studio live streams on youtube or facebook and the M4 loopback feature makes it easy to stream the audio to both the internet and M4 outputs at the same time. I highly recommend this interface.

The latency is amazingly low

I wanted an interface that I would use to record but also play along with backing tracks and practicing guitar.

The driver never crashed on me once on any windows 10 update whatsoever.

I get insanely low latency which means I can easily play the guitar with loaded fx, amps and IR's without any hustle.

The recording part is very good and exceeds my needs.

Nothing to complain here, only some (2) knobs feel a bit stiff to the touch when I move them clock or counter clockwise.

Perfect

Edit After 5 Months: Extremely happy, very well choice. Strongly recommend...

I got the unit today. I have Mac and it works perfectly; flawless. Everything works as you wish to expect.

Amazing!

This little black box has it all:

- amazing sound

- very “quiet” almost no noise microphone preamplifiers

- incredibly natural sounding preamps for instruments (all kind of guitars)

- very clever combination of inputs and outputs

- phantom power individually switchable for each channel

- great sturdy build (I dropped it just when unpacking, was moment of terror, but the interface works perfectly) :)

- unbelievable short latency time

I bought it for my home studio to replace constantly problematic Focusrite Scarlett 4i4 3gen (which replaced TC Impact Twin).

Using and abusing it for 3 weeks now, and it just works. Works perfectly well with:

- Windows 10

- MacOS

- iPadOS

I am using it with USB-C cable, but this device works without problems connected to USB-A port (USB 3 and USB2) - tested on my laptops.

If you’re looking for quality interface for your home studio, this one is wort to try.

I am very happy. In the last two years I changed/checked dozens of USB audio interfaces. Always was some problems - either noisy preamplifiers, or non-working drivers, or devices not working after OS update.

This MOTU M4 seems to “just work” :-) I am happy.

Pros:

A fantastic audio interface! Cheap and a lots of features...In it, is a chip like the high prices versions of motu use.... you can plug in studio monitors and analog speakers at same time.

To use the Loopback function you have to use a seperate free software (google for it) .

Con:

- the delivered usb cable got to much latence just replace it with a usb- c to usb-c cable then it workes much better

- software is like all other software from audio interfaces or sound cards... you have to restart the software if the sound is randomly shut off

Swapped out NI for MOTU

As the title says, I had the NI interface previously but wanted more features (more ins)

This is as good in sound quality, but not reliability.

Sometimes the unit (out of the blue) delays the input/output signal by about a second.

Input will occasionally be unavailable for no apparent reason.

(unit must be powered down to rectify, most days in the studio)

The input gains are too sensitive (for guitar) and too close to the inputs

My MOTU is up to date on drivers/software, as it my mac.

I wouldn't use it live, it could prove a liability.

UPDATE late 2020 onwards

Now very stable, all previous problems resolved, again the usual case of the end user being the beta tester for a newly release product. Have to say I would now recommend it

Great clarity and sound for this price

I'm using this in my home studio setup, connecting two pairs of monitors, headphones and some mics and guitar.

The build quality is great, metal chasis and pots, beautiful LCD display with meters, and rubber bottom pads so it doesn't slip around.

The headphone amp drives my 250 ohm DT990 without a problem. I keep it at about 60-65% while mixing and at about 50% for mastered material and it is loud enough for me, with a lot more gain if you need it.

Sound is crystal clear, which is expected as it has professional converters.

The only thing that bugs me is that there is no volume control for output 3/4, at least no practical and fast way to do it. So switching to my secondary monitors to check the sound is a bit of a hassle.

Pros:

Sturdy build, clean converters, great LCD, two pairs of outputs, good headphone amp.

Cons:

No volume control for output 3/4

Really good quality!

Such a high quality audio interface. Very beautiful looking on the outside and very good sound quality in the inside. I would recommend this interface to everyone.