Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 vs MOTU 896 - semi urgent!

[notbillcosby]

I have a couple of (I think...) good deals laid out for me that I need to make a decision on in fairly short order.

MOTU 896 mk1 - $250
Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 - $300

Feature-wise, I'm fine with either of them. I'm curious about:

-Sound quality. I will not be using the onboard preamps, just as converters.
-Stability. I know Focusrite drivers used to be dodgy but have gotten better.
-Compatibility. I'm using a Core 2 Duo iMac and dual boot via Bootcamp into Windows XP Pro SP3. Whenever I bring this up on forums I feel like I have to stick up for myself - Deal with it! I'm using Windows for some sessions, and I'm going to need to use my interface through Bootcamp as well as OS X.

If anyone has used one of these and can vouch for anything (ESPECIALLY the Bootcamp compatibility) please let me know. If anyone has gotten to use BOTH units and care to compare, I'm all ears! Thanks!

[mrc]

I'm on win 7 using a saffire 24 dsp, and think it's pretty amazing for the price. Enough so that I bought a pro 40, today. I plan to buy an octopre mkii dynamic shortly to have 20 I/O @ 96 k or 28 @ 44.1/48 k, with the AI3 I have on hand. I'll use this for a mobile rig if UAD gets their stuff together on the Apollo for win. That's all I know. Be aware that the 40 only accept 4 channels @ 96 k. The pro 24 will as well, so you can get 20 @ 96 that way. I'm running on AMD Quad 975, win 7 now, but the 24 ran fine on XP3 sp3 on an AMD dual core. I'm just waiting on UAD to jump to 64 bit 7, have one I haven't opened yet. I'll need to go back and forth from 32 to 64 to use my old parallel port MTPAV for input, but the tightness of the mtpav is worth it. My Vox Tonelab LE has trouble with midi messages via the focusrite. I have several other midi modules and devices, so a multi channel unit is the best for my gear. I'm using a card on the Asus Sabertooth 990FX mobo. ps they recently released driver ver. 3 to replace 2.4 both work fine for me.

[Bro Shark]

One is a Pro model so I think the choice is obvious.

[Nick Sevilla]

One is a Pro model so I think the choice is obvious.

[tomhampton]

i don't know the MOTU piece, so i can't weigh in on that, but i've been extremely happy with the Pro 40 i picked up about three months ago - i had a Presonus box before that, and the difference has been pretty huge. I'm running Win7 32 bit with 4GB RAM, and the dropouts and glitches i had with the old box are gone. the software interface that comes with the Saffire is extremely flexible, and if i had to really dig for a complaint, the only thing i can really come up with would be that i wish the jacks felt a little more high quality to me...plugging in and out of it, i often wonder if this will be the last time i make a successful patch. they're a little dodgy.

if you hardwire it into a patch bay, as i did, i think you'll be really happy with it.

[Brian]

I was looking at both recently and went with the saffire. No Regrets.