the ORIGINAL MOTU 828

[logancircle]

Anyone have a review of this thing? MOTU has little on their site anymore because it's out-of-date-like. Is this thing like the Digi 001 in that it does some of the processing internally? Does it have zero-latency direct hardware monitoring for those of us laptoppers? Thanks all!

cd in DC

[darjama]

I'm not sure what you mean by processing internally, but direct monitoring is limited to one (mono)or two channels (stereo pair). This is probably the biggest improvement in the mkii, the cuemix software (which doesn't work on the older version) offers all kinds of routing options for monitoring.

I'm using the 828 original currently and like it alot. I think the sound is good and it's been rock solid with the latest drivers. My recording method doesn't require more direct monitoring than it offers.

[logancircle]

So do you mean you can only monitor what's going into one intput, or that it just has one headphone out, or what? What I meant about processing was that the 828 took some of the processing load off the computer's load like the Digi 001 does. No?

[darjama]

The original 828 control panel lets you pick an input or pair of inputs (I believe analog only, not digital) and route that back to the main outputs, which feed the headphone.

You can use software monitoring using whatever DAW program you're running, but you'll have to worry about latency then. The good news there is that the 828 is pretty good with low latency using ASIO drivers.

Again, not sure about the Digi001, but there's no DSP farm in the 828. That said, the CPU overhead for the 828 seems to be really low, I've never encountered a scenario where I couldn't run as many plugins as I wanted (I'm runing an AMD XP 2500+ with 512mb RAM using WinXP & Samplitude). Maybe enough instances of convolution reverb would do it, but that's more a processor issue than soundcard.

[wardshorsehead]

What I meant about processing was that the 828 took some of the processing load off the computer's load like the Digi 001 does

the digi oo1, oo2, and m-box are completely host based. they don't take any burden off the cpu. neither does the 828.

frank

[logancircle]

So what do you generally feed back through the phones for people tracking to hear? I assume the things you can't hear in the room like DI bass or acoustic guit or other things too isolated to hear?

[loosegravel]

Its mixer lets you select either one or a pair of the inputs for monitoring. I love mine, got it seccond hand for 400. It fried and MOTU sent me a new one for 50 bucks. greak folks.

I use mine with sonar. the converters in the 828 sound pretty good by my (and many others) ears. Its a good buy that lets you avoid the high cost of good pro tools-ish features.

[logancircle]

So the way you get the direct monitoring is by running it through a mixer first and going into headphone amp pre-MOTU? That is good for people using mixers in their rig, but I just got rid of mine because I'm destitute and I don't want extra steps in my chain

[darjama]

In that case, if you need more than a track or two of zero latency monitoring, then a better choice would be the rme multiface or the motu 828mkii or 896. These all have better internal mixing for monitoring. But since these are more expensive, they may not be the best choice for the impoverished musician.

What's the intended use? Do you really need several channels of zero latency monitoring? ASIO or WDM software monitoring may cover your needs, you should be able to get 6ms of ASIO latency, maybe less.