Motu is looking good.

[JEromeo]

I was thinking of buying a Digi 002, but was checking out Motu and for what I would spend on a Digi 002 I could buy a 896HD with 192 sample rate (Cost less). Has anyone used a 869HD?

Digi better start doing something good with out charging us for upgrades.

Digi 8-in 8-out

Moto 18-in 22-outs

[where02190]

The 002/002R is 18 i/o:
8 analog
8 lightpipe
2spdif

The 896HD is 18in/22out:
inputs
8 analog
8 lightpipe
2 AES/EBU
outputs included in the advertizing are the same as the inputs, but include the main outs and headphone outs. Put those into the 002 equation and the number of i/o are the same. Furthermore, if you use the lighpipe inputs at anything over 48k, the number of lightpipe i/o cuts in half to 4, making the total only 18 outs including the hp and main outs.

So to summarize, the 002/002R and the MOTU 896HD have exactly the same number of i/o

[JFreak]

digi gear sounds better than motu gear; sample rate does not tell you anything about the sound quality, it just tells you how often the sound is sampled. you also cannot use motu gear with protools, but can use logic/dp with digi gear. so which has more options?

also, digi dear comes bundled with protools while - as i recall - motu gear includes digital performer. nobody wants to use that crap and you will have to add the cost of logic express to fair comparison of the prices.

[pk_hat]

as i recall - motu gear includes digital performer. nobody wants to use that crap and you will have to add the cost of logic express to fair comparison of the prices.

Umm...no.

MOTU gear does not come with DP, it comes bundled with 'Audio Desk', a proprietary sequencer which most people end up ditching anyway. In other words, once you're done spending your cash on the MOTU interface, you still have to pick your sequencer of choice, with the excpetion of ProTools.

Having said that, I'm going Logic Pro but keeping my 002R as my interface.

[carbonunit]

"Motu is looking good."


Motu stuff has always looked good, it's using it that's been the problem.....


Dave

[South]

Hi. I'm a musician, and my music might be called electronic music.
I use a lot of software, but I still prefer Digital Performer over PTLE or Logic 6.
It’s really a matter of taste, I guess. But, I really like the elegance of the interface, and
the bulit-in plug-ins which in my opinion, are much more for musicians/composers.
Their pug-ins have really creative features that you might feel no one would use.
I feel creativeness from those MOTU guys from those things and use PT over the others even though it's a little buggy.

No, DP doesn't come with the MOTU hardware,
only Audiodesk comes. It's basically DP without MIDI.
You can upgrade it to DP. I think it costs about $350, or something, I guess.

I think in most cases, Digi stuff is more strongly built.

The 896 has 8 pre amps. To me, 192 sample rate isn’t very useful since most other gear or plugins
aren't up to it, yet. But, you'll certainly get a lot of benefit from 96 hz. But, your other gear has to be good enough
to do everything in 96hz.

Hope that helps a little bit.

[sdemott]

You're certainly entitled to do as you see fit, but be sure you get all the facts.

the 896HD sounds pretty good (comparable to the 002r), but MOTUs OSX support is sketchy at best (check out the discussions on www.unicornation.com for more info). The CueMix function on the MOTU hardware is awesome...Digi are you listening? No latency monitoring of all inputs when recording...sweeeeet!

MOTU HW does not work with Pro Tools. It comes with a stripped down version of Digital Perfromer called Audio Desk. So, you will need to trade-up to DP4, and they offer a discount, but you're still throwing in another $200-250. Have you ever used DP? I use it occasionally, but really don't like it. Very clumsy feeling and you have to open about 30 windows to get anything done (slight exxageration...but you get the point). There are other down sides to DP, my biggest turn-off being that fact that you cannot bus a mono track to a stereo aux and have it retain its pan position - it goes in dead center mono regardles of pan setting! How annoying. You have to send it twice and "jury rig" the stereo position using differences in left/right volume (effectively using 2 sends for something that should take only 1).

My point: it looks like you pay a little more for Digi, but you have to remember the Digi HW comes bundled with the studio standard Pro Tools (LE and TDM/HD are almost identical - minus a few features). So, you can take a session to a big studio to lay down drums or for final mixing with complete compatability.

So, when you throw all of that into the mix (pun intended), you end up with a "6 of one, half a dozen of the other" scenario in terms of pricing. So, base your decision on which software better suits your needs.

Just do your research and choose what is best for you rsituation now and in the near future.

HTH

[tenton]

One thing to note is that MOTU CoreAudio drivers allow you to have/play more than one device or piece of software at a time. So you could have iTunes, a browser, DP, etc all open and you could play audio from any of them (though I'm not sure it will play simultaneaously).

Digi hardware, however, limits your CoreAudio output to one device only. If you open PT, every other device that might use CoreAudio has to be closed.

Hope that description makes sense. I found this to be a huge disappointment. Pretty lame on Digi's part. I've heard excuses made for it, but frankly I'm not buying it. Oh well, I have the 002 so I have Pro Tools compatibility but will still probably use DP for some composition work.

[South]

There are other down sides to DP, my biggest turn-off being that fact that you cannot bus a mono track to a stereo aux and have it retain its pan position - it goes in dead center mono regardles of pan setting! How annoying. You have to send it twice and "jury rig" the stereo position using differences in left/right volume (effectively using 2 sends for something that should take only 1).

I have never head someone say this. Maybe, there's something really wrong with your setup.
Maybe, you want to go to Uniconnation or call their customer support.

If you already bought your copy of DP, spend more time on it, and you'll find it very creative.
It's a pretty deep program.

Peace.

[sdemott]

Already dealt with MOTU support...according to them that's how it's supposed to work (a.k.a "it's a feature not a bug"). It's also the consesus at Unicornation...Just seems ass-backwards to me.