Is the MOTU 2408 MK3 Good SAC Interface

[CyberTronics]

Anyone have success using the Motu 2408 MK3 interface with SAC?

[DominicPerry]

Have you done a search for 2408 ?
It turns up a few threads.
You won't get better than RME, there really don't seem to be any problems with RME drivers, but plenty, on and off with MOTU drivers. Save yourself the heartache and get an RME interface - I'm using an old Digi 9636/52 which cost £85 on eBay and it does 1x64 buffers with no trouble. If you can't get an RME interface to work at low buffers with your system - then there's something wrong with your system. A MOTU 2408 Mk3 is not cheap, so it can't be a money thing!

Dominic

[CyberTronics]

Thanks Dominic,

I am sold on RME. I will getting a HDSP 9652 shortly. A MOTU 2408 MK3 is available to me at reasonable rate. It would fit into my redundancy plans. If the Motu is up the task I would plan for it as a backup to the main setup.

I did try a search for Motu 2408 and most of the posts did seem to have been regarding saw studio. My apologies if I am riding an already beaten horse.

[MMP]

While I don't have the 2408, I have a couple of the MOTU boxes and they run fine these days. There was much trauma with early Windows drivers from MOTU, but I think that their more recent drivers have been much better.

That said, I think the RME & SSL/Sydec drivers are the best on the market for Windows machines.

Regards,

MM

[DominicPerry]

Thanks Dominic,

I am sold on RME. I will getting a HDSP 9652 shortly. A MOTU 2408 MK3 is available to me at reasonable rate. It would fit into my redundancy plans. If the Motu is up the task I would plan for it as a backup to the main setup.

I did try a search for Motu 2408 and most of the posts did seem to have been regarding saw studio. My apologies if I am riding an already beaten horse.

No apologies needed, I'm just trying to make sure that your SAC rig works as you want. The thing is, low latencies in SAW are not so critical as in SAC, but the general advice and experience from SAW still stands - you want a trouble free, reliable interface with the lowest possible latencies. These are all, magically, available in one interface - from RME. The only down side is the price.

Dominic

[gdougherty]

No apologies needed, I'm just trying to make sure that your SAC rig works as you want. The thing is, low latencies in SAW are not so critical as in SAC, but the general advice and experience from SAW still stands - you want a trouble free, reliable interface with the lowest possible latencies. These are all, magically, available in one interface - from RME. The only down side is the price.

Dominic

Price, meh. For $850, to get 36x36 and full expansion functionality in a fast stable audio card, that's quite good. Of course you still need preamps, but you only get about half of the RME equation or less in the $500-700 range with preamps built-in.

[Trackzilla]

I have a big pile of MOTU stuff & have tried all of it with SAC, use it almost daily between SAC & SAW on the same box. What I don't have is any of the firewire pieces (traveller & such).

I stuffed SAC Beta into every computer & interface combination I could get my hands on, tested, removed, & moved on to the next to test stability & enhance the knowledge base. We do only have Intel CPUs here, so I can't attest to any oddities that might or might not exist with AMD.
I found no issues of any kind with driver stability or latency that differed from the RME reports...which is not to say that RME isn't still 'the best' ;)

I did find that the Supermicro Dual Xeon MB I tested would not even power up with either a PCI-324 or -424 card installed, though it ran great with the PCIe-424...so well that it might eventually become my next SAC rig when I buy a second SAC license & steal that computer back from the Mrs who uses it for video work. ;)

Tested: PCI-324, PCI-424, PCIe-424
2408, 2408 mkll, 2408 mk3, 24i
The various I/O boxes are completely interchangeable without issue just like MOTU promises they will be.

Current default show set-up where my SAC license lives: PCI-424, 2x 2408 mk3, 6x ADA-8000...with a 4 space redundancy rack on the truck that contains a third 2408 mk3 & three more ADAs.

I'm stable at 1x32 on the current rig with most of it in use, but I run comfortably at 2x64 buffers for shows & I'll increase to 1 or 2x128 if I am using heavy plug & mon mix loads at a high channel count.

Summary: although RME is officially the best, there is no reason I can find to have any concern about using MOTU with SAC, especially if you have ready access to their pieces. 65 live shows so far that way here & 0 crashes...all 'one nighters' & festivals with a road rig.

[CyberTronics]

Thanks again Guy for the info and guidance.

Trackzilla your report is very encouraging. I will check out the motu for use with SAC. I am Glad you've lots of show experience with the motu rig.

[dbarrow]

No apologies needed, I'm just trying to make sure that your SAC rig works as you want. The thing is, low latencies in SAW are not so critical as in SAC, but the general advice and experience from SAW still stands - you want a trouble free, reliable interface with the lowest possible latencies. These are all, magically, available in one interface - from RME. The only down side is the price.

Dominic
The price is worth it over time. I have pulled my hair out with various other interfaces: MOTU, Presonus, etc. in the past. The RayDAT I bought for my current SAC system is rock solid. I also run Cakewalk Sonar on it from time to time: rock solid. It was well worth the price to not make myself sick with endless tweaking resulting in nothing but clicks and pops, dropped buffers, etc. I could have just spent all the wasted time earning the extra money to by something that works. If only I had believed that from the beginning...

[DaveS]

With the MOTU Firewire devices the actual firewire interface - and the computer itself - seem to play a much larger role in the MOTU firewire gear working or not...MOTU gear seems to be quite particular. I have a Traveler (mkI) that works fine on two of my racked machines - but gives me all sort of fits with my laptop.

It's hard to go wrong with an RME interface though...they have, in my opinion, the best drivers around (of those that I have tested...)