Fuck you MOTU
The 828 running on my G4 powerbook has frozen on me mid-take 5 times in the last 2 days. It's history for this project.
So I'm back to using my sweet, sweet rock solid, has never failed me ProTools Mix++ system. And it feels great!
UPDATE:
Steve in comments said he was thinking about buying a MOTU box himself -here's some context about what exactly I was doing.
I was trying to record 5 tracks simultaneously at 24/96kHz on my 12' Apple Power Book with a 1gHz G4 processor and 1.2GB of RAM onto a LaCie 250GB External Hard Drive thru FireWire 400. (the drive has about 30GB of space used)
The recording software I was using is called "AudioDesk". It comes free with the interface. it's pretty much a ProTools rip off witohut all the attention to detail that makes using ProTools such a joy for me.
But the point wasn't to mix and produce in MOTU Audio Desk -just track. No plugins were used and no other software was running on my mac. If I had this out on a gig I'd be pissed. (I shuold point out that Dave Grosmman had a MOTU282 out at Solo Bass night a few weeks back and he tracked the whole show with it at 24/96.) 2 track recording only and he was using it on a PC I believe.
The computer froze up mid take at least 5 times in the past 2 days. It's frozen at the end of a take when I press stop also. These weren't great once in a lifetime takes - but the freeze thingy really reduced my confidence and it became 1 MORE thing to worry about while recording.
Maybe if I had FireWire 800 on my puter it would have been able to track more reliably.
Also - If the sample rate was lower I suspect it might be more stable as well. But that's not why I bought it.
Here's a mesage board where you can get an idea of what people are complaining an raving about in terms of MOTU..
http://www.unicornation.com/phpBB2/index.php
My suggestion - know what you're going to use it for - the upper limit of what you expect it to do - and make sure you buy 2 times the computer power you'll need to do that if it's available.
Comments
how weird! I'm thinking of trying out the MOTU ultralite - will have to have a look round and see if anyone else is finding their stuff unreliable...
Posted by: Steve | June 1, 2006 02:50 AM
Hi Jeff,
Man... that sounds frustrating for sure! I've been using a MOTU 896HD for several months now and have had no problems at all... 5 tracks at 96/24 might be a bit much for a G4 laptop... have you tried tracking directly to your laptop's internal drive, as opposed to an external drive?
Posted by: Gustaf | June 2, 2006 08:09 AM
Hey Gustaf - I don't have nearly enough room on the internal HD to track at those rates.
I never really liked host based systems that depend entirely on the computer. But if you want portable - thats the way you gotta go. I know the computer is the weak link in the chain in my set up.
But I'm not in the mood to blow 3gs on a new puter to get sound that's only marginally better than what I'm getting on my PT system.
Posted by: Jeff | June 2, 2006 08:53 AM
I've had my MOTU glitch in the past. I had read at their site that they the Windows Firewire driver had problems or something but the guy who sold it to me told me that he used his just fine. I figured that if there was a problem, I could return it. I didn't notice the problem for a while. It showed up in the form of dropped buffers of data in the wav file. I've since upgraded the firmware and it seems okay now.
I tested the MOTU recording 10 tracks to my Sony Vaio notebook. I forgot how long I let it go for but it seemed to work fine.
- Dave
Posted by: Dave Grossman | June 2, 2006 09:23 PM