MOTU 896HD vs. 8pre

[mrstrat]

I'm getting ready to purchase one of these units for a mobile recording
project.

Do you have any suggestions regarding selecting one over the other?

The 8pre is about half the price of the 896, and I'm wondering whether there
might be any reason to pay the extra money for the 896. (Other than 96khz
vs. 192khz)

[Thomas Bishop]

"mrstrat" > wrote in message
> I'm getting ready to purchase one of these units for a mobile recording
> project.
>
> Do you have any suggestions regarding selecting one over the other?
>
> The 8pre is about half the price of the 896, and I'm wondering whether
> there might be any reason to pay the extra money for the 896. (Other than
> 96khz vs. 192khz)

I just bought an 8Pre last week. I haven't put it to the test yet, but it
installed easily and seems to work fine. It has exactly the features I
need, no more and no less. I hope to do some tracking in the next week, but
if all goes well then I'll be buying a second. One major benefit of the
8Pre for me is less rack real estate than the 896.

[shawnm]

Thanks Thomas,

I'd be interested to find out how your recording goes next week.
Please share your experience.

What operating system are you running?

Cheers!

Shawn

Thomas Bishop wrote:
> "mrstrat" > wrote in message
> > I'm getting ready to purchase one of these units for a mobile recording
> > project.
> >
> > Do you have any suggestions regarding selecting one over the other?
> >
> > The 8pre is about half the price of the 896, and I'm wondering whether
> > there might be any reason to pay the extra money for the 896. (Other than
> > 96khz vs. 192khz)
>
> I just bought an 8Pre last week. I haven't put it to the test yet, but it
> installed easily and seems to work fine. It has exactly the features I
> need, no more and no less. I hope to do some tracking in the next week, but
> if all goes well then I'll be buying a second. One major benefit of the
> 8Pre for me is less rack real estate than the 896.

[Thomas Bishop]

"shawnm" > wrote in message
> Thanks Thomas,
>
> I'd be interested to find out how your recording goes next week.
> Please share your experience.
>
> What operating system are you running?

I recorded a little bit last night and am having problems with input synch.
I was playing bass and when I played it back it sounded like my timing was a
little off. It was 2:00 am so I just thought I was tired, I deleted the
track and went to bed. A few minutes ago I tested it out again and watched
the input meter. I was just keeping a steady beat going, slapping the
strings, and noticed that sometimes the meter was right on with the slaps
and sometimes it was a little behind. I'm going to change latency settings
and see if there are any updated drivers on the MOTU site. I'll let you
know.

As far as the recording I'm doing...... I'm mixing monitors for a band I've
worked with before, a local Beatles tribute act. There should be at least
24 channels coming into the mixer and I'll have to figure out some grouping
to get it down to 8. I am running Adobe Audition 1.5 on Windows XP.

[Scott Fraser]

<<Do you have any suggestions regarding selecting one over the other?
>>

The one with good sounding preamps & modern converters would be my
choice. The 896 is about 5 years old at this point, & current MOTU
interfaces have much better converters. The mic pres in the 8pre are
the same as those in the Traveler which I've used on some fairly
demanding material. The newer pres have much more gain & sound pretty
darn transparent. All in all I find the 896 a lackluster sounding unit.
If everything about the 8pre maintains the same standard as the
Traveler, it will be a noticeable step up in quality.

<<The 8pre is about half the price of the 896, and I'm wondering
whether there
might be any reason to pay the extra money for the 896. (Other than
96khz
vs. 192khz) >>

I would consider the alleged difference between 96k & 192k a complete
non-issue with converters in this price range.

Scott Fraser

[Thomas Bishop]

> I recorded a little bit last night and am having problems with input synch.
> I was playing bass and when I played it back it sounded like my timing was a
> little off. It was 2:00 am so I just thought I was tired, I deleted the
> track and went to bed. A few minutes ago I tested it out again and watched
> the input meter. I was just keeping a steady beat going, slapping the
> strings, and noticed that sometimes the meter was right on with the slaps
> and sometimes it was a little behind. I'm going to change latency settings
> and see if there are any updated drivers on the MOTU site. I'll let you
> know.

I installed the latest Firewire driver from the MOTU site, increased
the latency setting (probably didn't help, but I'm not running any real
time plugins with live location recording anyway), restarted both the
computer and the 8Pre. I don't notice any lag now. It could very well
have been the restart that fixed it.

[shawnm]

Thomas Bishop wrote:
> > I recorded a little bit last night and am having problems with input synch.
> > I was playing bass and when I played it back it sounded like my timing was a
> > little off. It was 2:00 am so I just thought I was tired, I deleted the
> > track and went to bed. A few minutes ago I tested it out again and watched
> > the input meter. I was just keeping a steady beat going, slapping the
> > strings, and noticed that sometimes the meter was right on with the slaps
> > and sometimes it was a little behind. I'm going to change latency settings
> > and see if there are any updated drivers on the MOTU site. I'll let you
> > know.
>
> I installed the latest Firewire driver from the MOTU site, increased
> the latency setting (probably didn't help, but I'm not running any real
> time plugins with live location recording anyway), restarted both the
> computer and the 8Pre. I don't notice any lag now. It could very well
> have been the restart that fixed it.

So...what's your overall opinion about the unit, now that you've had a
chance to play around with it a bit?

[Thomas Bishop]

"shawnm" > wrote in message
> So...what's your overall opinion about the unit, now that you've had a
> chance to play around with it a bit?


I brought my rig out last night and set up in monitor world. There were 7
spare auxes so I took those combined with the insert trick on the lead vox
to make 26 channels into 8. Everything seemed to be going well; I recorded
the 45-minute opening act (a comedian) and it turned out fine. Hit record
for the main act and before the song even finished my Adobe Audition locked
up. This show was for my purposes (testing my rig, etc) so no big deal.
Forced quit the program, re-opened it, started again. 5 minutes later it
freezes again. So I said screw it and mixed 2-track to my Nomad Jukebox off
a stereo aux on the Spirit Monitor console.

This has happened in the past quite a bit, on different computers. I
attributed it to hardware compatibility issues and moved on to the next
interface. But now I'm wondering if it isn't Audition 1.5. But I also
tried CEP 2 (each upgrade is a new program, not really an "upgrade," so I
still had CEP from the original full version purchase) and still had
problems. I'm going to try some more testing tonight and install a copy of
Cubase that I have. These are all full purchased programs, so it's not like
I'm using some pirated copy.

So all in all the session didn't go very well, although I am glad I didn't
commit to anything serious before testing this out. I'm ready to give up on
computer recording altogether and get an HD24, but that means I need to buy
24 channels of preamps. Neither one of these purchases are in the budget
right now. I can't say that the MOTU didn't perform well because it seemed
to work fine, and it is extremely easy to use. I'll go through some
troubleshooting and let you know.

[Thomas Bishop]

On Jan 21, 3:20 pm, "Thomas Bishop" >
wrote:
> So all in all the session didn't go very well, although I am glad I didn't
> commit to anything serious before testing this out. I'm ready to give up on
> computer recording altogether and get an HD24, but that means I need to buy
> 24 channels of preamps. Neither one of these purchases are in the budget
> right now. I can't say that the MOTU didn't perform well because it seemed
> to work fine, and it is extremely easy to use. I'll go through some
> troubleshooting and let you know.

After some more testing I have found that Adobe Audition is the
problem. So if you had any hesitations about the 8Pre because of my
ramblings then please don't.