[LAU] Motu 1248 - Full success

[Moshe Werner]

Hi Folks,

after a long period of being distracted from doing sound work I'm getting
back into business. I needed a solid solution for Audio Interface, so I
started researching.

I must say that from my perspective a lot has happened in the past three
four years.

More class compliant interfaces enter the market and the horizon widens
regarding hardware in Linux.

I came across the new Motu AVB devices and could'nt believe that they would
be the solution to my hardware problems.

The point is, my old studio and travelling interfaces are RME HDSP9652 and
TC Impact twin, respectively.

The RME always just worked. Pretty low latencies and with the right
configuration zero xruns.
The TC has a little bit higher latency but also pretty solid.

But... they are old interfaces and the time will shortly come when I will
not be able to buy a new PC/laptop with PCI or Firwire ports.

So I looked for other options...
Rme new stuff is mostly class compliant but has proprietary drivers and
that means no control over certain features.

So I got a pretty good deal on a Motu 1248 and went for it.

Here are my first impressions from half a day of testing.

 First and foremost, the interface just works! Out of the box. I plugged it
in configured Jack and got sound. Great... and non trivial for Linux.

After a bit of fiddling around with my Network settings I got the control
software to work, and I must say it's just amazing to have a piece of
equipment that I can fully use under Linux.
There is a full featured mixer in the DSP that's also a nice addition, but
the main thing for me was the routing matrix, which is pretty cool to have.

Latency - The latency in CC mode is better than my Firewire interface, but
still a bit worse than the rme. For now I succeded to run a medium session
(25 Channels with processing and fx) at 64 frames buffer size with 3
buffers.
Certainly not bad. While playing guitar and singing I didn't feel any of
this annoying delay that you sometimes get when the latency is bad.

Sound quality - Pretty good. I have nothing to complain about... Though I
can't really hear the supposedly amazing ESS converters stand out from the
other professional DAC crowd...
To be honest in the Studio I'm working happily with the old Alesis HD24xr
AD/DC to make 1/0 out of my precious electrons...
The Preamps are pretty clean sounding from my firswt impression, but I
really didn't have enough time to toy with them.

The channel count is huge for my terms. 64 in and out... That should be
enough for me. Though I didn't get around to check if the AVB connection
does really work on Linux.

To summarize I'm feeling that we are moving in the right direction here...
I hope other manufacturers will follow and make Interfaces and software
that work with Linux...

Cheers

Moshe
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