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Over in another thread Doublehelix advised:
First off, if you are going with a PC, stay away from MOTU...they specialize in Macs, and have a pretty shoody reputation with PC drivers...

Are there rampant known horror stories about trying to use the MOTU 2408 MkII in a Windows PC?

A good friend, for whom I recently built a 2GHz P4 DAW, is bent on getting one of these units since he wants to use the ADAT and TDIF interfaces to dump tracks back and forth from his tape machines to his computer as well as use the analog audio ins and outs and since this unit has 8 analog ins and outs plus triple ADAT and triple TDIF interfaces and the ability to have any three banks of 8 i/o's active concurrently has him drooling over it. I know nothing of MOTU's products, should I warn him about impending doom, or is this particular unit known to work alright with a Windows PC?

Comments

pbryce Sun, 04/07/2002 - 08:57

I have a 2408mkII & 1224 and they run perfectly under Win98SE & W2K Pro
The main thing to watch out for is carefully check the motherboard out beforehand to make sure it works with the Motu stuff.
Certain AMD combos with the Via chipset don't work,
I have a PIII/667 Asus P3V4X with a Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset and works fine.
If you have any more questions, ask away :)

anonymous Sun, 04/07/2002 - 12:14

Thanks Paul,

The motherboard in this system is a genuine Intel D850MVL, rambus, i850 chipset (onboard audio and ethernet are disabled). Disks are ATA/100 Maxtors, video card is an ATI Radeon 7500 AGP dual-head capable, the only other PCI card that'll be in this machine with the MOTU i/o card is an Adaptec SCSI card that hosts an external CD burner. The machine currently has a classic 20-bit Echo Gina in it, but that'll be removed completely.

anonymous Mon, 04/08/2002 - 15:19

Originally posted by Nick Driver:
Thanks Paul,

The motherboard in this system is a genuine Intel D850MVL, rambus, i850 chipset (onboard audio and ethernet are disabled). Disks are ATA/100 Maxtors, video card is an ATI Radeon 7500 AGP dual-head capable, the only other PCI card that'll be in this machine with the MOTU i/o card is an Adaptec SCSI card that hosts an external CD burner. The machine currently has a classic 20-bit Echo Gina in it, but that'll be removed completely.

I run the 2408 as well with a SCSI system. The ability to use the 2408 really shouldn't be an issue on that system. But it does work better with some progams than others. For example, it interfaces a little better with CueBase than it does with Logic. In Logic, latencey times can get large due to the need for a larger playback buffer for Audio when large track counts are involved, whereas with CueBase the Latencey is a little lower and the need for buffers is not as high. I'm not sure why that is, I just know that it is.

Also with the SCSI controller, you may want to remember to check for IRQ conflicts. For example, placing the SCSI card in slot 4 usually works better than slot 2 or 5 and then look to put the PCI-324 in slot 3.

Otherwise it just comes down to sound and needs, and I think most would agree that the 1296 or 896 have nicer sounding converters, though they are more expensive.

anonymous Tue, 04/09/2002 - 20:31

Originally posted by jscott:
Otherwise it just comes down to sound and needs, and I think most would agree that the 1296 or 896 have nicer sounding converters, though they are more expensive.

Are the converters on the 2408 MkII pretty decent sounding? He'll be comparing them to what he's accustomed to... an old 20-bit Gina, which for its vintage actually sounds pretty good.

Opus2000 Tue, 04/09/2002 - 21:08

IMHO...which means nothing...lol
The MOTU converters are allright....nothing special. Nick has a point where the Layla20(which is my main audio card) is great sounding. The 2408 is nice but it's the PCI324 card that really grabs people's attention. One PCI card to handle three 24 input firewire slots!
I think JScott gave you all you need to know about what to do for a MOTU and SCSI based system. The MOTU is very flexable and can handle pretty much all that you throw at it. By the way the reason Logic is like that is due to it's driver system. Unless 5.0 fixes it and actually impliments true ASIO support than it might be more betterer as others have said...
Opus

anonymous Wed, 04/10/2002 - 12:42

Originally posted by Nick Driver:
Are the converters on the 2408 MkII pretty decent sounding? He'll be comparing them to what he's accustomed to... an old 20-bit Gina, which for its vintage actually sounds pretty good.

While I have not A/B'd them, from what I remember and have been told, the sound is in the same family, sort of, I mean, the 2408 is pretty run of the mill in that price range. Your next jump is pretty much going to be add like $1000 to it, then start comparing. It is a personal preferance thing and a philosophy thing too. Do you mind tweaking EQ for one thing vs maybe not for another?

I think that comment about the MOTU not working on PC's is just out of ignorance. Most MOTU and PC problems can be traced back to VIA chipsets starting with the KT133 series and through the 266's today. Intel based boards are just fine, and neither affects the sound.

Just like you see on here, one guy likes the Layla vs 2408. Some like the Delta 1010. To me, I know I'm not getting fabulious converters in this price range, so haveing any one of them that gives me the I/O I need is adequate. The 2408 did that in my case, and it was out prior to the 1010, etc. Also, some of these others give you midi. But in my case, that was no good because I needed at least 6 midi ports, so I chose to go the MTP AV w/2408 and kept it in the same family. I'd probably not fo the MTP AV again though w/Logic or the 2408, because I can nopw appreciate and afford better things, and my need to work from an ADAT is non-existent!

As Opus said, it's the 324 card that's drawing people to MOTU, just look at the possibilities for interfacing? Just focus on your needs.

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