Sorry man. Not much going on here. There a lot of people who love MOTU. There are an equal number of people who hate them. I think a lot of that comes down to system configuration and compatibility. I have a friend who has an 8pre that works fine. The 896 looks quite a bit nicer.

I worked on a 24 i/o with the PCI-424 system for many years. I've also used various other pieces of their gear and I would have to say that their number one allure is that the drivers are rock solid. I would almost go as far to say the drivers are almost as good as RME's.

The sound?

Well, I'm sure the newer units have improved but the 24 i/o's sound is as run-of-the-mill as you get. I think they use the Asahi Kasei chips, which are otherwise good, but when you cram 24 channels into a 1u box, the first thing you skimp on is the analog components, which don't sound great at all. As far as the 896 goes, here's what Black Lion Audio has to say:

BLA wrote:
The Motu family of audio interfaces are all built upon essentially the same platform. The newer generation utilize Texas Instruments TMS320 series of DSP processors to handle busing and routing. The converters are Asahi Kasei (AKM), and are the same converters used in many other brands of interfaces, including Digidesign, RME, M-Audio, Roland, and many more. Given their strong Macintosh drivers, these units are fantastic choices for an Apple-based home studio.

[...] In the world of converters, there is a pervasive myth that the converter quality matters the most, and that the analog stages are not important. We know that this isn't true. In MOTU's case, the use of NJM4580 and NJM2115 opamps is one of the biggest liabilities to sound quality.

[...] A second weak spot is definitely the clock. It's based around Texas Instruments TLC2933, which is a VCO and PLL all in one. Jitter is high in comparison to good converter clocks-the datasheet claims at least 120 picoseconds, although I suspect it's much higher than that because of power supply noise.

Hope that helps.

Cheers :)