Hi, At work, we have two fully featured Pro-Tools systems. Synchronized together we can easily achieve a track count of 128, with lot of FX and EQ. But naturally that comes at a very high price tag. I use Logic Audio on a G4 400Mhz in my home studio with MOTU 24i and 2408 Audio interfaces. When Comparing sound quality, I have the feeling that the MOTUs are as good as If not better than the Digidesign 8/8/8. In my opinion they sound more open . Naturally the track count is not the same: On my home system I can play back around 40 tracks (24 bit - 48kHz) with around 15 Eqs, 8 inserts, 2 Aux FX + a stereo insert. The main drag with a native configuration to me as compared to Pro-Tools is Latency. With a 400Mhz system, you cannot go much lower than 1024 samples, and that is a lot!! When working in an integrated studio (No mixing desk), it's frustrating to try and synchronize live Synths inputs with recorded audio. And it's hard for the musician to play when he hears himself delayed in the cans. MOTU addressed the problem with a software cue mixer that greatly reduces latency, but it still cannot compare to an analog direct sound (or Pro-Tools ) I am investigating on other audio workstations too, in particular: - Nuendo : However Cubase isn't very clear on the real performances of their system, and claim that it can play way more tracks, than what physical restrictions impose on a computer system. http:// - Merging Pyramix. A very... Very interesting product... Probably the hottest new software (and hardware around). I attended a demo at work, and the ergonomics are fantastic. It is a truly powerful system, and the price is more than moderate.(Running on Win 2000, with a proprietary PCI board for processing [Mykerinos]: 64 tracks mixer, onboard proprietary processing) Main disadvantage: No midi sequencer http://www.merging.com Thanks for this great discussion Forum....
Hi Michel, << When Comparing sound quality, I have the feeling that the MOTUs are as good as If not better than the Digidesign 8/8/8. >> I don't know the MOTU unit, however I'm not surprised. The 888/24 is starting to look it's age and it's main problem seems to be it's clocking. You can improve the sound quality of the 888/24 by sync'ing it to a decent clock. Advark or Nanosync seem to be the choice of many TDM users. Better still is to use an Apogee AD8000 with the PTools board. It's a lot more expensive than an 888/24 but has noticably superior audio quality. The AD8000 is the ADC of choice for the higher end TDM user. Greg
