Ableton Forum

hi guys,

i've had so much trouble with my motu ultralite mk4. i'm on my second one that motu sent me and it crashes all the time and there is distortion and crackling. i've spent a year exhaustively troubleshooting this with motu and their support isn't able to fix it and i've just spent too much time on this at this point.

it's too bad because this sound card is great when it works and is like the only thing in its segment:

-- 8 channels of I/O
-- ESS sabre converter
-- $600.

Everything else I've seen that has this much I/O and a good converter is way more expensive.

Universal audio 8 is on sale for $1200 for black friday but I can't really justify the price. Also skeptical of the UAD hardware DSP stuff, I think I've got enough plugins at this point and I don't know why I would buy more that's locked to their hardware platform. though people do love it...

the UA apollo looks nice too and honestly I only use more than 2 in / 2 out like once a month but I just really want the options to have lots of hardware plugged in and use some external FX when the mood strikes.

Apogee, RME, Prism, Antelope are very expensive too.

So, do you guys have some ideas for interfaces with good converters, at least 6 I/O and under $1000?

Also, I really suspect that supposed differences in quality of converters is like 95% a tossup. I have pretty good speakers in a treated room and I just never really noticed appreciable differences when using different sound cards. I'm not, like, an experienced mastering engineer in a perfect room with impeccable monitoring, maybe that's the user who can really appreciate this. thoughts ?

You don't mention anything about the computer you're using the MOTU with, or what latency / buffer size you're using.

Have you tried the MOTU on other computers? Have you adjusted latency? In other words are you sure it's the MOTU that's the issue?

102455 wrote:You don't mention anything about the computer you're using the MOTU with, or what latency / buffer size you're using.

Have you tried the MOTU on other computers? Have you adjusted latency? In other words are you sure it's the MOTU that's the issue?

thanks for the thoughts. Yes indeed. multiple computers, clean installs, all kinds of different configurations.

when I say "exhaustively troubleshooting", I'm careful with this word choice .

MOTU interfaces are notorious for what you discribe.... Too bad for you it turns out you have spend more money.....

When UA stopped with UAD1, all support stopped for it - what I heard (maybe I'm wrong) - so I would not spend my money on an UAD2 system. It's a pitty, 'cause there fx's are very good, as well as their interfaces.

RME is very good too, but it comes with a cost.

Have you got ADAT I/O on your ultralite? If so, a Babyface from RME could do the job using your Ultralite as an ADAT AD convertor instead as an audiointerface. Maybe that is possible. I mean routing the eight inputs to an ADAT out, and using the ADAT in for syncing.

A RME Babyface is reasonable priced, and could this way do the job maybe.......

Hey mate - have you looked at any of the Focusrite stuff? The 18i20 is great value (in my opinion). The 18i20 should fit your budget, and has quite a few inputs for future use, too! I prefer much more to my Apogee Duet.

Focusrite is OK. I have an old Saffire Pro 40, which basicly has the same amount of I/O like the 1820 USB.

Their preamps are good for the money and the software supplied is usefull.

hey guys, thanks for the thoughts.

@shift gorden I've had 2 focusrite cards in the past stop working and support did nothing for me both time because I was literally days outside my warranty those experiences soured me on focusrite but it was a while ago and I have heard positive things recently...

@miyaru Yeah, don't really vibe with UAD. Dont like being locked into a platform for plugins. Also looked more into the DSP stuff and those chips in the soundcards are like 10 years old. It seems like a really bad value. About ADAT, interesting thought but I'd be pretty worried about using the MOTU at all for stability's sake? Haven't really needed to use ADAT before so I've not so familiar.

I actually have an update from MOTU. they say it's a known issue with Core Audio on macOS. But other manufacturer's sound cards work just fine on my system. Soooo.... yeah pretty frustrating.

what version of Mac OS are you running?

I am using MOTU 828es on macOS 10.13.6 with no issues, strange. But it's AVB series, not sure if it makes a difference. Anyway, it's super solid here.

Presonus Quantum is another contender. It offers the lowest possible latency across a Thunderbolt 2 connection. I saw one on reverb.com for slightly over €600 yesterday.

Andrejs

oratowsky wrote:hi guys,

i've had so much trouble with my motu ultralite mk4. i'm on my second one that motu sent me and it crashes all the time and there is distortion and crackling. i've spent a year exhaustively troubleshooting this with motu and their support isn't able to fix it and i've just spent too much time on this at this point.

it's too bad because this sound card is great when it works and is like the only thing in its segment:

-- 8 channels of I/O
-- ESS sabre converter
-- $600.

Everything else I've seen that has this much I/O and a good converter is way more expensive.

Universal audio 8 is on sale for $1200 for black friday but I can't really justify the price. Also skeptical of the UAD hardware DSP stuff, I think I've got enough plugins at this point and I don't know why I would buy more that's locked to their hardware platform. though people do love it...

the UA apollo looks nice too and honestly I only use more than 2 in / 2 out like once a month but I just really want the options to have lots of hardware plugged in and use some external FX when the mood strikes.

Apogee, RME, Prism, Antelope are very expensive too.

So, do you guys have some ideas for interfaces with good converters, at least 6 I/O and under $1000?

Also, I really suspect that supposed differences in quality of converters is like 95% a tossup. I have pretty good speakers in a treated room and I just never really noticed appreciable differences when using different sound cards. I'm not, like, an experienced mastering engineer in a perfect room with impeccable monitoring, maybe that's the user who can really appreciate this. thoughts ?

Wow that sucks and I thought about getting one. Maybe there will be a deal from a vendor on the RME Babyface Pro.

I had issues on this with Yosemite and High Sierra.

The ultralite mk4 has "AVB" type functionality in that you can control it over wifi on the web interface but isn't branded AVB i don't believe.

Someone else just told me they were really impressed with the Presonus Quantum. gonna look more into that!