Thunderbolt?/USB 2 audio interface with DSP, networking and MIDI
A new front panel layout, the 828es connects to a Mac, PC or iOS device over Thunderbolt or USB with low latency, high performance drivers to deliver 60 total channels of I/O, 48-channel mixing and 32-bit floating point DSP effects processing.
Caractéristiques
Superb analog sound and ultra low latency performance
Advanced extras, incorporated from MOTU's flagship 1248 interface, include ESS Sabre32 DAC technology with 123 dB dynamic range, ultra low round trip latency (RTL) performance as low as 1.6 ms at 96 kHz over Thunderbolt (and 1.9 ms over USB), USB audio class compliant firmware for connection to iOS? devices (with a standard camera adapter, sold separately), convenient web app control from any mobile computing device, flexible matrix-style routing and splitting, stand alone mixing with Wi-Fi control and AVB/TSN audio networking for system expansion.
New control room features
New control room features appearing for the first time on a MOTU interface include a built-in talkback mic with front panel "talk" button and "A/B" monitor select, mute and sum-to-mono buttons for the main outs.
Award-winning design
Numerous features brought forward from the award-winning 828x model include pre-converter sends for the two mic inputs, dedicated quarter-inch time code input and output jacks, MIDI in and out jacks, BNC word clock I/O, a foot switch input for hands free punch-in during recording, AudioDesk workstation software and a suite of audio analysis apps.
All the I/O you need
Housed in a sturdy, aluminum alloy chassis (one rack space), the 828es provides 28 inputs and 32 outputs, including two redesigned mic/guitar "combo" style inputs featuring high quality, transparent preamps with front panel control (and remote software control) of individual gain/pad/48V phantom power. The hi-Z quarter-inch sockets on the combo jacks provide amp-like performance when plugging in a guitar.
Additional I/O includes eight balanced (TRS) analog in/out (with DC coupled outputs), separate main outs on XLR jacks, two banks of 8-channel optical I/O (switchable to stereo TOSLink), RCA S/PDIF digital I/O and two independent front panel headphone jacks with volume controls.
The 828es sounds great, is very stable at low latencies, and (with a bit of tinkering) can be used for a lot of different things - this one piece has replaced 3 other pieces in my rack. The routing/mixing interface is very powerful, my only complaint Lire plus
would be that some of it is a bit counter-intuitive and requires extra steps to get it to do what you want.
4.5
François
Montreal, QC
18 juin 2021
MOTU 828es , super bon
D'entrée de jeux, le choix des cartes de sons compatibles avec Windows est limité. Alors la Motu 828 es est une solution plutôt imbattable qualité prix. J'utilise des synthés avec le bon vieux midi 3 pin et déjà cette caractéristique est de plus en plus rare sur les interfaces récentes. Lire plus
Les sorties d'écouteurs sont d'une qualité sonore au-dessus de la moyenne, le mixer DSP très efficace pour un mix final. Pour l'aspect matériel c'est du solide. Mais il faut quand même préciser que le logiciel de contrôle est assez complexe et élaboré, pas pour les débutants. Après 6 mois d utilisation je suis vraiment heureux de mon achat. Les préamps sont vraiment bien aussi, comme tous les I/O.
4.0
chanceoperation
La Malbaie
15 avril 2021
Very versatile and sounds great.
The MOTU 828es has a huge variety of ins and outs, including nice extras like extra main outs in addition to the usual 8. It is also AVB, which is a no-brainer, self-configuring network option that I think beats Dante and others for simplicity and configurability.
The two reasons I did not rate it a 5:
1. Lire plus
It gets hot and can start acting strange when it does - an extra space in your rack is obligatory.
2. Mine came with a dead channel on one of the headphone outs. SE was great, and MOTU sent me a second one before I returned the first, so I had no down time, and the trust they extended is to their credit. Still, it represents a QA problem that should have been caught.
After dealing with these two issues, the thing has been bullet proof for 9 months, on all day every day. The hardware metering is very helpful, and the browser-based setup, routing, and mixing is excellent.
Highly recommended.