Fireface 800 Or Motu Travler?

[vibralux]

Hi Guys,

A firewire interface is coming to my studio and I cant make up my mind. Help please !!!

I was looking on the Fireface 800 as I heard it has some nice converters and that's what I am buying it mainly for ( dont expect me to use those Fireface amps since I got GR ;-) I just want a good ad/da conversion and the RME legendary stability is the issue also. I dont really need the portability of Motu (it can po powere directly form the firewire bus) and the metering on it is also not a big issue.

On the other hand- Motu Traveler is a lot cheaper, and i am not shure if both units differ in sound that much (I made some test today in a friendly studio). The salesman told me it has the same converters as the Fireface, but he was trying too lobby too much in favor of the Motu...

I was also thinking about the new Multiface II- do YOu know if it has the same converters as the Fireface 800?

Any suggestions? Thoughts?

Would appreciate any input.

Cheers

Marty

P.S I use Nuendo with Reason Rewired on a desktop Pc (Win XP) plus Virus C via Midi . I will also use this setup on a PC laptop that I will buy soon (any suggestions about that? what laptop works with the Fireface 800?)

 

[sile2001]

I was looking on the Fireface 800 as I heard it has some nice converters and that's what I am buying it mainly for ( dont expect me to use those Fireface amps since I got GR ;-) I just want a good ad/da conversion and the RME legendary stability is the issue also. I dont really need the portability of Motu (it can po powere directly form the firewire bus) and the metering on it is also not a big issue.

Well, you've kind of answered your own question right here!

On the other hand- Motu Traveler is a lot cheaper, and i am not shure if both units differ in sound that much (I made some test today in a friendly studio). The salesman told me it has the same converters as the Fireface, but he was trying too lobby too much in favor of the Motu...

Then the saleman was a two-faced liar...that or an idiot. I use a Motu 828mkII and IT has the same converters as the Traveler. They're get the job done in a reasonably good fashion, but they're nothing to write home about. On the other hand, the RME units are known to have much better converters. If I had at all been able to get the extra cash when I was buying an interface, I certainly would have gone with the RME unit over the Motu.

I was also thinking about the new Multiface II- do YOu know if it has the same converters as the Fireface 800?

Looking at the specs on RME's site, it looks like the Multiface's converters only go up to 24bit/96KHz while the Fireface 800 supports up to 24bit/192KHz. Also, the Multiface does not have the preamps that the Fireface has. It's just up to you to decide if you need those preamps and the higher sampling frequencies.

P.S I use Nuendo with Reason Rewired on a desktop Pc (Win XP) plus Virus C via Midi . I will also use this setup on a PC laptop that I will buy soon (any suggestions about that? what laptop works with the Fireface 800?)

Well, it's not really a question of what laptop works with it. Any reasonably spec'd laptop should work just fine. The one problem you would run into is that (most) laptops do not yet have Firewire 800 ports...only Firewire 400. To use the Fireface 800, you would need to buy a Firewire 800 PCMCIA (CardBus) adapter card to use on the notebook.

 

[vibralux]

Thanks guys,

That cleared a lot to me. I wanted to go with the RME since the beginning but the fricken salesman have seeded some doubt in my fragile soul ;-) He was a two faced motha.... indeed. Can You imagine? We were doing an A/B test with motu traveler and fireface) in a nice studio (Adam's monitors, tlaudio valve board) and first we were doing a listening session of my tunes. Once we switched to motu the guy yelled after thee seconds, during which he might hear two bass notes and a snare: "O h yeah, thats better, now it sounds good, I can clearly hear". Common- he wanted to sell the motu so badly, that I thought he would give me a head. Then I knew that new motu is a hoax;-0. But serioulsy- the difference were not that big. RME was a little more open and liked the bottom better, but it was not like day and night.


Cheers

MArty

PS As for the laptop Firewire port- I can still use the Fireface 800 with the Firewire 400 if I wanted to right? It would just be a slower data transfer or is it totally incompatibile?

 

[SBax]

I have the RME FF 800 and 400 speed works fine. In fact my MoBo FW port only goes to 400. I think most MoBo are only 400 and you would need a fast FW PCI card to get to 800. But, you only need 800 if you have all the inputs at 192 KHz or something like that. Download the FF 800 manual from the RME website, it explains all that The RME software mixer control panel is amazing. I use Sonar. Never had a crash. I monitor with Mackie HR 824 and my home stereo is pretty decent to double check mixes. I know my home stereo very well and have lots of SACD and DVD-Audio discs. I used to use a Roland digital mixer before so I know the difference in convertors. There is difference in the high and and a little in the low that I can hear but there wasn't a giant wow. I can recommend the FF800 for the software mixer and driver stability but I don't know the Motu at all.

 

[sile2001]

Then I knew that new motu is a hoax;-0. But serioulsy- the difference were not that big. RME was a little more open and liked the bottom better, but it was not like day and night.

Well I wouldn't go as far as to say the Traveler is a hoax... It is a very good piece of equipment. My Motu 828mkII is basically a less portable version of the same thing, and it is an excellent product for what I paid for it. The RME is just higher quality gear at a higher price.

PS As for the laptop Firewire port- I can still use the Fireface 800 with the Firewire 400 if I wanted to right? It would just be a slower data transfer or is it totally incompatibile?

SBax is right that you can use it with the Firewire 400 interface. You will just need to get a cable that has the 400 connector on one end and the 800 connector on the other (count on them to use different connectors... )

 

[mikedaul]

Just throwing in another thought on the fw800 thing... so far as I know, there are currently NO laptops that have 64-bit cardbus slots, so as I understand it even if you use a fw800 cardbus interface, you are still only going to get fw400 speeds out of it (due to the 32-bit bus).

The latest g4 powerbooks do in fact have fw800 on board, fwiw.

 

[sile2001]

Just throwing in another thought on the fw800 thing... so far as I know, there are currently NO laptops that have 64-bit cardbus slots, so as I understand it even if you use a fw800 cardbus interface, you are still only going to get fw400 speeds out of it (due to the 32-bit bus).

The latest g4 powerbooks do in fact have fw800 on board, fwiw.

Not exactly true. A standard 32 bit, 33MHz PCI bus is capable of a theoretical sustained transfer rate of 127.2MBytes/sec, while the fw800 bus is capable of a theoretical sustained transfer rate of 100MBytes/sec. Some simple algebra shows that (800Mbits/sec) * (1byte/8bits) = 100MBytes/sec. So dealing with theoretical maximums, the standard PCI bus is still fast enough to handle the full bandwidth of a fw800 interface.

 

[Solafide]

I would defininetly recomend the fireface over the Motu stuff.

I had a 2408mk3 before getting a fireface. There is a clear improvement in the converters. If you want to compare a MOTU product to the fireface it would be the hd192 (if I remember right they use the same a/d converters). As for drivers - there is no comparison. You might have to wait a few weeks for an update from RME on known issues, With MOTU try waiting years!!

Also, as has been noted, fw400 is all you need for the fireface, fw800 is only necissary if you are using more than one fireface chained together.

 

[vibralux]

Thanks for advice- I just ordered this monster ;-)

Peace

Marty