Presonus or MOTU?

  • Thread starter Thread starter elenore19
  • Start date Start date

Which one?

  • MOTU 8PRE 16x12 FireWire Audio Interface

    Votes: 39 48.8%
  • Presonus FP10 10x10 FireWire Recording Interface

    Votes: 24 30.0%
  • Neither. Choose this one that I'll suggest...

    Votes: 17 21.3%

  • Total voters
    80
Just to provide a contrasting view, I've been using a Presonus Firepod for a couple of years now. It was dead easy to install and has run faultlessly since then. Latency has not been an issue, nor has quality of sound.

There is no argument that the motu has lower latency per buffer size than the firepod. That said, the firepod if it can be gotten cheap, with a return policy, is a good unit, and very conveniently laid out with headphone and main controls in easy reach.
 
So the majority leans towards the MOTU? After reading some things about presonus' CS I am inclined to buy the MOTU's, also cause it's black...

But the other thing I was reading about the presonus (firepod) in a few reviews was that the pre's were dull sounding, and actually got worse as you added more channels. There was also a comment to the effect that the midrange was not well represented overall.

For those of you who have used both MOTU and Presonus, can you describe the difference in sound or tone, if in fact you perceived any?

Thanks... I am about to drop $ on a laptop to get a really portable recording rig - hauling around this Korg D1600mkII has gotten old - and came here looking for answers to the same q the OP had posed.
 
If you can avoid it, don't force yourself into this dichotomy (choosing between these two brands) - there are a lot of manufacturers making a lot of units with different price, features, and and quality -- definitely check out interfaces from RME and Echo, for instance. Further, the folks who can boast of the best signal chains tend to have separate components for each of the functions I associate with an interface (preamp, A/D, D/A, clock, etc.).

I have a low end interface from Presonus (Inspire 1394) and a mid-range unit from MOTU (traveler), and use them both on macs. I'm not aware that I've experienced any meanginful latency or software problems with either of them. I recently picked up a Digi 001 for a total of about $50 (got the breakout box and card in different places), and boy howdy, on XP there's some serious latency. But whatever.

The Inspire is totally entry level, and the pres are pretty noisy once you turn up the gain about halfway -- nevertheless, I got some good tracks with a high sensitivity mic and the gain set low (and with digital recording, low gain is good, since you can always boost it digitally). The MOTU pres were much higher gain and quieter, but didn't have a great sound, and one of them went bad. I sent the unit (my second, after getting one replacement from MOTU) to Black Lion Audio, who modified the analog stages in it, and I also picked up their microclock - since then, I couldn't be happier with it (at least I don't think so :) ) And I still don't feel qualified to opine on which of the two companies is better or worse, having experience only with these two interfaces.

Make sure to read up on the other alternatives.
 
When latency, stability and proper throughput are the criteria you really are stuck with motu and rme.Others makme occaisional inroads, but this is where we are ATM at least with firewire stuff...pci is another matter
 
So the majority leans towards the MOTU? After reading some things about presonus' CS I am inclined to buy the MOTU's, also cause it's black...

But the other thing I was reading about the presonus (firepod) in a few reviews was that the pre's were dull sounding, and actually got worse as you added more channels. There was also a comment to the effect that the midrange was not well represented overall.

For those of you who have used both MOTU and Presonus, can you describe the difference in sound or tone, if in fact you perceived any?

Thanks... I am about to drop $ on a laptop to get a really portable recording rig - hauling around this Korg D1600mkII has gotten old - and came here looking for answers to the same q the OP had posed.


I haven't used both, just presonus. Pres dull-sounding? I've not noticed this. Worse with more channels? Not evident. Mid range not represented? Not evident. An A-B comparison with another device might reveal things, but at the moment, Presonus is delivering the goods.
 
If I was running a Mac, I'd look at the Duet or Ensemble. Bought a Duet recently for a friend and it's a really elegant, solid bit of gear. For PC, I'd be looking at RME or possibly Echo if I wasn't in the RME price bracket.
 
I use a presonus firestudio 26x26 interface, with a presonus digimax fs adat'ed through that for 16 simultaneous inputs. I completely ignore latency issues and use the largest possible buffer for stability insurance. I directly monitor my incoming signals and use nuendo's recording latency adjustment to compensate for output latency. Granted I have had a few snags, especially when recording a full 16 tracks at 48k, but I'm pretty sure it has more to do with the fact that my notebook only have 1 gig of ram at the moment. Need to upgrade that soon.
 
512 megs of ram will be far more than enough to record 24 24 bit 96khz tracks at once
 
really? maybe it is the drivers then...well it's something to look into...i'm probably going to upgrade ram anyway for the purposes of mixing and plugin usage. I've gotten into some projects where I've had over 48 tracks at times, and when you start using a bit of eq hear and there, compressors on certain parts, some auto-tune, reverbs, etc...it adds up quickly
 
The firestudio is a Dice II unit, you can increase ram till the cows come home and it will still be a Dice-II
 
really? maybe it is the drivers then...well it's something to look into...i'm probably going to upgrade ram anyway for the purposes of mixing and plugin usage. I've gotten into some projects where I've had over 48 tracks at times, and when you start using a bit of eq hear and there, compressors on certain parts, some auto-tune, reverbs, etc...it adds up quickly

True enough. Some EQ plug-ins can eat lots of CPU cycles, and AutoTune is a big fat pig. That's just plain overloading your CPU.
 
Black Lion does some affordable mods on MOTU gear. I have a modded 896HD and have no desire to upgrade any time soon...
 
That's pretty funny stuff ... sad, but funny:D


um...no. Entirely incorrect. If you want to run the same stuff as the pros you'll buy neither, and spend most of your time on internet forums slagging BOTH Presonus and MOTU products.
 
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I've owned both I had two presonus and two motu8pres and the Motu was better - easier to daisy chain or adat while the presonus had no official daisy chain support and often crashed. The drivers for the presonus sucks too. The motu interface has been great, so great I will be getting another one this year (09)

:)
 
ive gotten 2 firepods for the price of one motu new, so i would say the firepod was a better deal for me ;)

i track with input monitoring all the time @ 2ms (According to the firepod) and never experience a problem...
 
PreSonus...

I run a PreSonus FireStudio 2626 and DigiMax FS with the optional Monitor Station Remote (MSR). I can't speak to MOTU, RME, or any others, I went right from a Roland VS-2400 to these and haven't used any of the other interfaces.

I know that the Dice-II chipset caused a lot of problems with DAW compatibility at first, especially with Sonar, but PreSonus seems to have made progress in straightening out their drivers. Subscribing to the if it ain't broke, don't fix it philosophy, I have not upgraded to these new drivers myself. I use Reaper as my DAW and when I built my computer I did so specifically using components that were listed on the PreSonus site as known to be compatible. I can record 16 tracks at 96kHz/24 bit without even noticing latency. As far as the pre's, I can hear a (positive) difference from the VS, but again I have never used any of the others so I have no basis for comparing.

The PreSonus comes with control panel software that is not exactly the most intuitive to use, but once you change the labeling to friendly names you can start making sense of it and you really can route stuff all over the place. The MSR is also really nice too, it's like a built in Big Knob but it doesn't affect audio quality since it connects to the FireStudio via Ethernet.

When I was first building this rig I was comparing MOTU and PreSonus and I thought that PreSonus offered more bang for my (limited) buck. Hope this helps.

-Wes
 
Only have experience with presonus but can definately say my firepod has been reliable and amazing for the money since day 1:)
 
I have used the Presonus FP10 to track drums, 8 simultaneous tracks. I had no problems with latency. my goal is to just get the signal into Sonar and in time. I've also recorded guitars and again no latency issues. I use a dual core Gateway laptop and I can say I am very happy with the results. I have recorded in various studios and while this set-up is pretty simple, so much of the work now-a-days is done with the tracks after the recording/performance is complete.

now I haven't matched up the FP10 with RME or MOTU products, but I can say that I haven't felt the need to because the objective of the FP10 has been satisfactory for me: get the tracking done in a consistent (and in-time) manner.

here is another thing: if you can't hear any latency in the monitoring, then what is the problem?
 
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