MOTU 8Pre

The most important aspect of an audio interface is of course the preamp and sound conversion quality, which are both very decent and okay. Sound quality-wise there's really nothing complain about, as is the matter with virtually any audio interface in the ~500 €/$ price range. Also, the MOTU drivers are okay and they work. And what is remarkable about any MOTU interface, is that they are less picky about the Firewire chipset than most their competitors. A year ago I recorded some drums with a MOTU rack featuring this very device I'm reviewing, on an Acer laptop using Vista. Everything worked beautifully.

That said, the 500€$£ price bracket offers usability-wise seriously more versatile alternatives to the 8Pre with marginal price difference. The number of inputs is on par with any similar device, but the number of outputs is significantly low. There's only a stereo line out pair and a headphone output. 8 analog outs and 2 headphone outs is not at all uncommon, as a comparison to a popular configuration in competing audio interfaces.

I had trouble at first getting system sounds out, until I figured that my driver settings where at 48khz. My previous interface changed the clocking automatically. The headphone volume control doubles as a clock switch - it says volume/clock (push) - but pushing it seems to do nothing. Trying to control the volume is unstable and unpredictable, since this is not a mechanical potentiometer, but a digital controller. All this makes me wonder if the device I have has a defective control knob.

Each channel has two switches in the front panel, a pad switch and a phantom. The switches are designed vintage style. They are metallic and require some finger strength to turn. They turn with a loud unpleasant snap. They feel like breaking any time, if overused. I'm not a fan of them.

I feel that in a home studio setting the workflow benefits from at least a couple of the mic inputs to be located in the front panel. In MOTU's case they are all in the back. It creates a threshold to quickly grab a guitar, plug it in and demo an idea.

As a verdict, I would say that in the 500$£€ price bracket the focus is largely on usability, in which this otherwise decent quality interface is subpar.