Tascam FW-1884 vs. MOTU 896HD

[Albert]

The Tascam is a recently released product, and it will take them a while to sort out the various bugs and issues. Do a search on the net. It took about a year and a half of OS updates to get their DM-24 mixer up to speed.

If it was me I'd go for the MOTU, but you really are comparing two different kinds of products.

[edmann]

I have heard several times that the FW 1884 AD/DA sounds Really Great, most likely because it has an analog front end built (by or with) Frontier Designs (People seem to love their "Tango" box)

I recently had a MOTU 896 version 1. It was OK with mics (with or w/o external pres) - but for recording feeds from a mixer (synths) at 48k - 44.1k - it sounded not very good at all. Reportedly this is due to gain staging - even though the 896 has +4 and -10 selector switches. So I would say the 896 is a very specialized box = mics only if you want the best it has to offer. I was much happier with the results from my old 2408 mkII for line level feeds. Look at the RME stuff too - reportedly a significant step up from the MOTU sound. Motu's greatest strength (imo) is its stability and wealth of features for the price. The RME stuff too is quite stable too although if you are running DP - use MOTU stuff.

good luck in your search

Ed