Product: MOTU 2408mk3
Price Paid: UNKNOWN
Submitted
09/02/2008
at
05:11am
by
Bill Ruys
Email: bill<dot>ruys at siliconaudio<dot>co<dot>nz
General
:
7
The 2408 Mk3 is MOTU's 3rd generation 1U Rackmount analog/digital audio interface. When the original 2408 came out some 10 years ago, nothing came close to it for the wealth of digital & analog connectivity. The basic configuration of the 2408 has remained pretty much the same, but the audio specs have improved.
The rackmount unit connects to the computer via a card which is available in either PCIe or PCIX, (PCIe-424 or PCIX-424 respectively).
The unit has 5-segment LED level meters for the 8 analog inputs and outputs, plus three banks of LEDs to show digital activity for each of the 3 banks. Each bank can be configured for ADAT or TDIF connectivity. The built-in ADC/DACs will occupy one of the banks if used, leaving two free for digital I/O.
The PCIe/PCIX card has enough DSP horsepower to perform mixing from up to 4 rack units. You can have a separate stereo mix on every output pair you have available. This means you can mix up to 48 separate stereo mixes if you feel so inclined, all at near-zero latency. The mixing applet is called CueMix DSP and is very flexible and powerful.
The case is die-cast alloy with clear plastic windows on the front where the meters and other indicator LEDs are mounted. The front panel hosts a 1/4" headphone socket, headphone level knob and monitor level knob that controls the volume of a separate pair of outputs which mirror the output of channels 1 & 2.
There are two rubber push buttons on the front panel, One selects the metering mode and one allows you to select between the two groups of sample rates, 44.1/48 or 88.2/96.
Last but not least is the power switch.
Connectivity
:
No Opinion
Connection between the rack unit & PCIe/PCIX card is made with a standard FireWire cable. The included cable is approximately 5 metres long and excellent quality. MOTU say that this cable can be up to 60 feet. It's important to note that despite the cable used, the MOTU card is not FireWire. It uses a proprietary protocol called "AudioWire".
I/O
:
10
All analog I/O is via 1/4" balanced TRS. Inputs can be switched between +4dBu/-10dBV. Outputs are fixed at +4dBu. There are 3 sets of ADAT lightpipe and three sets of TDIF. In addition to the usual coax S/PDIF I/O, there is an additional coax output. There are a pair of BNC wordclock connectors allowing you drive or slave to other digital devices.
Unlike a lot of combo interfaces available today, there are no mic preamps and no midi I/O.
Power
:
7
The unit is powered with an in-built power supply. There's a switch on the side of the case allowing you to use the unit at 110/120 or 230/240 volts. The power supply is a traditional transformer based setup as opposed to the switch-mode supplies often found these days. The transformer is toroidal, which should reduce EMF. I find there is more buzz from the transformer than you would normally expect. This seems to be quite a common complaint with these units.
Technical specs
:
6
The converters in the 2408 Mk3 max out at 96KHz, which I guess seems low these days with more and more units offering 192 KHz sampling rates. MOTU publishes the SNR at 108 dB (A weighted), but in loopback tests it scores more like 100 dB. In real-world tests, it has a higher noise floor and lower dynamic range than my ageing M-Audio Delta 1010.
PC drivers are pretty good (ASIO and WDM). I have used the unit on XP Pro, XP 64-bit Edition and Vista 64-bit Edition with no real problems.
Other
:
No Opinion
A basic Mac-based DAW (AudioDesk) is bundled in with the unit, but there is nothing offered for the PC.
With all that I/O, the unit can also do stand-alone format conversion, which could be useful if you have legacy MDMs in your studio.
Overall
:
6
The 2408 Mk3 is still a fantastic piece of gear when it comes to connectivity. However, the ADCs/DACs are pretty average by today's standards. The unit is pretty reliable, but another common problem is that the rack unit is not always recognised when the PC boots, requiring a restart before you can start working. Also, if you often work with different sample rates, switching between the lower rates (44.1/48) and the higher rates (88.2/96) can be a chore with some applications, as you need to switch rates before launching your DAW.
On a modern quad-core PC, I can reliably run at around 5.8 ms latency. Much lower than that and pops and clicks become a problem. As a comparison, I can take my old Delta cards down to 2 ms without too much trouble.
