• Registered: 2024-08-18
  • Posts: 8

Topic: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

Current setup:

MOTU 828ES with 2x ADAT to 2x MOTU 8PRE

Proposed setup:

UFX III with 2x ADATs to 2x MOTU 8PRE

What has been your experience with regards to

- Usability.  The Motu matrix is a bit convoluted for my simple brain, but I can get around
- Sound quality.  I imagine not a big difference?  Don't know
- Any Noise Issues.  I am getting a bit of ground noise in my current setup and have tried all kinds of things (cables, hum eliminators, power boards with noise reduction etc)

I like Motu, good company, served me well, but looking at other options.

Thanks!

2 Reply by ramses (edited by ramses 2024-08-18 16:10:35)

  • ramses
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: UTC+1
  • Registered: 2012-10-14
  • Posts: 13,194

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

Hi Steve, welcome to the RME user forum.

I try to answer your question as good and honest as I can. I migrated from Focusrite to RME many years ago.

To answer your questions briefly: you won't be disappointed! Sound quality is excellent and the DSP mixer TotalMix FS is the best I ever saw, a very stable and mature product. One product for all recording interfaces since over 20y. Lag free and which gives you a lot of flexibility.

My experience to this topic:

Many manufacturers have to make many compromises in their device design (including drivers and software). This is the only way to sell a product as a mass-produced item based on price.
Product lifecycles are then often shorter. Since external developers are typically used, there is not much product maintenance once a project is completed (short product lifecycle).

RME takes a different approach. Here you get professional devices that are designed with great attention to detail and are even improved over the years through firmware and software updates. This is possible by design, as RME uses FPGA ("programmable CPUs") which can be reflashed with new code. Nevertheless, they are still affordable and give you an excellent value.

There are simply too many details in which RME sets itself apart from the competition in terms of quality for me to keep re-typing them.

That's why I wrote this blog article on the subject. I just made some updates.
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … -aug-2024/

My setup and use cases you can look-up in several blog articles, a good overview you can get here:
https://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/ent … iii-en-de/

BR Ramses - UFX III, 12Mic, XTC, ADI-2 Pro FS R BE, RayDAT, X10SRi-F, E5-1680v4, Win10Pro22H2, Cub14
  • Registered: 2024-08-18
  • Posts: 8

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

Thank you so much for the responses Ramses.

Hey one thing I like on the MOTU is the Noise Gate and Compression per channel (like a digital channel strip).

Does the UFX III have that?  I do find noise gates useful.

I am going to look at your articles, thank you.

4 Reply by waedi (edited by waedi 2024-08-19 02:03:05)

  • waedi
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: Swiss Zürich
  • Registered: 2020-12-08
  • Posts: 4,541

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

In this MOTU Is this Gate in the recording path or only in the monitoring ?
RME has EQ and dynamics in the Totalmix monitoring and you can switch it ON for the recording path in the driver Settings.
Gate is at the moment not part of Totalmix, but who knows...?
Would be a good thing especially when we can switch it ON or OFF for the recording path.
But I think some customers will immediately complain the gate is not good because it has no individual thresholds for individual frequency bands...

M1-Sequoia, Madiface Pro, Digiface USB, Babyface silver and blue
  • Registered: 2024-08-18
  • Posts: 8

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

waedi wrote:

In this MOTU Is this Gate in the recording path or only in the monitoring ?
RME has EQ and dynamics in the Totalmix monitoring and you can switch it ON for the recording path in the driver Settings.
Gate is at the moment not part of Totalmix, but who knows...?
Would be a good thing especially when we can switch it ON or OFF for the recording path.
But I think some customers will immediately complain the gate is not good because it has no individual thresholds for individual frequency bands...

Hi Waedi!

So the MOTU can have the gate for monitoring path, or for recording path.

I personally use it for the monitoring path only.  For recording I use a gate (when required) in my DAW (Cubase Pro).

That is possibly the only thing I would miss in the UFX III however friends are telling me I can use the compressor on the UFX III as a gate, something about a DYNAMICS setting?

And yeah a simple gate on each channel for the RME would make this a no brainer for me and possibly other folks too.

  • Registered: 2024-08-18
  • Posts: 8

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

Hey so I am moving to the TOTAL MIX sub forum to ask questions about this.

https://forum.rme-audio.de/viewtopic.php?id=39988

Happy to delete this origin thread if required.

  • From: Germany, Tuvalu, Poland, Chile
  • Registered: 2021-07-27
  • Posts: 473

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

That is possibly the only thing I would miss in the UFX III however friends are telling me I can use the compressor on the UFX III as a gate, something about a DYNAMICS setting?

Yes, your friends are right. Thats how i use it, too...
So, you can do this via the expander in the dynamics section in Totalmix. In my opinion, even more detailed adjustable than a gate. 

Afaik, a gate is more like a binary on/of switch. lt reacts to the signal by its predetermined range amount lowering the signal by the range value once crossing the threshold.
While an expander is more like a variable gain control. It reacts to the signal by its ratio amount lowering the signal by the ratio value once crossing the threshold.

But there may be use cases, you espacially want the "hard on/off cut"...

“Do It For Her”
My Gear: Bontempi Magic light Keyboard
  • Registered: 2024-08-18
  • Posts: 8

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

Oh wow!  Thanks Maggie, this goes well with the other info I got.  I was going to delete this thread as it kind of duplicates but there i good information in both that someone else might benefit from.

  • mkok
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2020-11-04
  • Posts: 632

Re: Anyone moved from MOTU to RME and what is your experience?

I did a lot of research when I got my RME interface. The big one for me was that people had interfaces that were nearly 20 years old and still supported on modern operating systems. The interface I had back then and the one after had lost support for drivers long ago. That sort of support is worth it alone.

Babyface Pro Fs, Behringer ADA8200, win 10/11 PCs, Cubase/Wavelab, Adam A7X monitors.