To those more learned than myself,
I'm in the middle of designing a DAW for my music department here at ACI. We've selected almost all components and about ready to start ordering parts so I can build the machine (it will run on Win XP Prof. and Vegas 3), with one small exception. The original proposal I submitted called for two Aardvark Q10's. However, the department chair recently became enamored with the MOTU 896. I've done a fair amount of research on both, and understand they have their advantages and disadvantages. The Q10 has a more accurate clock, a hardware DSP built into the PCI card, and it's only 1U wide (versus 2U on the 896). The 896 uses the firewire bus (which frees up PCI slots), and it can sample at 96kHZ, versus 48kHz on the Q10 (but both are 24 bit, and it's not like 48kHz sounds bad). Other than that they're really similar (although the Aardvark is considerably cheaper).
Here's the catch... I've never owned either, and research and white papers doesn't amount to squat when actually using the stuff. From what I've read in this forum and others, Aardvark has outstanding tech support and fantastic drivers, while MOTU tech support and drivers are considered a joke in the PC world. Is this true? If so, could you tell me about your experiences? I know some of you have used MOTU interfaces before. Are they all just plain difficult to use? Or do they just take time to set up properly before they work without a hitch? How about Aardvark? Do any of you have experience with their hardware? I’ve designed this system to be able to last for years into the future, and to run with minimal supervision, since I’ll be graduating in two years. It needs to be stable enough to be run by less-experienced users. I feel fine about the other decisions I made, but frankly, this MOTU thing makes me really nervous. I’m ready to tell the department that I won’t endorse using the MOTU, but am I jumping to conclusions? Any kind of help you folks can offer would be much appreciated.
Regards,
Nick LaMartina
I'm in the middle of designing a DAW for my music department here at ACI. We've selected almost all components and about ready to start ordering parts so I can build the machine (it will run on Win XP Prof. and Vegas 3), with one small exception. The original proposal I submitted called for two Aardvark Q10's. However, the department chair recently became enamored with the MOTU 896. I've done a fair amount of research on both, and understand they have their advantages and disadvantages. The Q10 has a more accurate clock, a hardware DSP built into the PCI card, and it's only 1U wide (versus 2U on the 896). The 896 uses the firewire bus (which frees up PCI slots), and it can sample at 96kHZ, versus 48kHz on the Q10 (but both are 24 bit, and it's not like 48kHz sounds bad). Other than that they're really similar (although the Aardvark is considerably cheaper).
Here's the catch... I've never owned either, and research and white papers doesn't amount to squat when actually using the stuff. From what I've read in this forum and others, Aardvark has outstanding tech support and fantastic drivers, while MOTU tech support and drivers are considered a joke in the PC world. Is this true? If so, could you tell me about your experiences? I know some of you have used MOTU interfaces before. Are they all just plain difficult to use? Or do they just take time to set up properly before they work without a hitch? How about Aardvark? Do any of you have experience with their hardware? I’ve designed this system to be able to last for years into the future, and to run with minimal supervision, since I’ll be graduating in two years. It needs to be stable enough to be run by less-experienced users. I feel fine about the other decisions I made, but frankly, this MOTU thing makes me really nervous. I’m ready to tell the department that I won’t endorse using the MOTU, but am I jumping to conclusions? Any kind of help you folks can offer would be much appreciated.
Regards,
Nick LaMartina