Ordered a M4 Mac Mini today. Need a new interface.

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

Started this thread almost a year ago. (par for the course for me. my gear feet are stuck in the mud compared to most of you)

Need to rebuild home studio. Mac Mini content...

I'm at the point (beyond it really) where this computer is making me want to throat punch strangers. Current setup: Hackintosh (dual boot for Windows) i5 2500k (2011). Focusrite Saffire Pro 14 (and 24) firewire. Yes, firewire (stop laughing) 2 x 24 inch VGA/DVI monitors, and 40" TV via HDMI...

thegearforum.com

Ordered the base model today. 32" monitor, 2TB external drive, and a thunderbolt 4 dock for extra ports.
Thinking about getting a MOTU M6, but am interested in other options. My needs here are modest. Minimum of 2 mic inputs and 2 line inputs. The MOTU has 4 Mic/Line inputs and 2 line inputs.

I'll probably spring for Logic once I'm up and running. Hard to beat for 2 bills.

Interface suggestions welcome.

 

[PatF]

MOTU is a solid bet. They've had their shit together for a very long time. 4 line outs is important if you want to reamp or have an effects loop.

 

[JiveTurkey]

Good on you! The new Mac minis are priced so good!

 

[FuzzyAce]

I'm sure the M6 will be just fine.
My Motu M4 has been very solid.

 

[Allexi]

I had a MOTU M4 with M1 mac for a long time. It is really a safe bet. Very good latency, stability and mix/playback knob, good sound from it too.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

Thanks guys.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

MOTU is a solid bet. They've had their shit together for a very long time. 4 line outs is important if you want to reamp or have an effects loop.

I had Digital Performer back in the PowerMac G3/G4 days. Liked it back then. But I can't see it being $300 better than Logic for my uses.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

Good on you! The new Mac minis are priced so good!

I hate them for their upgrade prices. But I'll just get external storage. And I'll be fine with stock ram since they doubled the previous gen.

 

[2dor]

I had a MOTU M4 for a good while. It's a decent interface but their specs don't always match how the interfaces measure.

 

[Sascha Franck]

I use a Motu M2. It's pretty much by far the best in its class regarding low latency. The Hi-Z inputs seem to be pretty decent, too. So using software amp sims is a breeze.

However, some things:

- Latency isn't reported correctly. Not by much but it's still 45 samples, roughly 1ms at 44.1kHz. As a result, it'll show 2.5ms (at 32 samples) in your DAW's driver dialog when it's in fact 3.5ms (still the best value in that price range).
Another result of that is a recording offset. So anything you record will be late by 45 samples. Again, usually nothing critical (unless you are Steve Vai or Donald Fagen...). And most DAWs also allow you to compensate for that globally (at least Logic does), so it's a set-once-and-forget thing.
Still, I have been in contact with Motu's support (nice guy who really answered each and every time) ever since May 2024 and they didn't fix this throughout 2 driver updates. That's a bit of a shame.

- No onboard mixing/monitoring tool. This is quite a bit of a lousy affair should you ever need to monitor with just the interface but not your hardware. The M2/M4s don't even have a single playback/input mixing pot (which the M6 has, but I think it's global for all inputs, which is pretty bad too). Yes, there's a monitoring switch for each input, but the level depends on your trim pot, so using that to dial in your monitoring level rather than your recording level would be stupid (which is why I split my signal beforehand and use input 1 for recording, input 2 for monitoring).

If all that is fine for you, go for it. It is for me - but there's certainly a bit of a sour taste coming along with it.

 

[Dave Lewis]

The new SSD Mac Mini’s are brilliant and really cheap Cost effective
I started using Mac Mini’s back in 2012 for music servers .
My original 2012 & 2014 Mac Minis are still going strong as my digital jukebox .
I bought the black version the year before apple started using there own chip and that’s brilliant as a server for music and films in my bedroom
I forgot to add I don’t actually store any music of movies on the Macs that’s all on SSD drives and HDs as are the backups .

 

[FuzzyAce]

I use a Motu M2. It's pretty much by far the best in its class regarding low latency. The Hi-Z inputs seem to be pretty decent, too. So using software amp sims is a breeze.

However, some things:

- Latency isn't reported correctly. Not by much but it's still 45 samples, roughly 1ms at 44.1kHz. As a result, it'll show 2.5ms (at 32 samples) in your DAW's driver dialog when it's in fact 3.5ms (still the best value in that price range).
Another result of that is a recording offset. So anything you record will be late by 45 samples. Again, usually nothing critical (unless you are Steve Vai or Donald Fagen...). And most DAWs also allow you to compensate for that globally (at least Logic does), so it's a set-once-and-forget thing.
Still, I have been in contact with Motu's support (nice guy who really answered each and every time) ever since May 2024 and they didn't fix this throughout 2 driver updates. That's a bit of a shame.

- No onboard mixing/monitoring tool. This is quite a bit of a lousy affair should you ever need to monitor with just the interface but not your hardware. The M2/M4s don't even have a single playback/input mixing pot (which the M6 has, but I think it's global for all inputs, which is pretty bad too). Yes, there's a monitoring switch for each input, but the level depends on your trim pot, so using that to dial in your monitoring level rather than your recording level would be stupid (which is why I split my signal beforehand and use input 1 for recording, input 2 for monitoring.

If all that is fine for you, go for it. It is for me - but there's certainly a bit of a sour taste coming along with it.

I run the Motu M4 and usually record at 48kHz, and will set at 64 samples when tracking. Latency normally shows 1.88ms. This is running multiple instances of HX Native too. Although running other resource hungry plugins simultaneously can push that number up.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Latency normally shows 1.88ms.

That's just the output value (shows the same over here, for RTL numbers you need to know the input latency as well) and as said, it's wrong as Motu's driver is reporting the wrong value.
If you feel like, you can measure it yourself, just connect one output to one input and use the Oblique RTL Utility. It'll show both the numbers the driver reports and the actual measured latencies.
Fwiw, this is confirmed by the Motu support dude.

Although running other resource hungry plugins simultaneously can push that number up.

The reported number should stay the same all the time, unless you change your buffersize (or samplerate). Sure, some plugins will add their own latency, but that number isn't reported in a driver dialog (but for the plugins themselves, sometimes shown in your DAW), which will be adressed by your DAWs latency compensation on playback.

 

[KHAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!!!!!!]

- No onboard mixing/monitoring tool. This is quite a bit of a lousy affair should you ever need to monitor with just the interface but not your hardware.

Sascha, I haven't done much recording in quite a while, and am hoping start doing so with the new rig. But a huge part of my usage is controlled by Saffire MixControl. The old firewire interfaces by Focusrite.

I have my FM9 in inputs 1/2 (mic inputs), a Roku TV output in inputs 3/4 (Line inputs), and YouTube/podcasts etc coming out of what MixControl calls "DAW 1+2". I'm always muting and adjusting volumes on the various inputs depending on what I'm listening to at the time.

Would I be able to set up a simple project with the included Digital Performer Lite with 3 stereo tracks to do the same thing? I really haven't sat with a DAW in about 10 years. so sorry if this is a dumb question.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Sascha, I haven't done much recording in quite a while, and am hoping start doing so with the new rig. But a huge part of my usage is controlled by Saffire MixControl. The old firewire interfaces by Focusrite.

I'm afraid that in case you're use to that (and make use of the MixControl features), the M-series Motus won't make you all that happy.

I have my FM9 in inputs 1/2 (mic inputs), a Roku TV output in inputs 3/4 (Line inputs), and YouTube/podcasts etc coming out of what MixControl calls "DAW 1+2". I'm always muting and adjusting volumes on the various inputs depending on what I'm listening to at the time.

This shouldn't be completely impossible, but more efforts are involved, such as not being able to properly level everything straight inside a single mixing tool. So you'll likely end up controlling your levels on the devices (or inside whatever application related software) rather than in one "consolidated" mixing UI.

Would I be able to set up a simple project with the included Digital Performer Lite with 3 stereo tracks to do the same thing?

Only sort of.
As said, it's not impossible but less comfortable.

A question: Do you have any plans to use software amp sims noticably often? Because if that's not the case, you very likely don't need the lowest possible latencies, something "in the ballpark" would be absolutely sufficient and I'd personally rather look for ease of daily handling. So you might want to have a look which other interfaces are out there. Most of them do in fact come with some sort of mixing control (the M-series are almost sort of an outlier here).
In fact, the lack of these functionalities in the M-series make me consider getting something else as well (or maybe at least reintegrate a little external mixer).

Whatever, with the M6 you'll be doing a lot better than with the M2/4s, simply because there's at least a blend pot to balance your playback and monitored channels, so it might not be too much of an issue. And apart from the mentioned issues it'll perform pretty well, so it'd still be a good bang for the buck. I'd still at least look around somewhere else, though, before making a decision.