New York, NY (February 9, 2024)—One of the products on display at NAMM was the newly redesigned MOTU 828 Audio Interface. The 828 has long been a mainstay in MOTU’s interface lineup. Like its predecessors, the new 828 ($995) is a 1U rackmount device with mic inputs on the front and a wide range of I/O on the back.
“The 828 has been an incredibly successful brand for MOTU,” says the company’s marketing director, Jim Cooper. “We shipped the very first one in 2001. That was the first firewire audio interface ever.”
In the intervening years, MOTU periodically updated the 828. It even released “Hybrid” versions that supported Firewire and USB. The new 828 retains its older siblings’ name, size and mission but has been completely redesigned for today’s audio environment. Cooper says supply chain issues stemming from the Covid pandemic were part of the impetus for the 828’s ground-up revamp. “COVID affected us just like it did everybody else. It made sense to re-engineer and use parts we knew could get a decent supply of moving forward.”
Compatible with Mac, Windows and iOS, the 828 features USB 3 (5Gbps) connectivity and low-latency, high-performance drivers. Its analog and digital inputs and outputs can support up to 28 in and 32 out. The I/O includes a pair of front-panel Mic/Line/Hi-Z combo jacks with mic preamps that provide up to 74 dB of gain. In addition to 48V phantom power, a -20 dB pad and a polarity invert switch, each input channel is equipped with a send/return insert jack for connecting outboard hardware. Also on the front are two independently addressable 1/4-inch TRS headphone jacks and control room features such as Talkback, Mono, Mute and monitor switching.
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The back panel I/O incorporates eight channels of TRS inputs and outputs, a pair of XLR Main Outputs, two sets of ADAT optical I/O and stereo S/PDIF ports on RCA connectors. MIDI In, Out and Thru ports on DIN connectors and BNC Word Clock in and out are also included. A footswitch jack allows for hands-free punching in and out (footswitch not included).
At the heart of the unit is its DSP-based 24-input digital mixer. It supports eight stereo busses and features effects such as reverb, EQ, gating and compression. It allows for creating separate stereo cue mixes for each TRS output pair. You can control the unit using its front panel knobs, switches and 3.9-inch color LCD, or use the free CueMix 5 software for Mac, Windows and iOS, which can additionally control the unit wirelessly from an iOS device or networked computer.
For podcasting and live streaming, the 828 sports two loopback channels to which you can route any combination of live and recorded channels. The unit also offers support for reamping guitars. Using the CueMix 5 software, the signal from a guitar connected to one of the combo inputs can be simultaneously routed to a DAW input channel and an analog line output. The latter can then be connected to a reamping box (not included), plugged into an amp and recorded back into another DAW track.
Those are just some of the features of the new 828. Find out more on the MOTU website.
