MOTU 8pre-es 24x28 Thunderbolt Audio Interface Reviews

I have owned, and still own more than one interface. The Motu 8pre-es is my go to interface in my studio. It works flawlessly and produces excellent quality recorded audio. It has 8 pristine mic pres, 52 simultaneous audio channels; 24 inputs and 28 outputs, and choice of Thunderbolt, USB, or Ethernet connectivity. I have never had a single technical issue and that alone is a huge factor in a recording studio.

This worked perfectly for my home studio. Sounds amazing. Good I/O and Preamps

I wish someone would have clued me in on Motu products early on. I would've saved a lot of money buying interfaces that lacked the expansion I needed as I learned more and more about recording. This interface has fantastic converters that sound equal to or better than converters in interfaces that cost twice as much. It has very clean high headroom preamps and makes recording drums effortless. The digitally controllable preamps are great for adjusting levels from behind your drum kit with a phone or a tablet. The i/o, versatility and expansion potential makes this interface the most future proof at this price point. The latency monitoring directly through my DAW or through the onboard mixer is non-existent. If you're a guitarist and use a Kemper, OX box or any sort of digital modeling gear, the digital inputs on this interface are handy to avoid unnecessary conversion and get a clean signal.

If you are a Mac and PC user this interface is extra useful. I currently have mine connected directly to my Mac via AVB Ethernet and my PC using thunderbolt and can route audio effortlessly between the two of them. You can record to two daws at once, you can use USB connection to an iOS device to record better audio shooting video while also tracking into your daw. If you want to live stream as a drummer, everything you need is here. I have a PC I use for gaming and I can have it hooked up simultaneously with my Mac that I use for audio production and I don't have to unplug anything to quickly switch between them. Loopback functionality is fairly simple via the routing matrix. You can print the onboard dsp mixer effects going into your daw which speeds up mixing in post. The routing and set up require some reading of the included owners manual to wrap your head around it but once you figure it out it's a breeze to change things up. Motu has tons of support videos to make it all a little less overwhelming.

Motu has a great track record of supporting their interfaces and updating drivers for many years. Long after this interface is no longer supported it can still be used as as input expansion for future interfaces you may upgrade to, or even just as a mixer for band practice. Most importantly, you won't have to keep an outdated computer around to connect to the interface via some outdated connector (e.g. firewire) to maintain the usefulness of this device. A simple Ethernet cable and any device with a web browser is all you need to access the onboard mixer. Well done Motu, and good on you for making an affordable, professional grade product in the USA. And thank you Sweetwater for offering great deals on demo products when available. Buy with confidence

My sales engineer Will Newbill said the DAC was a very critical part of the mixing chain (other than monitors). He was right! This MOTU was a significant upgrade from my old M-Audio Profire 2626.

In 2001 I bought my very first interface, a MOTU 828 Firewire. How ironic exactly 20 years later I have another MOTU.

Great headphone outs, preamps, clocking, and conversion. Suprisingly assembled in USA
Just listening to music through the headphones is very enjoyable. But has helped make mixing much easier and better sounding.

Very good customer support from MOTU. I had a permissions window pop up during install on the Mac Mini M1. MOTU replied quickly with instruction for the extra step needed and I was good to go.

My only comment is regarding the internal Mixer and DSP. On my PC laptop connected via USB I created a 16 input mixer and added a compressor and eq on each channel. The mixer became laggy and would freeze up for 20 or 30 seconds. And the reverb was cheap sounding no matter how I tweaked it.

I ended up creating a 16 channel mixer in Studio One with plug ins on each channel. It seemed to worked fine. I had to set the buffer to 64 samples, but didn't notice too much latency.

It's very lightweight and does not need require power adapter. Standard IEC power cord plugs right into the back of the unit. I now use my Profire 2626 for an additional 8 mic pres into the MOTU via adat.

About as good as it gets in or around this price range.

I think this unit has exceptional bang for the buck. The preamps are uncolored and quiet and the A/D D/A latency is low. As for routing, the interface is a little hard to follow at first but once you get used to it you realize it's versatility. My only complaint is that it doesn't have the option for direct analog thru. If you route a preamp in to analog out it's a preamp > A/D > D/A > analog out path. I confirmed this with MOTU. But to tell you the truth, when I tried this it still sounded great - which I guess it an indication of the unit's clean converters. Overall, 8 excellent preamps and converters, and onboard mixing for low latency monitoring... Great value!

from id44 to 8pre-es, definitely upgrade in sound quality and features. it is actually better than i expected about the driver stability and the sound quality from what i have experienced before. Love 8 preamps sounds and dsp mixer and plugins are actually great.

I upgraded from the Roland Studio-Capture to this interface and it has been amazing, the routing is absolutely insane, it feels like there are no limits with this interface. Took me about a day to really get my head around the routing/mixing page but now it is very easy to navigate through. Any output can be easily assigned to any input via the routing page and you can totally customize your I/O and make tons of different templates. Mixing with hardware has never been easier now for me because of the I/O capabilities. The mic pre's sound nice and clear and the DAC sounds great, tons of headroom. I use this interface with two Audient ASP880 preamps via ADAT and they seem to be a perfect match. My only criticism's would be that the built in reverb is awful, almost has a weird delay sound to it, so I bought a TC Electronic M350 reverb unit and it works really well with the interface, so problem solved. My other criticism would be that the Pro Audio Control (webpage mixer that controls the interface) does tend to lag often, but you simply have to click a channel or just exit out of the page and reopen and it goes back to normal, worst case I have had to restart the interface because some channels have bugged out. These small bugs are no big deal at all for me because of the amazing options this unit gives you. My main computer is a Macbook Pro but I also own a PC Desktop, I do find the MOTU seems to work 10x better on my Mac than my PC, my PC has troubles communicating with it I find, luckily I almost never use my PC. Overall I am happy as ever with this unit.

This is it, a real value for what you get with this Motu 8Pre ES. The control interface is tremendous, easy to use with a nice mixer, and with the ability to load presets into the hardware to be used offline. It is flexible, low noise; and high gain and headroom. Just can't say enough good things about this interface and about Brenton from Sweetwater who has been the great to work with. Brenton is a top notch guy who understood my needs and pointed me in the right direction. Superb!!

I'm having an absolute blast with the 8pre-es. Based on reviews of the previous model, I took a risk by investing in brand new hardware, and I do not regret the decision.

I needed an interface for the home studio I've been building in my new home. I needed good quality pres, lots of routing flexibility, and preferably an interface that worked for USB on my Windows machine or Thunderbolt on my MBP.

The software that controls the 8pre-es is very confusing at first because there are just SO many options available to you. Once you learn the basics, the software is extremely powerful, and allows the interface to be used for many purposes (live mixing and recording, studio recording and overdubbing, 5.1 mixing, etc). The routing flexibility is really remarkable, and the interface is easily expandable to add additional pres over ADAT, a master word clock, or analog outboard gear.

The mic pres sound great and have lots of clean gain. It's very nice having so much onboard DSP available to make it easy to offload reverb/compression/EQ for real-time monitoring. All of the parameters are also controllable wirelessly, so if I want I can set up an iPad in my recording booth for cue controls.

At this price, I really doubt you're going to find a better interface. I'm really impressed with the 8pre-es, and I'm glad to finally have a quality interface that meets all of my needs and gives me plenty of room to grow.

I got this to update my old Presonus FireStudio Project. This is a very nice interface with great sounding pre amps and a ridiculously thorough app for routing and mixing. Also, it's assembled in the USA!! And the tech support is pretty great over at MOTU. An overview:

Pros:
-Lovely front panel with fantastic metering LCD screens.
-Great preamps
-Amazing routing/mixing interface that runs in a web browser
-USA assembled. Built beefy.
-2 ADAT in/outs

Cons/Minor nits:
-Despite being billed as a THUNDERBOLT interface, it does not come with a THUNDERBOLT cable! Just a old square USB cable. If you have a new mac and expect plug-and-play for $, you are hosed like I was until you hit up Jeff Bezos for a cable to book it up.
-The Thunderbolt port on the back is old Thunderbolt 2 style (the squareish one). It should be the new Thunderbolt 3/4 style which is the little oval USB Type C connector. I mean, come on, it's 2022!!
-Wish it had a basic single MIDI I/O interface like my old Presonus. I mean, the panel is jam packed so I understand it might not have fit, but I would have massively appreciated a MIDI interface.

I was eyeing the RME Fireface UFX+ for awhile until I saw the price on this thing. There was little advertising or reviews for the MOTU 8Pre-es, but it had exactly what I needed: A good display, eight *quality* preamps, and no inputs on the front. I did not care for any DSP capabilities; I just needed something to track my synths, condenser mics, and guitars in Ableton. I thought I'd chance it. Worst case, I'd just have to return it.

This interface is amazing for tracking. You cannot bypass the preamps, but they are so clean it wouldn't make a difference. The preamps were a major improvement from my old interface, and the difference is very noticeable. Even the outputs seem much more defined; The high impedance on the headphone outputs make using my HD 650s much more enjoyable.

Overall, the onboard functions and display are intuitive and helpful for recording quickly. The knobs move in "clickable" units and it shows the dB value on the display, so matching stereo levels is a breeze. Some other reviewer (on another website) said that this doesn't save the trim levels, which is false. Additionally, the build quality is very sturdy yet lightweight. I like it better than the outer aluminum shell that other interfaces use, because those are much more susceptible to dents.

My only complaint is how the software runs. Just so you know, it runs entirely on your local network. I performed the setup correctly, but I would constantly get bad context errors which would drop the connection. Thankfully, my remote job previously shipped me an ethernet to USB-C cable. Once I used this to connect the interface directly to my laptop to bypass my local network, I had absolutely no issues. After configuring the routing settings to my needs, I just saved the preset directly to the interface. Since I'm just tracking instruments, I haven't had to open the MOTU software since my initial setup. Looking back at this, these issues were probably due to antiquated network gear or bad settings. However, now that I have everything under control, I don't care.

A lot of people said the routing software is convoluted, but that is probably because they don't have much experience with scalable interface systems. Its reminiscent of Dante routing software, where there is a grid layout. I prefer this much more than other layouts where you have to dive into dropdown menus. I found it really easy to get things going. One thing I will say is that the software is responsive and pretty on a computer, but the ports to iOS are just lazy and embarrassing. Seriously, don't bother using your phone or tablet to access the software.

I've had this for about 2-3 weeks now, and I haven't tried using the live DSP effects or mixer. I have heard that the onboard effects sound extremely bad; I never plan trying these out. As I said earlier, I bought this solely for tracking into Ableton. There is no point of mixing through the interface when I can mix in Ableton much faster. CPU usage/performance is not an issue for me as I have a powerful computer. That being said, most stock EQs and compressors have very low CPU usage anyway, unless you are dealing with vintage emulations. A lot of good sounding reverbs out there have been incredibly optimized as well. Take Valhalla DSP's plugins for example.

So, here is a conclusion/digest of what I'm saying:

Do you need an expandable interface for tracking instruments directly into your DAW with superb build quality, flexible routing, low latency, eight crystal-clear preamps, and a pretty screen? Absolutely go with this and save around $. Any more money you spend will most likely result in diminishing returns, as the preamp quality difference between this and interfaces at the $2000 range will be virtually identical.

Do you need an interface for real-time mixing and performing? STAY AWAY and get an RME Fireface UFX II or UFX +.

This was a big bump up from the Focusrite Saffire Pro-40 .... and obviously long overdue. The Focusrite worked well and I gave it high marks until the headphone outputs started giving me trouble. But Focusrite did not provide me with a lateral move for under $2K so I jumped ship and went to MOTU. I've been using DP for close to 20 years and thought it made sense to keep it in the family and it was a good call.

I had no problem just plugging the unit in and firing up Digital Performer. Only the names of the inputs changed but it was much more than that. Because I now had so much more headroom and the sound was just bigger, clearer, more natural. Only then did I realize just how much the old interface colored my sound.

The colored LED indicators are vertical meters that stand out pretty well, but are still not easy to read. I wish MOTU had given this a bigger face to work with. Just make these things bigger so we can see what we're doing. Little tiny knobs, a tiny little screen - I know the name of the game is to go small but I'm here to tell you I don't care about that. I'd rather have 2 rack spaces eaten up for ease of use and all.

Anyway, the first thing I noticed was how good everything sounded. Even old recordings sound better and remixing is warranted. Yes, great product. You'll be happy with it.

I have been using the 8pre-es for about two years for remote recording - Orchestras, Wind Bands, Jazz Ensembles, Choirs. The pre-amps and conversion are excellent, clean and you get what the mic is capturing. The biggest issue and it became a big issue recently is that the Interface does not always connect to the computer in a good way. The interface will be recognized but when you do a test check no sound will record and throw you down a rabbit hole of checking every connection from mic to interface and restart everything at least once if not twice while wasting precious set-up time. 90 per cent of the time the issue turns out to be a handshake issue with the computer and restarting the interface fixes that until you don't notice, because it appears you have signal, but you didn't and lose half of a clients one off concert. Again, excellent, clean mic pres and converters but dodgy connection.

The motu might have decent converters, ok preamps and low latency, but being touted as a "mixer" is simply aggravating. Motu's routing/mixing interface is the most convoluted environment I could ever imagine. Everything appears to be straight-forward, but trust me, just go with UAD for the extra $ or simply save and get a Presonus Quantum product. Frankly, if you don't need t2, just go with a Studiolive series mixer that can both function as a respectable interface at 44.1/48k, for less money and more power/intuitive workflow. Or, get a PreSonus quantum line as their latency is probably even better than this. IMHO, this is in no way a "mixer." I do not like the idea of having paid a premium for functionality that this product simply does not have. If, after 20 years a pro, cannot get the routing/mixer portion of this product to work when all obvious boxes have been checked, then I know it's not user error.