MOTU UltraLite-mk5 18x22 USB Audio Interface Reviews

I was literally head spinning over what interface to buy with todays choice realm. After reading several hundred articles and YT video recommendations,
i decided to get some candid advice from my sales engineer Travis. Once again he had a wealth of information, which honestly created my final decision. With my I/O needs being greater than most and not wanting to totally break the bank, we narrowed down the choices to RME & MOTU. I've heard so many great things about using RME with a windows based system, but the MOTU specs I felt just couldn't be overlooked. I purchased the Ultralight MK5, then purched the rack mount, and to be totally honest I'm BLOWN AWAY with this product. Not "just because of the specs", but the sheer pro quality of clean, high output, easy to use device and software...It was a MUST for me to leave a review! In my past 40 years of buying studio recording & mastering gear, not only do I find this hardware exceeding my rather high expectations, but because of the simplicity to operate its digital patch bay software without a massive learing curve! Not only was I testing and smiling with ease, the words "ROCK SOLID" simply describes this interface. To say I'm extremely happy is a total understatement, but I also wanted to thank both Travis and several other associates in helping me make this truly fantastic purchase experience possible. Thank you Gents! Happiest of Holidays to everyone at Sweetwater!!!!

For the price, this box brings you a fantastic deal, in a portable setup.
Good conversion as well as great pre-amps. Ready to expand, runs stand-alone, what else do you need from a box with that price? Get you one!

Perfect solution for my needs. I upgraded from a Steinberg UR44c for more inputs and outputs. I use six analog ins and SPDIF on the rear, keeping the two combo/preamps on the front available for easy access if I need to add a mic or instrument. I stopped using my desktop mixer but plan to add a monitor controller. Wish I could use a midi remote to control the Cuemix software. SPDIF and USB work simultaneously no problem.

i cant even sense any latency, what a great audio interface, couldn't be happier.

I've had my Motu Ultralite mk-5 since May of 2021 and I've got to say I've had no real desire to replace it since purchasing and I'm still finding out just how capable the unit is of handling just about any issue while recording and mixing. Let me start by saying I run Logic Pro; I utilize the 6 line ins with 500 series pre's (Stereo sets of Avedis MA5's, Meris 440's and a Cranborne Camden 500's) as well as the ADAT input with the Audient ASP800 for more channels (4 at 96k and 8 at 48k). Recording drums, a live band or just instrumental performances couldn't be easier with this unit. Utilizing the outs to bounce tracks through the pre's for coloration and summing is really simple with CueMix5 where you have individual out level control. I also utilize the insane amount of outs with Tascam MH-8 Headphone amp so that performers have individually crafted monitor mixes using the Cuemix5 app on their phones or tablets. Conversion sounds great; latency isn't an issue with the Cuemix5 mixer allowing you to listen to your analog ins. This product is tough to beat at the price point!

This unit has not only improved my capabilites as a mobile DJ, but also my aesthetic. I mention this because the price tag could lead to similar customers opting for a tabletop mixer - which do have their place. However, I can't stress enough how much clients appreciate the clean look with cables tied into a rack case instead of laid out on a tabletop.

The performance metrics are not overexaggerated. All of the promotional material that I saw about the unit has been completely accurate.

I wanted to buy this interface during the pandemic, but it was impossible to find it in stock anywhere at that time. So I settled on another brand that had similar I/O.

Two main things attracted me to this interface. One is the form factor. There really isn't any other interface with this much I/O packed into such a small form factor. Meaning I don't need a 2nd interface for travel.

The onboard DSP was the second thing I really wanted on this interface out of this interface. You get a 4-band EQ and Compressor on all inputs, along with Gate for mono inputs only. Now I heard an influential YouTuber mention that the DSP will not print into your recordings. This is not true, the DSP works just fine in the production environment and will print your DSP settings onto the recording if you desire.

Another thing I love about this interface is the stereo pairing for the line-level inputs. My other interface didn't offer gain matching when stereo pairing. Which makes this a great choice for synth players.

There isn't much I don't like about this product, but one thing I miss is the volume control. Adjusting main volumes is not user-friendly at all so you may want to consider getting a monitor controller if this interface is going to be your daily driver. One area I really feel that MOTU could improve on is adding remote WIFI control of CuMix 5 via iPhone/iPad.

This thing is amazing on my M1 mac book. If you restart your Mac, with no startup apps, and Disable wifi. You can track through plugins. The plugins need to have low or no added latency. with (32/96khz)1.4 millisecond round trip latency.You will have no cracks or pops. It did have bad dropouts from time to time, but after an update i haven't had any problems. I use it on both my M1 mac and PC, just unplug the usb from one computer and put it into the next. Latency is higher on PC if that matters to you. Cue mix seems silly at first, but the interface makes sense 70% of the time.

Good thing I didn't listen to the people who told me a better interface wouldn't make a difference and that "Specs are just about marketing"(Someone actually told me that). No, specs are specs, and the specs on this unit are impressive, and they matter. Upgraded from a Scarlett 2i2. I'm embarrassed that I didn't deal with my interface quality issue sooner. Latency issues: gone. Output volume to my headphone amp: louder and cleaner. Converters: Clearly superior. The overall quality and the extensive I/O have really made a difference for me.

I had purchased my previous interface back in 2007, so it's fair to say I was way overdue on replacing the 15 yo relic.
It was important for me to upgrade this technologically weakest piece of hardware in my recording system (I.e. the Audio Interface) to improve the quality of my recordings.
I researched "ALL" the Audio Interface Target Price options between $500.00 to $1K for five weeks and I wound up focused on three units; Audient-EVO 16, RME-BabyFace Pro FS and MOTU-UltraLite MK5.
As of this writing the EVO 16: is "still unavailable" for whatever "Reason" for purchase, so that stumble, scared me away.
The RME-Baby Face Pro FS: Great Spec's, Price was around $1K, limited I/O's, it can control 2 Monitors.
The MUTO-UltraLite mk5: Great Spec's, about 1/2 the price of the RME, many, many I/O's, it can control 2 Monitors.
So I purchased the MOTU. I'm not going to get further into it because...."Julian Krause on YouTube" has made a very professional review and explains every spec. and is painfully detailed in his qualified presentation.
MUTO-UltraLite MK5: performs as advertised, which.....has made me a happy man.

I am a very discerning customer. My use case is that I need to have a few mic pres, 4-6 additional ins, optical in/out, an additional output, portable, great conversion, and a solid headphone amp. Now, I have tried many of the sub-1000 interfaces (Apollo Twin X, RME Babyface Pro FS, Audient ID44, Focusrite Clarett 4 Pre+, Apogee Duet 3.

All of these are great products, but there was always something missing for me. Either the conversion was lacking (dull, low mid boosted, etc), limited I/O, not very portable, or a pain to require an external software (ie. Apollo). The Ultralite MK5 is amazing in all regards and my soul mate of an interface! The preamps are quite warm for a built pre and the DI is pretty good too. There is a ton of gain (74 db I believe). The software is incredibly powerful, yet so easy to use (unlike RME's TotalMix). The conversion is definitely a step above all of these and in many ways is pretty close to on par with Apogee. To top it all of this things has all the I/O I can ever want and is less than most of these others.

Don't think twice, this thing is the one!

I've only ever used a couple other interfaces so I'm no expert, but this is the best of the lot by far. Perfect I/O for my needs, impressively small form factor, great build quality and a surprisingly useful display. It's such a sleek, efficient, sturdy package that more than earns its price. Even when I had a problem with my order, not only Sweetwater, but MOTU went way above and beyond to make things right. I love my purchase and I will happily order from Mark of The Unicorn again (that's MOTU's full name!)

After almost a year, I finally got it. I really like the device. It works as advertised. Quality is excellent and pre-amps are as good as I could have hoped for. My only complaints are minor: Build quality could be a tiny bit better. The device does not sit perfectly flat. It wobbles a little and i had to use a business card to balance one of the rubber feet. Also, I wish the screen was dimmable, it is very bright. Lastly, I wish the display had a way to indicate peaking like a red color or light. You can't really tell if you're peaking except to notice the white bar is totally filled. Still happy with the purchase. Nothing's perfect. Would buy again.

This interface needs a very well-made USBC cable. I use a thunderbolt 3 cable and it works much better for me. The preamps are amazing, stunningly clear and detailed. There are loads of inputs and outputs. The headphone amp, in my opinion is plenty loud. I'll detail my setup so you'll have an idea as to how versatile this unit is.

I perform on stage with a keyboard attached to the interface via MIDI to an Ableton Rig. So the interface is outputting the stereo Ableton mix with loads of VSTs running through outputs 1 and 2. I have my vocal mic running into the first preamp. I have some compression, EQ and some reverb on the vocal and then it outputs through output 3. I have a crowd mic plugged into the second preamp so I can hear through my in-ear monitors that I'm running out of the headphone amp. I have a return channel from the front-of-house console or personal mixing device on stage running into inputs 1 and 2. I also have the outputs of the keyboard I'm playing running into inputs 3 and 4 just in case Ableton crashes.

I have CueMix 5 running on my laptop or sometimes wirelessly connected to my iPad (this is a bit complicated and my "wish" is that MOTU would make wireless iPad connection to CueMix 5 simpler). I can run my entire in-ear mix through this unit complete with a crowd mic I use to hear the room. If I'm ever handed a wireless pack on stage, I simply plug it into an adapter that runs into inputs 1 and 2. I never have to deal with wireless interference and the clicks and pops wireless packs often introduce.

After all of this, I still have loads more outputs and a few more inputs. All of that and I still haven't addressed that there are 8 additional ADAT ins for use in the studio. This is the best bang for the buck interface in existence. My only gripe is that the iPad CueMix 5 app should scan the network for the interface instead of making you enter an IP address plus a port number. This is over most users' heads and a pain when I'm setting up in a hurry. Aside from that, this thing is flawless. I can pack my entire road rig in my carry-on and fly anywhere. I just have the host bring in the back-line gear I need (keyboard, stands, etc).

The sound quality is amazing and has a-lot of inputs and outputs for a small interface. I Definitely don't have any complaints about this product and a big + for me is that it looks great in the studio. The new design blows the previous ultralite out of the water in my opinion with the White OLED display.

Hey its great! I bought it as an affordable way to integrate some nice analog gear into my mix setup. Its very clean and professional. Pre amps are solid, great routing. I've had it a couple months and still loving it. Conversion is solid, and I'd need to pay another couple G's to see any real improvement over 8 channels. Totally happy

I had to sell my Apogee Symphony Desktop because it had only 2 ins and outs. I have a couple pairs of monitors and also a few high end analog gear pieces and this is just perfect!! I am so glad they released this. I do not need tons of preamps, I already have external ones. I could even have done without these two on this box and had more in and outs. This unit can also be racked or not if you buy the connectors. Love this device because you are not paying for esthetic as much as reliability and functionality.

After watching Jacob Dark's review on this unit I was sold. I'm only tracking myself at the moment but once I feel comfortable enough in a post-Covid world to track bands again, it's nice to know I'll never have to worry about connectivity issues. Future proof for sure and yes, it sounds amazing.

The sound: make no mistake, your ears will be the bottleneck here. This thing is so, so pristine and renders music perfectly. At some point you have to wonder how it can get any better. I'm at that point with the quality of the sound running through this device. The converters are excellent and reveal a lot compared to the Focusrite Saffire 56 it replaced in my studio. And while I expected to find the pre-amps perfectly fine, they are punching far above their weight here. The headroom is amazing.

I have one complaint: why did they even bother with the nobs? Methinks someone on the design team insisted on a few real knobs. This unit doesn't need any. Its form factor is too cramped to make them comfortable and easy to use. They feel tacked on and a little flimsy compared to what is otherwise top notch build qaulity. But not to worry! I immediately got used to just using the software interface to adjust levels, which is excellent and seems quite mature. Perhaps mk6 will be knobless. This is a minor quibble.

And then a rant: $ for rack ears. And they didn't even bother to throw in four rack screws. For shame!

I've been at this for about 25 years. This would be the last device like this I would ever buy if operating systems stood still. Five stars.

This new MOTU is almost perfect. Highly recommended.

The good:

- The performance, latency, and stability is rock-solid
- Great sound quality
- There are LOTS of inputs and outputs
- The CueMix 5 software is extremely user-friendly and makes it easy to assign sources to inputs and outputs
- Supports loopback for recording computer audio
- Has a power switch (sadly not a given on USB interfaces)
- Very well built

Minor quibbles:

- The power of the headphone amp is just okay. You need to turn the knob up to about 2/3 of max to get any real volume
- The monochrome OLED display is nice, but it would be great if this unit had the same color display as on the M4

I primarily purchased this audio interface based on its outstanding measured performance because I intend to use it to test other audio equipment and I wanted to get to the 110dB+ THD+N level on both ADC and DAC sides of the device; this MOTU exceeds those thresholds by at least 3dB.

Despite being a demo, when I received the MOTU UltraLite-mk5 it was like new and clearly well cared-for. I unpacked it, plugged it in, downloaded the software, and was off to the races. I never thought I needed this many inputs and outputs, but I'm finding creative ways to use them and I'm very glad to have all of these channels now. It's great that every channel seamlessly supports balanced/unbalanced connections (you'll of course need adapters if you're going from 1/4" TRS to RCA) and has a wide range of attenuation and gain to allow level matching.

I may end up using this (or buying another) as an active crossover in a multi-way loudspeaker setup by adding an external controller to handle the DSP and just using the UltraLite-mk5 as a very hiqh-fidelity interface. I'm sure this device would also be excellent in a studio setup where very high-fidelity results are required.

Things that would make this interface even better:
- more bands of parametric EQ
- full functionality across all bitrates - the reverb, for example, is not available at 96k or 192k sample rates
- perhaps higher bitrates on ADC and DAC (384, DSD, etc.)
- allowing firmware to support standalone crossover and FIR-based DSP similar to MiniDSP units

Because there are so few affordable products that do everything this product does, I'll only dock half a star for these minor complaints. Even without the above items, this product mostly does what it claims to do, and does it well. Highly recommended!

I updated from an Apollo twin and love this thing with many more outputs and midi ports. Would recommend if you have a lot of external gear!

Background: I direct live music productions and need multiple sends to send stems, loops, cues, and click tracks to various mixing engineers.

I bought this product because of the 10 sends, which I believed would be very clutch for live productions, but it has been problematic. In a nutshell the issues are with the sends. I've had several productions (7+ in the past year) where some of the sends stop working completely or they timeout and produce a tone between 4k-6k or it produces audio with crackling noises. It's been an embarrassing, frustrating, and costly issue. I'll be often left to rerouting sessions and projects after troubleshooting due to technical issues during soundcheck. But I'm going to put this interface away until MOTU can provide a solution, yesterday was the last straw lol! I'm thinking about selling it, but in the mean time I use it as my desktop interface in my home production space.

But it works for your BASIC home recording needs in the sense that I'm able to record, track, and playback adequately in a "sterilized" environment (for lack of better words).

Please note: I update the hardware (and drivers) well before productions. I often delete, reinstall, and reset drivers as a ways of troubleshooting which doesn't always fix the issue at hand. I also read through forums both on MOTU's site and open source.

I get random bit crushed distortion events and dropouts with this unit. I've read on forums of others having this exact issue. One such user with same model of computer saw a post of mine and even reached out to tell me his story. Same thing. I also have a friend to bought a unit on my recommendation (before I got mine) who is having issues with an m1 Mac mini.

After months of back and forth with MOTU trying to find out why I get random bit crushed sounding distortions, and audio glitches, MOTU
themselves have told me there is an issue with USB controllers in the new Macs and this Ultralite Mk5. They shipped me 2 replacement units (so 3 units total) they all do the same thing. Either bit crushed random distortion events, or sometimes it loses sync with computer and then all audio is delayed like you suddenly switched to a vary high buffer. The USB sync is not stable with this unit, hasn't been since I've owned it. Useless for client work, useless for recording live shows, or using for live performances, all the things they advertised it being great for! They say Apples next OS release, Ventura "should" fix it. But who knows how long plugin and DAW companies will be caught up to that OS release, so more waiting while the unit sits depreciating over time. Terrible that companies rely on their customers to be beta testers. MOTU won't refund the unit so I can move on with another product, and I can't in good conscience sell it knowing full well it doesn't work with current Apple computers. Thankfully I had purchased a Focusrite Claret + 8pre at the same time to use as an ADAT extension. That unit has worked flawlessly as a USB interface since day one. No excuse MOTU, this is terrible customer service. I've been a long time MOTU user (Digital Performer since it was originally just Performer!) After this experience I will never spend another dollar on MOTU products. Buyer beware. Time to move to another DAW as well, as much as I enjoy Digital Performer.