store 5 min down the street from me has 3 of them in inventory...

 

It is a bit hard to get this (and other related) stuff. But if you do some homework you can (still) find M2/M4. Thomann is not the only shop. And check local too

 

Hi Akrovatis, many thanks for the useful Information.

Are you waiting that long? Or buy you another Audio Interface ?

 

I have the Motu M4 sitting on my shelf right now ironically waiting for some longer usb-c cables to come in for it because the one it comes with is so short (3ft). Upgrading from a Behringer 404-Uphoria.

 

I live in Greece. There is no Motu M4 in the whole Europe.
Not even in Sweetwater. Obviously some small stores might have it. No new orders are being delivered though.

 

I'm waiting for MOTU M4 since December...

 

samash has them but not ship internationally. that sucks. international shipping right now is not good either. I waited 3 months for a synth from Moscow to US. and now waiting another lol. one only a few months before that from Japan took a week.

but September sounds extreme, still. that is a 12" x 12" box. air freight is probably not that expensive.

 

I don't know if you understood correctly. I have ordered MOTU M4 in December but MOTU factory has seized the production of them and they will not be ready again till September. Maybe I will go for RME Fireface UC or some other MOTU.

 

Here is a Link to " Motu Distributors ": https://motu.com/other/distributors.html

 

I see on Amazon Motu M4 and they sell at 300€...madness

 

The shops they have it sell it for 299....the shops they don`t have it sell it for the usual price of 259....Its the same with Compter hardware atm

 

I have MOTU under Win10 / Intel last generation, the driver is excellent, installed in a new desktop with an OS optimized for audio and nothing else, no network, never a problem, a latency almost inexistent ... a very pleasant sound, in this range of sound card difficult to do better....just invest in a usb cable C .....

 

My dear @Akrovatis, I'm not saying almost everything comp/tech related is difficult/expensive to get. But "no MOTU M2/4 in EU" is an overstatement. I can point you to a couple of shops that have them ready to ship right now. Unfortunately they go for 280-300 €

My advice.. I have some information there will be a drop around 3-5th of May. So you can wait for another week..

And, if you can get a RME, that would be my obvious choice. BTW those really in short supply as afar as I can see.

 

Okay! Yes, they are supposed to be great as long as it works on your machine but it still doesn't work very well on every Windows system. Here is a part of a review from thomann (translated from Italian):

"- SERIOUS problems (still unresolved) on the Driver / windows 10 side: unfortunately the most frustrating thing is the continuous pop and scratch that you feel in the dphase of use, given that it is totally unusable with buffer from 64 down and sample rate 44100 or 48000 regardless how powerful your PC is, even by setting buffer to 64 and sample rate 48000hz you will hear continuous noises and distortions (it shouldn't happen but it can be) but the worst thing is that even if you set buffer to 128 and sample rate 48000 there are some glitches, while listening I noticed that even going up the buffer to 256 and 512 it happens to hear them, which is unacceptable to me, moreover, every now and then the card "goes crazy" (it happened to me 3 or 4 times in a week) and shoots everything to the maximum and then no longer emit any sound and you have to turn it off and turn it back on, I firmly believe that all this is due to driver problems with windows 10 (I tried with 3 different ultra-performing pc and with all 3 I had ssi problems) I contacted the Motu assistance in the USA which proved to be very quick in answering me but we have not yet found a solution, and, since it is practically unusable in the professional and productive field, I am very tempted to return the product and I do not I feel I recommend it at the moment for Windows users.
For mac users or with apple systems, from what we also read in the various forums, there should be no driver problems there so, if you are looking for an entry level product, it can be there but also evaluate the other competitors, maybe save a little bit and have a completely product comparable."

The thing about the volume suddenly maxing out and then just going silent is something I've read happens to a lot of people. The only reason I know about these problems is because I saw that they just released the Ultralite MK5 which made me interested in buying one, but before doing that I wanted to read up about possible problems. MOTU used to be a Mac-only interface developer until maybe 10 years ago (?) and even though they have made drivers for Windows for awhile now they are still not anywhere close to their Mac drivers in terms of stability.

 

Hi " Arabian_jesus " thanks for the Information:

I found it on the Italian thomann website and translated it. The user will probably exchange it, maybe it's on exchanged everything is fine. Let's keep an eye on that. Let's see if there are other users who have these or similar problems.

I've just read other user reviews, almost all of them are satisfied.

Spoiler: Motu M2 & M4 – Audio-Interfaces im Test | SOUND & RECORDING

Drivers & Latencies ( Review

The interfaces of the M series run on Mac and PC. A driver installation is not absolutely necessary for the Mac; the driver, which is just under 200 kB in size (macOS from 10.11; 10.15 "Catalina" is already supported) reduces the latencies (as we will see later). The Windows driver supports all versions from Windows 7.

On my MacBook Pro 15 inch (Late 2016, Intel Core i7 @ 4x 2.7 GHz, 16 GB RAM, macOS Sierra 10.12.6) the small MOTUs already ran quite well without installing a driver. Even in the smallest buffer setting with 32 samples, a sample piano could be played fully; Even with excessive use of the hold pedal, there were no dropouts. The initial latency was 2.79 ms; the input latency was 4.04 ms - the latter is only relevant if you e.g. B. Record guitars with NI Guitar Rig; d. H. not MIDI but audio input signals processed with plug-ins. However, higher processor load could not be managed in the 32-sample setting; a maximum of 4 DIVA voices were possible without dropouts (see box "Latency Benchmarking"). All 16 DIVA voices were only possible in the 128-sample setting, which produced an output latency of 4.97 ms and (if relevant) an additional input latency of 6.21 ms.

The latencies are significantly shorter by installing the MOTU driver: the 32-sample setting now comes to input and output latencies of 1.27 ms each, the 128-sample setting to 3.45 ms each. The driver cuts the latencies in half - without additional load on the CPU!

Driver installation is mandatory under Windows. I tested it on my new studio PC (Intel Core i9 @ 8x 3.6 GHz, 64 GB RAM) under Windows 10, 64 bit. The smallest buffer setting here is only 16 samples. Since mostly internal buffers of the operating system or other undeclared buffers of the driver are added, you should rather look at the latencies reported by the DAW. These are actually very low with the M-Series interfaces: Cubase 10.5 shows an output latency of 1.09 ms and an input latency of only 0.54 ms! Since my new PC has a lot of grains and the driver is obviously programmed efficiently, all 16 possible DIVA voices sound without dropouts even in the smallest buffer setting.

Since the CPU meter seems a bit fidgety, I would rather choose the 32-sample setting (2.18 ms / 0.91 ms). If you are traveling with an older or less powerful computer, you can still achieve very good values of 4.35 ms (Out) and 1.63 ms (In) with the 64-sample setting. In short: MOTU's M-Series interfaces work extremely well on Mac and PC, especially for USB 2.0!

Source / with Google Translator
https://www.soundandrecording.de/equipment/motu-m2-m4-audio-interfaces-im-test/

 

Last edited: Apr 27, 2021

This is probably wrong, Motu has also been making Window PC drivers for a very long time. See example:

MOTU ships 4pre Audio Interface - 20th December 2011 - Windows PC & Mac

 

Last edited: Apr 28, 2021

2011 is 10 years ago, just like I wrote. They seem to have been making Windows drivers since at least 2001 though. This is the oldest posting I could find about it: https://motu.com/products/motuaudio/global/win2kdrivers.html/view?searchterm=driver

And like I said, they seem to work great for most PC users but if you look on Gearslutz, other pro-audio forums and reviews at different online retailers there still seem to be people having these driver related problems, unfortunately. I would still rank MOTU as the next best interface developers for PC after RME, but for me personally I don't think I will risk having driver issues just to save a couple of dollars buying MOTU over RME.

 

It is not only the interface drivers that play a role. Mainboard, cpu, usb-port, usb-driver, driver configuration, quality of the cable.
At some point I got tired of all this nonsense and switched to thunderbold. Problem solved.

 

Last edited: Apr 27, 2021

Is there an audio interface out there that its drivers run flawlessly on windows 10?
The problem with the volume happened to me too using the onboard sound card of my motherboard under WASAPI multi drivers.
I had Arturia Analog Lab in Ableton and the knob of an instrument controlling its brightness was turned off. I don't think Motu has crappy drivers.
I have checked Ultralite MK5 but I think I would choose RME for this amount of money. Don't you think?

 

The oldest posting is from: © 1997-2001, Mark of the Unicorn, Inc. !

You can also buy a Focusrite or Audient for the same price. RME is really a question of money. Do you have that much money or not.

I think it's great that you've checked exactly what other users say about it. In no case do we want to make a manufacturer bad, that has to be true if we claim something.

Many errors with the computer are user errors. Sometimes the device is also damaged. Sometimes or rarely there are problems in production that then lead to later errors. That's why man has the right of exchange with the right to repair.
There are also companies that write the drivers badly. Some companies go bankrupt.

Example from a Moto - M4 User:
There is one star trigger each for workmanship and features: the chinch output was incorrectly soldered on the first delivery, which resulted in a mass hum (but only on the chinch out). The device was of course replaced.

 

Last edited: Apr 27, 2021