Motu M4 Audio Interface Review

[Ellie]

I ordered an M2 from American Musical Supply on Monday, and they shipped it Tuesday. Just got here today.

Guitar Center is probably where everyone is trying to order stuff from, I'd cancel it and find a less-used storefront, you'd get it faster.

 

[artburda]

Just bought my M4 at a small local guitar and music shop. It was the last unicorn they had. Everywhere else in Switzerland it‘s out of stock and has been for quite a while now. Looking forward to testing it out this weekend.

 

[artburda]

Installed the driver on my windows 8.1 machine, restarted it and tried to listen to some music in musicbee and foobar. At first with the asio driver. When playing the first track after powering on the M4 there is no music for about 3 seconds. When I change to tracks with different sample rates (44.1->96, 96->44.1) it takes the device a few seconds to start playing after the track is already running. I started to hear the music, but it was heavily distorted. Only after I double clicked on the tracks for a second time, then the music would start to play like it should. And in foobar the wasapi driver was unable to play any music without clicks and pops in the first 2-3 seconds of playback.

Similar story on my girlfriend's mac machine (high sierra) when using the VOX player. When changing to tracks with a different sample rate than the one before, there is no music for about 3 seconds.

Any ideas why that is?

Edit: Spotify and Youtube work flawlessly

 

[Χ Ξ Σ]

Installed the driver on my windows 8.1 machine, restarted it and tried to listen to some music in musicbee and foobar. At first with the asio driver. When playing the first track after powering on the M4 there is no music for about 3 seconds. When I change to tracks with different sample rates (44.1->96, 96->44.1) it takes the device a few seconds to start playing after the track is already running. I started to hear the music, but it was heavily distorted. Only after I double clicked on the tracks for a second time, then the music would start to play like it should. And in foobar the wasapi driver was unable to play any music without clicks and pops in the first 2-3 seconds of playback.

Similar story on my girlfriend's mac machine (high sierra) when using the VOX player. When changing to tracks with a different sample rate than the one before, there is no music for about 3 seconds.

Any ideas why that is?

Edit: Spotify and Youtube work flawlessly

I had a similar situation with the Motu M2, described here in post#9. What I did was to add delay when changing the sample rate, explained it post#12. It still takes a while before the music plays though.

 

[artburda]

I had a similar situation with the Motu M2, described here in post#9. What I did was to add delay when changing the sample rate, explained it post#12. It still takes a while before the music plays though.

Is this normal behaviour when using the Motu M2/M4 to playback music? Are all units like that? I mean, you found a workaround but that can't be the long-term solution. It's unusable like that.

 

[Χ Ξ Σ]

Is this normal behaviour when using the Motu M2/M4 to playback music? Are all units like that? I mean, you found a workaround but that can't be the long-term solution. It's unusable like that.

All units are like that. I say that because I have had more than one M2 units. I asked an expert/manufacturer about this, he said the M2 basically "restarted" whenever it has to change the sample rate. This is a USB-powered device, which has limited power allocated to its DSP. All the other DACs with a switch power supply that I had did not have such issue.

 

[artburda]

All units are like that. I say that because I have had more than one M2 units. I asked an expert/manufacturer about this, he said the M2 basically "restarted" whenever it has to change the sample rate. This is a USB-powered device, which has limited power allocated to its DSP. All the other DACs with a switch power supply that I had did not have such issue.

I see. Thanks for sharing the expert's insights. In that case I'll be more careful with my playlists or just use upsampling.

 

[Ellie]

I see. Thanks for sharing the expert's insights. In that case I'll be more careful with my playlists or just use upsampling.

Quick note, when it comes to playback, you don't need anything higher than 44.1khz. You cannot hear frequencies higher than 18-20 khz at most depending on the age, and 44.1khz sampling can perfectly recreate every frequency up to 22.05khz for PCM audio. That's all a higher sampling rate does.

There's no added 'resolution' with a higher frequency in terms of playback, you're just wasting disk space and processing power. And in this case, making your M4 restart repeatedly.

So if you can, ditch anything over 44.1khz for music, or just downsample it with a converter.

Explanation from an engineer if you don't believe me:

 

[artburda]

So if you can, ditch anything over 44.1khz for music, or just downsample it with a converter.

Very informative video. I think by upsampling everything to 96kHz in the music player, I won't lose any information from my 96kHz files and 44.1kHz files will be fine as well. I'm sure I wouldn't hear a difference if I downsampled everything to 44.1kHz with a converter, but I don't want to lose any information.

 

[artburda]

I just installed and tested the new MOTU M-Series driver v4.0.86146 (2020-11-18). I'm using a MOTU M4 and with the new driver I can't use Out 3-4 and In 3-4 anymore. Windows, Audacity, Visual Analyser, etc. can't see the additional I/O anymore. I guess the new driver makes the M4 look like the M2 for Windows.

Anyone else having the same issue?

 

[kderh]

I just installed and tested the new MOTU M-Series driver v4.0.86146 (2020-11-18). I'm using a MOTU M4 and with the new driver I can't use Out 3-4 and In 3-4 anymore. Windows, Audacity, Visual Analyser, etc. can't see the additional I/O anymore. I guess the new driver makes the M4 look like the M2 for Windows.

Anyone else having the same issue?

Same, reported the issue to them. The new driver has been pulled already it seems.

 

[Lefty9]

Can you select between rca out and balanced or does it output simultaneously to both? What i mean

I want to connect a set of active monitors to balance out and a power amp + passive speakers to rca or the second balance out. I would like to select where to output with a single click. Can the motu do that?

 

[Atanasi]

Can you select between rca out and balanced or does it output simultaneously to both? What i mean

I want to connect a set of active monitors to balance out and a power amp + passive speakers to rca or the second balance out. I would like to select where to output with a single click. Can the motu do that?

RCA and TRS are both active at the same time. You could use channels 1/2 and 3/4 as independent outputs and switch in software.

 

[Lefty9]

RCA and TRS are both active at the same time. You could use channels 1/2 and 3/4 as independent outputs and switch in software.

Thank you for your help.

 

[JeffGB]

Installed the driver on my windows 8.1 machine, restarted it and tried to listen to some music in musicbee and foobar. At first with the asio driver. When playing the first track after powering on the M4 there is no music for about 3 seconds. When I change to tracks with different sample rates (44.1->96, 96->44.1) it takes the device a few seconds to start playing after the track is already running. I started to hear the music, but it was heavily distorted. Only after I double clicked on the tracks for a second time, then the music would start to play like it should. And in foobar the wasapi driver was unable to play any music without clicks and pops in the first 2-3 seconds of playback.

Similar story on my girlfriend's mac machine (high sierra) when using the VOX player. When changing to tracks with a different sample rate than the one before, there is no music for about 3 seconds.

Any ideas why that is?

Edit: Spotify and Youtube work flawlessly

I also was having the delay in playing high res files in MusicBee. I was using ASIO so I tried switching to the WASAPI exclusive driver and had an error with no sound, then I tried the WASAPI shared mode driver and all was fine. No delay or distortion when changing between different resolution files. So, if you can use WASAPI shared mode in your application, it may fix your problems. Good luck!

PS: I'm using the latest Windows 10

 

[kderh]

Darn, with my new M4 I do experience the often-described clicks and pops in audio playback from normal music players, browser etc.
For now I have only tested playback using the WDM driver, not been using ASIO, recording much etc.

The clicks/pops happen very infrequently (maybe one every 5-10 minutes) but they do happen repeatedly, at all buffer sizes in the Motu tool.
This is with two completely different PCs (Intel Notebook and old AMD Desktop PC), both with Windows 10.

Especially the old AMD is problematic, the USB 3.0 ports (Etron controller) do not detect the device at all, on the front USB 2.0 ports there was some strange whining noise ground loop in the recording signal, and the back USB 2.0 ports work but have the clicks/pops. And only on the AMD, when I set the buffer size to 1024 sometimes extreme distortion lasting for 1 second happens, luckily this is not present on lower buffer sizes.

Have already tried the usual tips like configuring USB power etc.
Very annoying that any 1$ USB sound card can achieve stable playback but the M4 can't.
I'll try to further narrow it down using older drivers, diagnostic tools, ask support etc. but currently I'm a bit annoyed with this.

 

[kderh]

Hmm, when I choose in the moto tool: 192k with buffer size 4096, it seems to pop all the time when playing back some youtube audio!
Could anyone on Windows 10 please try out if this also happens for you? Maybe my unit is bad...

 

[JeffGB]

Hmm, when I choose in the moto tool: 192k with buffer size 4096, it seems to pop all the time when playing back some youtube audio!
Could anyone on Windows 10 please try out if this also happens for you? Maybe my unit is bad...

I just tried youtube with upsampling to 192k and a large buffer setting (4096) and I get clicking and distortion as well. When set to 44.1khz and 128 or 256 for a buffer, it is fine. It plays native 192khz fine, just the upsampling setting is bad. I think they are working on a new driver that will hopefully fix these issues, but they don't affect me because I don't care about upsampling.

 

[jean-benoit]

About the headphone output: is it possible to run two headphones at the same time with an adapter/splitter? Or should i use the line-outs 3/4 with a cinch/jack cable? I really want to buy this interface, but i need two headphone outs and the only other option would be the NI Komplete Audio 6 MK2, which doesn't have a very good reputation.

 

[testek]

i need two headphone outs and the only other option would be the NI Komplete Audio 6 MK2

not the only other option:

- focusrite scarlett 8i6
- arturia audiofuse rev2
- mackie big knob studio
- evo 8
- tascam series 102i
- m audio air 192-14
- ssl 2+
- steinberg ur44
- spl crimson
- rme babyface
- steinberg ur28m