MOTU DEBUTS FIREWIRE AUDIO INTERFACE
Pro studios will appreciate the high-end audio quality and professional XLR connectors, as well as the unit's two rack-space form factor. All I/O is routed to an on-board 16-bus digital mixer driven by hardware-based DSP with 32-bit floating point precision. The mixer allows users to apply no-latency effects processing to inputs, outputs or busses directly in the 896mk3 hardware, independent of the computer. Effects can even be applied when the 896mk3 is operating without a computer as a complete rack-mounted mixer. Effects include reverb, parametric EQ and compression/limiting.
Users can apply EQ and compression to every input and output (a total of 60 channels), with enough DSP resources for at least one band of parametric EQ and compression on every channel at 48kHz. A DSP meter allows users to keep tabs of the 896mk3's processing resources.
Metering is via 10-segment ladder LEDs, provided for every input and output. One eight-channel meter bank is dedicated to the eight analog inputs and another can display any input or output bank. Dedicated main out meters are also provided.
All of the settings in the 896mk3 are accessible from the programmable front-panel backlit LCD. Users can also launch the CueMix FX control software for Mac OS X, Windows XP and Windows Vista. The software front-end allows users to access to all of the unit's features from within one window.
The 896mk3 has two FireWire jacks so it can be daisy-chained with additional devices. Pricing will be $1,295 when it ships this summer.