Do you think it would make any sense to spend $350 for MOTU 896HD mod... Or should I just trash the Motu and get something like the Apogee Ensemble?

Black Lion Audio

Dunno, but you should add the Metric Halo to your list of interfaces to check out. The Ensemble is nice too, though - don't get me wrong.

I own the 896, a bunch of Digi 192's and Apogees. If I were in your shoes, I'd forgo the mod and get an Apogee. I'm not a huge fan of MOTU interfaces and adding money to the unit isn't what I would consider the best investment.

Thanks! The Metric Halo seems to make very good products...
HERE


But $6K for the ULN-8? Ouch! I wonder if using the MH 2882 ($1700) just for AD conversion (behind the ISA 828) would do the trick...

The 2882 is the one I have here, and I really like it. I'd say the Ensemble sounds a hair - and a really fine one, not one of the ones you're thinking of shame on you - better, but the MH software and speed of updates with new OS changes is better.

I had them (and some others) here side by side, and I decided that the MH's features and build quality more than made up for the really, really small sound quality difference. The most important ones are a) its meters (the Ensemble's are useless) and b) its hardware loopback mode. It also has some really nice onboard processing, if you go for the +DSP version.

Metric Halo makes a solid product

had a bad experience with Black Lion. they offered a money back guarantee for their work and then wouldn't honor it without a big hassle from my credit card company.
RME might be another option - people like their interfaces a lot and they're not as expensive as the MH or the Apogee and they have multiple models to choose from.
depending your needs, the API A2D looks like a really great deal too.

Nick, I think that the nasty little hair you're talking about is in the mic preamps. The Ensemble has better ones than the 2882. So perhaps that could be made up by feeding the 2882 by the ISA 828. ???

On the other hand the ULN-8 supposed to be better than all of the above. But I'm not sure I want to spend $6k on 8 channels.

Michael, my friend has the RME FF400. He says it's ok... still better than his PT 003 rack.

Are you sure about the mic preamps, Josef? The Ensemble has more gain, but you're going through them with either unit (i.e. just like the DA7 the inputs are designed to accept a wide range of input levels). I found the difference between the input and the output in the units to have the same quality, if that makes sense.

MH also makes a 2-channel box, the ULN-2, that supposedly has better preamps than the 2882. But I'm very happy with the 2882...and my outboard Millennias, of course.

I had a FF400 here at the same time, and it sounds another hair more brittle than the other two but still very good. Its software is good too; the only thing is that you can (and I did) blow it out by hot-plugging it, which really shouldn't happen with a FireWire device.

Are you using the box just for digital conversion? If so you might save money by not getting FireWire I/O.

One other thing: the MH boxes can run on bus power (i.e. they're portable) or in "high power" mode - their 24V power supply. The latter makes quite a difference to the sound.

And I don't want to pretend that this isn't somewhat subjective. I did listen to all three units for a long time, however.

have you heard the API A2D Nick?