Pro Audio, Music & Mac Blog

The new PreSonus Fader Port control surface / fader / transport device looks to be perfect for me as someone who isn’t particularly afraid of mixing with a mouse anyway. That said, being able to automate fader moves one at a time, or in groups, and having the transport controls at my finger tip in such a small footprint gadget makes a lot of sense.

My questions are:

1) PreSonus has been pretty vague about support for Digital Performer. Things are weird enough with Universal Binary evolution going on to start throwing new hardware device issues into my life. Does the Fader Port support DP? Natively, through CoreMIDI or with a driver?

2) How noisy is the fader when it’s sliding around?

3) How high is the resolution on the fader automation? Much is said about the differences in resolution between the various control surfaces. How does the Fader Port compare?

4) Not really a question, but more of a entirely subjective, principled superstition: the Fader Port is a brand new, first generation product for PreSonus. I usually only buy brand new, first gen products that I really, really friggin’ want. In such case, I’m willing to live with bugs or features no one realized were important yet.

Gearwire has a PreSonus Fader Port demo video from Summer NAMM 2006

In the NAMM video above, as well as on the PreSonus site, there’s no mention of whether or not the PreSonus Fader Port is compatible with Digital Performer or not, and IF NOT yet, WHEN they expect it to be. Hopefully, we’ll learn more soon and we’ll report back when we do!

Just released is the brand new MOTU 8pre – Multi-channel Mic Preamp/Converter/Firewire Audio Interface. Clearly, the new MOTU 8 pre comes as a move to keep some of the dollars being spent in the hot 8-channel single rack unit mic-pre/ADAT converter space all under the MOTU tent.

For many DP users, simply having such a choice as the 8pre, coming directly from MOTU, supported natively in Digital Performer, would be reason enough to choose the 8pre over other similarly featured boxes.

And there is some logic to that idea, especially as the MOTU 8pre can be used as either a primary or supplemental audio interface (for example, adding to an existing Traveler or 828 MKII) or it can be used strictly as a stand-alone 96K A/D D/A converter via ADAT – even when disconnected from the computer, making for a very flexible set up.

The 8pre also a cool way to be able to have multiple interfaces that you can split out for mutiple purposes – you could grab the 8pre and go with a Powerbook, then easily came back to the studio and hook back up to a larger MOTU rig connected to a desktop DAW.

However, I’m going to come right out and blaspheme against the MOTU faithful a little by saying that I’m not really that impressed by the 8pre.

The mic preamps have never been a strong point of MOTU’s audio interface line (particularly and maybe only because of their lack of gain) and so, right off the bat, you’ve got a fundamental issue with the primary function of this box. It’s an 8 channel mic pre, that’s not that great as a mic pre. So the MOTU 8pre is kind of an “eh” for me.

If you really don’t need the firewire audio interface functionality but just want an additional clean 8 mic/line inputs to hang off the ADAT port on your existing interface, the Behringer ADA8000 Ultragain Pro 8-Channel A/D D/A Converter is pretty hard to beat for the disposable price.

I know, I know… It’s a Behringer, but they actually (surprisingly?) got the ADA8000 right and it’s doesn’t cost much more than a decent patch bay.

Then, when you consider what you can buy in the same price range as the MOTU 8pre, you can get yourself significantly better mic preamps with the Focusrite Octopre LE.