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| Motu Ultralite mk3 |
After a quite long consideration I decided to buy one more UltraLite mk3 (hybrid).
So what's the deal here, have I lost my mind or what? (And reason is not that I have too much money, quite contrary.)
My starting point was to find a "final solution" to my live stage setup which has at least two synths at the moment: Nord Stage (or in some cases Nord Piano) and Arturia Origin. Then I have a pair of TC Helicons VSM-300XT as my personal monitors. Basically I needed a mixer which can mix together my synths and send this signal to main mixer. Let's call it mix 1. Sounds simple (and it's so far). Then I needed mix 2 which has my synths but goes to my TC-monitors. Finaly I needed mix 3 to go to my head phones. Mixes 2 and 3 may or may not have a monitor line from main band mixer (some vocals, bass or drums etc.). Also mix 2 and especially 3 may need to have some equalization and compression. From sound card I also needed a possibility mix in also sounds from computer (in my case macbook).
When I went to search a new sound card or mixer I was basically trying to find a new thing, not again MOTU. Still after my quite thorough investigation I could not find any better solution than Ultralite. There seems to quite few small portable sound cards which can do what I needed. For example: Cakewalk Sonar VS-100 seems to be quite interesting product but it cannot route internally those 3 different mixes. In other words, Cakewalk cannot work as my personal standalone mixer without computer. In its quite reasonable price Motu does all that I described and in fact much more. It also feels well constructed, I have dropped it certain times and still it's working. In one word, it's a small but powerful creature.
Ok, but now wait a minute... I already have Motu Ultralite; why do I need second one? Reason is this: I have a permanent place for the first unit at my home and it seems wise not to take it all the time out from this setup and put it back. Also, new Motu has one (and quite big) advantage over the unit which I already have: new one is called hybrid, which means that it has both Firewire and USB. On gig setup I will probably use USB for controlling it. Motu is great sound card and great mixer (if you give it a little time to learn how to use it) but it needs a computer to make real time modifications. This is made with CueMix software (see picture below). My setup is simple in a way that I don't even need to use CueMix on stage that much. So MOTU works well also standalone and I can even use it completely without computer. And finaly one very good reason to follow MOTU line: I have never had any problem with it in my mac setup. Why to change to something unfamiliar and untested thing...?
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| Motu Ultralite and CueMix software |
