I have been using the Steinberg UR824 with JRiver/Acourate for the past several years. It handled jriver sources very well. ASIO live sources work well when they do but they frequently don't because JRiver hangs: while I never did try to debug this, it seems to be related to the Steinberg multi-client driver. I frequently need to reboot the machine for ASIO live to work. Pretty frustrating.
So I was super excited when I read mojave's wonderfully written Motu 1248 review
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,96435.msg664968.html#msg664968. I give a lot of weight to what he says and even though some of it went whoosh, these I understood.
The Motu 1248 - The Perfect Audio Device for use with an HTPC
No noise on sample rate changes - Sample rate changes are completely silent! No slight tick, pop, or anything else. This is perfect for home use when listing to a playlist of mixed sample rates.
No noise during on/off when amps are on - You can turn the Motu 1248 on/off and never get any noise out of the amps - no tick, pop, click!
Multi-client ASIO driver - This is a huge feature! With most ASIO devices including my 16 channel Lynx Aurora 16TB, you can only use one instance of the ASIO driver. With the Lynx, if eight channels are in use then you can use the other 10 channels for other Zones. With the Motu, it is truly multi-client. You can access channels 1-8 for a home theater and use the other channels, simultaneously, for output to other Zones. You can also access the headphone output Zones the same time as the other Zones and even use both headphone outputs simultaneously with different content.
Super yay! ordered a used Motu 1248 from guitarcenter but unfortunately it was dying (LCD takes 3 minutes to light up on subsequent startups) and I returned it. Needed a new one asap since I need to get my new room correction measurements taken before my wife gets back from her vacation. Thought the 828es was mostly the same as 1248 (newer, AVB, TB, ESS ADC but different DAC though I think) and amazon got it to me in 2 days. Set it up last night but not entirely happy.
The ASIO live works as expected now. JRiver smoothly switches to my external chromecast, nextflix etc. So that promise seems fulfilled. Super happy.
However the pops: two pops when it powers on and for every sample change (I have a set of mixed 44.1k and 48k sampled audio files. Some old ones as 11k). This goes completely against Mojave's experience with the 1248. Thought I got a bad unit. However, when I called Motu support today, they said that this is normal and the 1248 does not have any special handling for these sample rate changes. Every motu should pop is what they say. Resampling recommended (I had considered that but wanted to check if I had a bad unit or not first)
Setting the motu to 48k and sampling everything to 48k fixes the issue by eliminating sample changes. Still bummed that these pops occur. The Steinberg UR824 never did this! I can live with this though. Many thanks to mojave for the thoughtful review.
Curios though.
Are the folks with Motu 1248 not hearing these pops at all ? Are they engineered out in the model somehow? is it sample variation ? some special setup config only in the 1248 ?
Author
Topic: Upgraded to Motu 828es. Need help with popping on sample rate changes (Read 1041 times)