MOTU 828es 28-In/32-Out Thunderbolt / USB 2.0 Audio Interface with 2 Mic Pres

60 simultaneous audio channels

28 inputs and 32 outputs, all independent

Connect all your studio gear, including microphones, guitars, synths, keyboards, drum machines, outboard processors, MIDI gear, optical expanders - even a foot pedal. All I/O is available simultaneously.

Superb analog audio quality

Renowned ESS Sabre32 Ultra™ DAC technology

New in the 828es, renowned ESS Sabre32™ DAC technology delivers 123dB dynamic range and the same proven, award-winning audio quality as MOTU's flagship 1248.

High-performance Thunderbolt and USB drivers for Mac and PC

Ultra-low latency and renowned rock-solid performance

Round-trip latency (RTL) performance as low as 1.6 ms at 96kHz over Thunderbolt™ with high-performance DAW hosts.

Universal connectivity

USB and Thunderbolt for Mac, PC and iOS

Connect to your Mac or PC with Thunderbolt™ or Hi-speed USB 2.0, with up to 256 audio channels (128 in and 128 out) over Thunderbolt. Or stream dozens of audio channels to and from your Mac over AVB/TSN Ethernet using a standard, affordable CAT-5e cable up to 100 meters long. Class-compliant firmware and industry standard drivers work with any audio apps. Connect to your iPad™ with a standard camera connection kit (adapter).

Redesigned mic channels

Cutting-edge components deliver ultra-transparent sound

Capture your recorded material in its truest, most natural form with -108 dB THD+N, 118dB dynamic range and -128dBu EIN performance. Each mic channel has individual preamp gain, pad, 48V phantom power and digital remote control. Do you work with outboard EQs and compressors? Each 828es mic input offers a pre-converter, hard-wired send for mono or stereo mic channel outboard processing.

Control room features

Take control of your recording sessions

Take control of your recording sessions with the built-in talkback mic and front-panel talk button. Connect two sets of speakers and check your mixes instantly with front-panel A/B speaker select buttons.

DSP mixing and effects

Console-style mixing with 48 channels and 12 busses

A full-fledged 48-input digital mixer delivers 7 stereo aux busses, 3 groups, access to 64 network inputs, and DSP effects including reverb, 4-band EQ, gate and compression. If you know your way around a large-format mixing console, you'll feel right at home. If you've ever wished to mix on a large console, the driver's seat is now yours.

Modeled vintage effects processing

Vintage processing with 32-bit float precision

Classic reverb. Compression modeled after the legendary LA-2A compressor. EQ modeled after British analog console EQs. The 828es DSP engine delivers virtually unlimited headroom and the utmost in sound quality.

Flexible matrix routing and splitting

Route your audio anywhere with one-click ease

Send any input to any output, or multiple outputs. Includes routing to and from the computer, plus any devices on the audio network.

Web app control from any device

Control everything from your laptop, tablet and smartphone

The software that you use to control the 828es doesn't reside on your hard drive. It's a web app served from the hardware itself. This means you can control the 828es on-board DSP, mixing, device settings, and network audio routing from your favorite web browser on a laptop, tablet or smartphone connected by wire or Wi-Fi to your local area network. Use any web client on any platform - Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android - as long as it shares the same network.

Touch Console

The art of the mix on your touchscreen

Designed specifically for touchscreen operation, Touch Console™ delivers a whole new mixing experience. Access Touch Console from your tablet or smartphone to effortlessly control the powerful 48-channel mixer and effects in the 828es. With large targets for your fingers, multi-touch operation and intuitive design, you can tap, swipe and pinch your way to a perfect mix, every time.

Stand-alone operation with wireless control

No computer or laptop needed

Connect an Apple® Airport™ or other Wi-Fi router with a standard Ethernet cable for wireless control of device settings, powerful 48-channel mixing and DSP effects.

Solid metal chassis

MOTU interfaces are built to last

Like all MOTU interfaces, the 828es aluminum alloy chassis is lightweight, yet incredibly sturdy and durable, and designed to withstand the rigors of the studio, stage, and tour bus. In a world awash with cheap plastic, the solid feeling of the 828es metal exterior in your hands is a reassuring reminder that you are holding quality engineering and construction.

The 828es Mixer

Large console style mixing from your laptop, tablet or smartphone

48 channel mixing

A flexible, dynamic, scalabe mixing experience

With almost twice the DSP power of MOTU's award-winning line of "mk3" audio interfaces, the 828es mixer provides up to 48 assignable input channels.

Aux bus mixing

Long-throw faders for aux sends

The Aux Mixing tab lets you zero in on a single aux bus and control send levels with long-throw faders, just like hardware consoles that let you temporarily "flip" aux sends to the channel faders... perfect for detailed mixing on any aux bus.

Monitor Mix / Solo Bus

Convenient dedicated monitoring

The monitor mix is specifically designed for monitoring. It can mirror any other bus, or act as a solo bus for isolating all currently soloed inputs, aux busses or groups. You can, of course, create additional monitor mixes with seven available aux busses.

32-bit floating point processing

Virtually infinite headroom

The 828es mixing and DSP effects engine employs 32-bit floating point processing, which produces virtually infinite headroom for complex mixing and processing calculations, along with an infinitesimally low noise floor.

Modeled analog EQ

British analog mixing consoles are renowned for their musical EQ profiles. The 828es meticulously models these classic EQ curves to give you the very same, magical EQ settings found on these coveted desks. Four separate filters are available on every input, including optional low-shelf and high-shelf.

Classic reverb

An all-around verb with tails up to 60 seconds

The 828es Classic Reverb™ provides three frequency bands with adjustable cross-over points, predelay, spread and reverb lengths up to 60 seconds. Perfect for monitor mixes when tracking in the studio or for treating vocals during a live show.

Leveler

Finely crafted vintage compression

The Leveler™ is an accurate model of the legendary Teletronix™ LA-2A™ optical leveling amplifier, known for its unique and highly sought-after Automatic Gain Control (AGC) characteristics. The heart of the LA-2A is the T4 opto-coupler, a photoelectric device with almost magical (signal dependent) self-adjusting behavior that makes optical compressors the tool of choice for smoothing out just about any audio material.

Gate and HPF

Gating and high-pass filtering on every input

Each input is equipped with a standard high-pass filter and gate module for removing rumble, environmental noise, and other signal clean-up tasks.

Feature Summary

New dual-LCD design

Two full-color LCDs display all signal activity at a glance with detailed metering for all analog and digital I/O. Access hardware settings from a simple and convenient menu.

Superb analog audio quality and high-end converters

Renowned ESS Sabre32™ DAC technology delivers 123 dB dynamic range and the same proven, award-winning audio quality as MOTU's flagship 1248.

Ultra-low latency and proven, high-performance MOTU drivers

Round-trip latency (RTL) performance as low as 1.6 ms at 96kHz over Thunderbolt™ with high-performance DAW hosts.

Universal connectivity

Connects to your computer with Thunderbolt™, hi-speed USB 2.0 or AVB/TSN Ethernet for up to 256 audio channels (128 in and 128 out). Class-compliant firmware and industry standard drivers work with any audio apps. Connects to an iPad™ with a standard camera connection kit (adapter).

60 simultaneous audio channels

28 inputs and 32 outputs, including two mic preamps with sends, 8 TRS analog in/out, separate main outs on XLR jacks, two banks of optical, S/PDIF, MIDI in/out, time code in/out, word clock I/O, and two front-panel headphone jacks.

DSP mixing and effects processing

Flexible 48-input digital mixer with 7 stereo aux busses, 3 groups, access to 32 network inputs, and DSP effects, including reverb, 4-band EQ, gate and compression.

32-bit floating point processing

The 828es mixing and effects DSP engine delivers virtually unlimited headroom and the utmost in sound quality.

Modeled vintage effects processing

Classic reverb. Compression modeled after the legendary LA-2A compressor. EQ modeled after British analog console EQs.

Flexible matrix routing and splitting

Send any input to any output, or multiple outputs. Includes routing to and from the computer, plus any devices on the AVB network.

Stand-alone operation with wireless control

Connect an Apple® Airport™ or other Wi-Fi router with a standard Ethernet cable for wireless control of device settings, powerful 48-channel mixing and DSP effects.

Web app control from any device

Control everything from your favorite web browser on a laptop, tablet and smartphone connected to your local Wi-Fi network.

Precision Digital Trim™

Digitally controlled analog trim on all analog inputs (mic/guitar inputs + quarter-inch TRS inputs) provides accurate adjustments in 1 dB increments.

Control room features

Built-in talkback mic with front-panel "talk" button and"A/B" speaker select buttons.

System expansion

Add a 2nd MOTU AVB-equipped interface with a simple CAT-5e ethernet cable. Connect up to five MOTU interfaces using a MOTU AVB Switch (sold separately).

AVB/TSN audio networking

Build a network with multiple interfaces and computers using standard AVB/TSN switches and network cabling, with ultra-low network latency, even over long cable runs (100 meters point to point). Stream hundreds of audio channels among devices and computers on the network.

Redesigned mic channels

Cutting-edge components deliver ultra-transparent sound with -108 dB THD+N, 118 dB dynamic range and -128 dBu EIN. Each mic channel provides individual preamp gain, pad, 48V phantom power, digital remote control and analog (pre-converter) sends for mono or stereo outboard processing.

Two headphone jacks

Each headphone output can be programmed with the same or different mixes, with independent front-panel volume control.

Two banks of optical I/O

Connect outboard digital processors, digital mixers or other gear. 16 channels of ADAT at 44.1/48 kHz, 8 channels of SMUX at 88.2/96 kHz or 4 channels of TOSLink (optical S/PDIF) up to 96 kHz. Mix and match formats among in/out ports.

Foot switch input

Connect a standard foot pedal switch (sold separately) for hands-free punch-in and punch-out while recording. Or map the pedal to any keystroke function in your host software.

Time code support

Dedicated time code input and output jacks. Converts SMPTE time code (LTC) to MIDI Time Code (MTC) and passes MTC on to any MTC-compatible host software.

MIDI I/O

Connect MIDI gear without the need for a separate MIDI interface.

Direct Digital Synthesis™ (DDS)

DSP-driven phase lock engine and internal clock source produces imperceptibly low jitter characteristics (below the noise floor), even when the 828es is resolved to an external clock source via SMPTE time code.

DC-coupled TRS outputs

Use the 828es to manipulate and sequence voltage-controlled modular synthesizers from a host DAW.

Instrument tuner and audio analysis tools

Includes an oscilloscope, real-time FFT, X-Y Plot, and graphic phase analysis.

AudioDesk

Workstation software for Mac and Windows with 24-bit recording, sample-accurate editing and 32-bit mixing and mastering.