Description
Equipped with the same ESS Sabre32 Ultra DAC Technology found in audio interfaces costing thousands, the M2 from Motu delivers an astonishing 120 dB Dynamic Range on its main outputs. ESS converters also drive the headphone output, which rivals dedicated headphone amplifiers costing hundreds. Ultra-clean preamp circuits produce a measured -129 dBu EIN on the mic inputs. Capture and monitor your audio with pristine clarity. The M2 provides best-in-class speed for monitoring live inputs (mic, guitar or keyboard) through your computer, thanks to MOTU’s expertly engineered USB drivers, which deliver class-leading, ultra-low 2.5 ms Round Trip Latency (at 96 kHz with a 32 sample buffer). When recording and mixing, nothing is more critical than achieving optimum levels. The M2 is the only audio interface in its class with a full color LCD featuring clear, detailed level meters for all inputs and outputs. It comes with an extra XLR-XLR cable.
Box Contains
MOTU M2 2×2 USB-C Audio Interface
- MOTU Performer Lite and Ableton Live Lite
- 100+ instruments
- 6 GB of free loops and sample packs
- XLR-XLR Cable
Steven Jewell –
Works first time! Rugged construction.
This is engineered in Cambridge Massachusetts. Made in China. The quality if high. Had to download ASIO for all software. It’s free online. I purchased this to replace my factory defective Prosonus. Glad I did and you won’t regret it either. Designed for low budget home studio.
Mal –
works perfectly
Prior to installing this, the latency between pressing a note on the MIDI keyboard and sound at the speaker was about 140 ms, after installation the latency dropped to about 25 ms. Also, I’m able to use multiple audio sources at the same time. The bar level display is easy to read and is really handy for setting levels.
Rob –
Awesome Audio Interface
If you are looking to step up from a basic interface or wanting your first but do not want to go with ultra budget this is the one. It’s not cheap, but it’s also really not that expensive for what you get.The unit is very solidly built, super clean audio. The clipping meter is an awesome addition. All the knobs feel solid. Connections are tight. And, it even has an On/Off switch, sounds trivial but how many interfaces actually have a switch?? Very few. I’d recommend to this to anyone who is in the market at this price point.
DaJamMaster –
Best Bang for the Buck
The two main attributes that I want from a small audio interface like this are good preamps and low latency. The Motu M2 delivers on both. I use this with Jamkazam and other online realtime music performance platforms and I’m getting around 4ms latency with the native ASIO driver in Windows and similar on a Mac with CoreAudio. Mostly, I really like the preamps. They have plenty of headroom and they are super clean. I don’t think you could get a preamp with less noise without spending at least twice as much and maybe 4x as much.If there is is one feature missing it is the ability to toggle between mono and stereo mode. I really do like the internal loopback feature, but it’s easy to create an infinite loopback situation with it in which you get nasty reverb effect or worse — feedback.
John B. –
Analog output too weak
Audio inputs work great. Left and right ones are different stereo channels. Meters are bright as are LEDs in the switches which run anytime moc is plugged in, so power switch is super to avoid unplugging when not in use. Headphone audio level is good but analog output to passive 8 ohm speakers is poor, must crank up big knob all the way to get sound that is just a bit too low level when bookshelf speakers are at a sides of monitor. I had wanted to use the Motu for all Mac sounds but it cannot easily be heard if other noise is present. Too bad because the M2 can mix USB sound from Mac with mic inputs but then can only reasonably go to headphones.
Rick C –
Nice, but lacking
This product had a great sound, and was easy to use, but does not appear to have any way to use a pedal to punch in. It seems to record very well, but punching in is something important.
Jim B. –
Easy to setup and VU meters very helpful!
We are using the Motu M2 to mix our church ceiling ‘crowd mic’ with the rest of the output from our mixer for church services sent out over Zoom. It works very well. We especially like the headphone monitor so we can adjust the ceiling mic as necessary and also monitor the overall sound being fed to the Zoom Computer. No more complaints about not being able to hear!
Chasernelson –
The only thing that checked all of the boxes
I am not using this product to record anything. I am using it purely for PC gaming/Music listening. This was the only thing I could find that met all my requirements, listed below:1. Ability to drive 250ohm headphones2. Has direct (latency free) mic monitoring (I like to be able to hear myself)3. Makes me not sound like a robotI tried lots of “gaming dac/amps” before this. None of them could meet all of the requirements listed above. I looked into the Scarlet, but it couldn’t drive my headphones. I looked into separate dacs and amps, but they didn’t have a mic port, or didn’t have monitoring, or didn’t have latency-free monitoring. This thing works marvelously. I can hear all of my PC audio, communicate clearly with friends in discord, and hear myself at the same time. It’s also nice to have my speakers plugged in as well, for when I don’t want to use a headset. The reason I couldn’t just the use the plugs on my PC was because they were picking up interference from my graphics card. This solves that issue.I am using this with DT990 Pro’s and a modmic (to use a mod mic you will need an XLR adapter to step down the phantom power). But I like that I now have the ability to use a more fancy XLR mic if I ever want to. Also, you may want to use some EQ software to get the sound where you want it. But once you get everything where you like it, man it just works perfectly.Buy it!
Austin –
Good product, but audio drops out occasionally & randomly.
Overall it does what its supposed to do. It accepts two XLR inputs, provides a monitoring feature, and is compact. Unfortunately, the audio drops out occasionally and is very annoying after the first couple of times. I find it hard to reproduce the issue, even using different buffer sizes.
Encode –
Great, but inconsistent
It’s great when it works and I didn’t even need to do EQ settings because I sounded great out of box thanks to its built in settings, but the audio is inconsistent. When I open or close tabs in my internet browser, I’ll randomly lose all audio and it’s an extreme disappointment that this has been occuring for years, based on forum posts I found after having this issue. Changing bit rate and putting it back will fix it but I shouldn’t have to do this during a game or when I’m playing with friends. Some reported it was fixed when using a different cable or simply using Mac instead of windows. I thought using a goxlr was a headache until I introduced this to my streaming/recording rig. Ymmv, as my friend loves his, which is why I purchased, but I do not.