FW1884 vs MOTU 896 HS

Does anyone have any thoughts on Tascam FW1884 vs MOTU 896 HD. I'm changing to a laptop to be able to record live and am looking at these two interfaces.
Thanks.

I had very bad luck with Tascams support. On the other hand I have a Moyu micro express MIDI interface, their support is excellent. I'd go Motu anyday....................JDW

with the motu i would lose midi in/out. would i then use another interface for midi?

I went with the FW, but if you're thinking of hauling it around to remote sites I'd probably lean to the MOTU. I have not had issues with Tascam... I think the FW is the bees knees. But it's rather large and not road-worthy construction. It's leave-it-on-your-desk construction.

Depending on your need, there are tons of USB midi interface options.

Well you can give yourself a couple of MIDI ln/outs for under $60. Tascam support when I dealt with them had Creativitis. I had the US428 which was early USB audio and there were issues, so I had to deal with support and I really didn't receive much. Motu on the other hand answer their Emails and you get someone with knowledge when you call. And I think Motu also stays on top of their drivers better. Because you know we are all gonna be going thru some driver trips with the change to 64 bits over the next 2 years....................JDW

The tascam unit does look very nice.

Personally however I would go for a Fireface and a Behringer BCF2000. - In fact I did ;)

Kind regards

Dave Rich.

I have the motu 896HD and I'm very happy with it but! You will get some error messages when trying to go to 96 kHz/24 bit mode using WDM and sonar. It will record in this mode but you have to ignore the messages. Forget about anything higher than that in recording mode. It is a high end mixer with no digital interface at 172.4 and 192 kHz. Just audio I/O there. I haven't had much success getting anybody to care about the error messages saying that this device doesn't support the 96 mode. I have a friend with the 828mkII and he gets the same nonsense. It's a well built unit and I use it for live recordings with my laptop. I thought about the presonus firepod but at the time it wasn't available. It looks like a better bang for the buck but I've never used it. I just bought a 828mkII to add the extra features and channels it has and it interfaces with the 896HD so easily through the firewire. Read between the lines with the 896HD, it's only good up to 96 kHz like almost everything else out there on firewire. Depending on your recording needs the RME fireface 800 looks interesting! I already have to much invested in motu at this time for me and a DM-24 to figure out.

I'm very happy with my FW-1884 but I would not consider it as a portable solution. It's far too bulky to be breaking down and setting up on a regular basis.