"for the money this is a well thought-out interface that offers a nice balance of simplicity and flexibility" - Robin Bigwood, Sound On Sound, April 2007

"the 8Pre's preamps sound good, and have a bit of character to boot" - Robin Bigwood, Sound On Sound, April 2007

The MOTU 8pre is a one rack-space Firewire audio interface that turns a laptop or desktop Power Mac, Intel Mac or PC into a 24-bit, 96kHz recording studio with eight mic inputs, 8-channel ADAT optical digital I/O and MIDI I/O. When not connected to a computer, the 8pre can function as an 8-channel analog-to-digital converter, making it two products in one. The 8pre is designed for convenient desktop or rack-mount operation, with a variety of controls and status LEDs on the front panel for easy access and connectors on the rear panel for efficient studio installation.

The 8pre has the ability to support 8 channels of optical output at 88.2 or 96 kHz (the 2x sample rates). This means it can be connected to another device that also supports 2x optical sample rates (via two sets of optical connectors) to add all eight mic inputs at 88.2 or 96 kHz.

The 8pre provides cross-platform compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3 or higher (including the new Intel Macs), Windows XP x64 (64-bit) and any audio software that supports standard WDM/ASIO/Core Audio drivers. The included AudioDesk workstation software for Macintosh provides 24-bit recording/editing and 32-bit effects processing & sample-accurate sync.