MOTU have announced three new high end interfaces offering not only class compliant USB 2.0 but Thunderbolt and AVB networking.

The three units announced as as follows:

1248 - 4 mic inputs, 8 analogue inputs, 8 analogue outputs, ADAT I/O and s/pdif I/O

8M - 8 mic/line inputs, 8 analogue outputs, ADAT I/O, s/pdif I/O 

16A - 16 analogue inputs and outputs, ADAT I/O. s/pdif I/O

DSP Mixer With Web Control

There are several features announced which make these new interfaces particularly interesting. They all feature on board DSP with a 48 input mixer and on board EQ, dynamics and reverb. The control of the mixer, system settings and routing, rather than being controlled via a software application, is via a web app allowing control from any web enabled device over Wi-Fi.

AVB Protocol

The addition of AVB compatibility allows use of several devices, connected via cat5 cables for a large, flexible, low latency networked audio solution, all controllable via a mobile devices. MOTU have announced an optional 5 port AVB compliant gigabit ethernet switch to connect multiple interfaces. Of course the usefulness of such a system is seriously affected by the 32 I/O limit imposed on non HD Pro Tools systems but the potential of systems such as these is really interesting. The potential for AVB interfaces to be distributed around a building via cat5 with web based control via Wi-Fi sounds exciting to me.

If you don’t know about AVB take a look at my two part series on networking and audio Part 1 and Part 2.