How I've gotten here
You can either skip this part or grab some popcorn...
I'm very glad this forum exists, but I fear I've discovered it too late. I went straight into MOTU UltraLite AVB's fly trap... As many others report, I have several problems operating this interface on Linux and now I'm thinking about replacing it.
Let me say that I am a Mac switcher and I've used a UAD Apollo Twin before. Knowing that hell will freeze over before I get that to work with Linux (without going insane reverse engineering and writing a driver for the device first of course), so I was in search for a new DSP audio interface and found the aforementioned MOTU. I've used it on my Mac for a few months before switching to Linux to "ease the switch" and it worked pretty well I have to say. However, my first weeks on Linux have only seen me restart Pulseaudio / PipeWire every few minutes to every few hours due to lack of audio output without any indication on the Linux' computers part.
Rambling aside, I'm throwing in the towel.
What do I want?
- An interface that "just works" and continues to do so for 8h at a time (I know, I'm asking a lot here )
- 2 XLR/Line Combo Ins
- S/PDIF / ADAT capabilities (optional)
- DSP support that is working and controllable on Linux (Compressor, EQ, HPF, Gate, Routing, Limiter at least).
- DACs/ADCs/amps that aren't of worse quality than the MOTU
- While I also sometimes toy around in DAWs, The main use will be recording narrations. With the Apollo Twin, I could come into a call or record a podcast/screencast and it'd always sound great with the rest of my setup, no extra setup or post-processing required. That kind of setup made me very productive on the Mac using the UAD Apollo Twin, the MOTU also worked great for this.
Thank you very much for all of your suggestions.