Upgraded from a Focusrite Scarlett to the Motu M4 for a couple reason. I heard that this was an upgrade in terms of audio quality, which is good but it's also just the interface, so it's not going to be a big change. It can also give more gain to the monitoring headphones, which is something I was looking for since my headphones were starting to hit the maximum of what the Scarlett could give. The main feature I was interested in with this upgrade are the two line in inputs on the back. This is mostly meant for instruments, but I was interested in using this for rhythm games.
If you've played a rhythm game at home before, you know that you need the lowest latency you can get with your audio. Often times, the best way to make it work is to directly connect speakers to the device or use the device's own speakers. This works great if that's the only thing you're doing, but there are times where that's not the case. I often find myself on my desktop listening to a video in the background if I'm playing casually or talking to my friends along with screensharing the game. In these cases, there are two options for listening to both at once: buy a dedicated mixer or plug the outgoing audio directly to the computer. Using a mixer does work, but I found it to be a hassle to set up. An extra usb port for power, extra wires being looped around my desk, and carefully setting everything up to not introduce any noise (admittedly, that's probably because I went cheap on the mixer). All that just to play one game for an hour did not feel worth it. The easiest alternative is to directly connect the audio to the computer and listen to the playback, but Windows likes to introduce extra latency in the process. It's not enough to ruin every game, but for rhythm games especially, it's easy to notice the difference between this method and directly plugging in headphones.
This leads to why I was interested in the Motu M4. The back 3 and 4 inputs are line inputs, exactly like how I had the audio currently connected to the computer. They're similarly passed to the computer as an audio input, so I can bring the audio over for screensharing. The real benefit to having this connected to the audio interface itself is that these inputs can be directly monitored. Just like the microphone on the Scarlett, monitoring these inputs directly has practically no latency. Monitoring these inputs still allows the audio from the computer to go through, which gives the exact setup I was looking for!
The main concern I still had before getting this was the volume of this input. Many people were complaining that the gain is a little low and would need an external amplifier to make usable in many situations. However, I could never find anyone discussing it in terms of the use case I was looking for, so I wasn't sure how well it would work. I'm happy to say this this worked very well for me, but I do want to add some details to that. I did find it to be a little low at the start, leading me to raise the volume almost to max while before I had it a little over half. I also had to mess around a bit with the volume of everything involved. There's a knob that balances between the computer audio and the direct monitored audio, so as long as you have some leeway in headphone volume or computer volume, you should be able to make it work. That doesn't affect the recorded volume though, so you'll want to make sure that other's listening through a screenshare can hear the game fine. Lastly I'm used to listening to things at a bit of a lower volume than others, so if you like to have things loud and would want both of these sources to do that, this setup may not be perfect for you.
At the end of the day, the Motu M4 gave me exactly the setup I was looking for without all the extra clutter of a mixer with my previous audio interface. If you have been looking for a setup like this for a similarly specific reason, I think this is worth trying out.
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This Item  MOTU M4 4x4 USB-C Audio Interface |  |  |  |  |  | |
| Price | $269.95 | $699.00 | $649.95 | $229.00 | $189.00 | $369.00 |
| Delivery | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 | Get it as soon as Thursday, May 16 |
| Customer Ratings | ||||||
| Sound quality | ||||||
| Value for money | ||||||
| Tech Support | ||||||
| Volume control | ||||||
| Easy to use | ||||||
| Sold By | AVLGEAR | AVLGEAR | Kellards | AVLGEAR | Amazon.com | Amazon.com |
| number of channels | 4 | 20 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
| hardware interface | usb | usb | usb | usb | usb2.0 | usb2.0 |
| connectivity tech | USB | External Line Return | USB, External Line Return | USB | USB | USB |
| model year | 2019 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2021 | 2021 |
| style | — | Digital | Digital,Impedance,Unique | — | 2-in/2-out | 4-in/4-out with 76 Compressor |
Reviews with images
It's just ok.
First let me say, this interface has great preamps and DACs. My problem is that I was expecting to get a wow factor coming from the behringer umc404HD; I didn't. The headphone amp on the M4 did not do as good of a job driving my DT990 250ohm head set; the behringer did a much better job. I also had to boost the gain on the M4 preamp between 2-3 O'clock to get the same levels as the UMC404 when at 12 o'clock. Initially the drivers were a nightmare to get working properly on the M4. The main reason why I got this interface was because I did not like the behringer drivers and DAC. The M4 driver in my experience is much worse. The best bang for the buck with the M4 are the transparent preamps and the DAC which sounds great on vocals and make mixing a dream. I've seen videos on YouTube describing the preamps on the M4 as being superior and more quiet than the umc404. But In my real world use they both appear to be just as quiet. The preamp on the umc404 aren't as detailed for vocals but they tend to sound better on bass and drums; this is just my opinion. Overall I am keeping both interfaces because they are useful for different applications. However, the price point for this interface should be $150 not $229 because it's just ok. No wow factors here.
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