greetings earthlings today I am back with a review of the brand new entry-level audio
interface from mo to the m2 if you are interested in this audio interface it will cost you around
one hundred and seventy dollars like always I'll throw some links down below and for the majority
of this review I have the rode nt1 connected directly to the m2 with 48 volt phantom power
turned on and my gain set just at around 11:30 I will not do any kind of post-processing but
I may boost it in post so check the doobly-doo to see what I did Lee did now let's talk about
what comes in the box of course you are going to get the audio interface you get a somewhat short
USB C to USB a cable some compliance information and everything else that you need is available
on motives website and it does come with some free software including performer 10 light Ableton Live
light some lucid samples some lupa master loops and some big fish audio whatever that is then
as far as the build quality the interface feels decent enough it does have an all-metal chassis
the buttons have a really nice tactile feedback to them but the knobs and the XLR ports have a
little bit of wobble to them that is a bit out of my comfort zone on the front of the interface you
will find two identical channels they both have XLR combo jacks which accepts XLR or quarter-inch
inputs you will find a gain dial for each channel an independent 48 volt phantom power switch for
each channel amazing and an independent zero latency monitoring on or off button for each
of these channels next to that you will find a relatively large monitoring screen which displays
the recording levels and the playback levels and it is actually usable especially for a colorblind
person like me which is why I am NOT a big fan of the halo metering on some other interfaces
then you have a huge monitor volume control which controls the quarter inch and RC outputs on the
rear of the device a headphone volume control and a quarter inch headphone output then on the
back you will find a power on/off switch some MIDI ports to connect any MIDI devices that you
might have a USB C port which again is amazing to see and you will find RCA outputs and balanced
quarter-inch monitor outputs and according to the documentation you can connect speakers on
both of these outputs simultaneously then as far as the specs this thing has a bit depth
of 32 bit floating a sample rate of up to 192 kilohertz a gain range for the XLR microphone
inputs of plus 0 to plus 60 decibels an EIN of negative 120 9.5 DB and a phantom power provided
of plus 48 volts now there's also an additional hidden feature in this interface and that would
be that it offers loopback what that means is it will actually allow you to record your computer
playback which is a very rare occurrence for an audio interface here is a quick sample of how you
would utilize the loopback functionality right here I am in the Apple Sound preferences and I
have selected the MOE to m2 as my audio output then in my recording software for this example
I am just using audio hijack I have two channels of audio the first one is my microphone and here
you can see that I have selected input 1 as both the left and right channels so I make sure that
the audio is coming out of both sides of the speaker the second track is selecting channels
3 & 4 left and right and this will capture the computer's playback and record that to
my a iff lossless recording now that I have the music queued up and I have my recording software
setup I will hit record in the software and you can see that the first input is recording we are
getting decent levels and now I will hit record or hit play rather in iTunes to play that song back
so there you go that is how you use the loopback functionality of course if you are live-streaming
you need to make sure that you get the mix set prior to actually going live but if
you're using a DAW you can go ahead and record both of these inputs two separate channels and
mix them in post now let's go ahead and measure the noise floor of the preamps in the mo to m2
you
now in order to really test the preamps of the mo to m2 I have connected the shure sm7b directly to
the interface my gain is currently set just at around three o'clock and I am peeking around
negative 9 or negative 6 decibels maybe a little bit lower than that and I will be quiet so you can
hear the noise while we're at this gain setting and in case you are a much quieter talker than I
am I am essentially whispering now and I increased the gain of the m2 to 100% and this is how it is
sounding and now I'll be quiet so you can hear the line noise generated at this gain setting
now when we look at the latency with a sample rate of 48 kilohertz and an i/o buffer size of
64 samples we end up with a round-trip latency of 3.7 milliseconds and an output latency of
1.8 milliseconds at 128 samples we have six point three milliseconds round-trip or 3.2 milliseconds
output and at 256 samples we have eleven point seven milliseconds round-trip or five point eight
milliseconds output then when we change our sample rate to 192 kilohertz that's where it gets really
impressive with the buffer size of 64 samples our round-trip latency is 1.2 milliseconds or
a point seven millisecond output at 128 samples we have a 1.9 millisecond round-trip latency or
one millisecond output and at 256 samples we have 3.2 milliseconds round-trip or 1.7 milliseconds
output next I will be plugging my guitar and bass directly into the m2 so you can hear the DI signal
that you would be getting and then I will play the guitar and the bass and a full mix using amp Sims
okay I honestly wasn't expecting to say this going into the testing phase of this interface
but I think that every other entry-level audio interface needs to move out of the way because
in my opinion the m2 is the new king of the entry level interface but first up in terms
of pros the interface offers a bit depth of up to 32-bit floating point and a sample rate of
up to 192 kilohertz and a quick sidenote Allen from the YouTube channel sound speeds is going
to be making a video talking about 32-bit floating point so I highly recommend going and subscribing
to his channel so you don't miss out on that but back to the pros the preamps in this thing
are insanely clean with an EIN of negative 120 9.5 DBA and plus 60 DB of gain meaning you are
perfectly capable of driving at sm7b even if you're a quiet talker it also had zero issues
with Headroom when I was plugging a guitar or bass direct into the quarter inch input and then
we have the latency what that is hands-down the best a latency performance I have ever seen on
an interface sub $800 we're not done yet because then it also has loopback functionality if you are
a podcaster that is insanely valuable if you are a live streamer that is insanely valuable in an
interface for a hundred and eighty bucks that is bonkers that they included that then we have the
feature that made me want to buy this as soon as I saw the announcement the meters you actually have
usable meters on this interface and you don't just have a halo light you don't just have a clipping
signal light it is actual usable meters that is amazing but we are not done with the pros just
yet it also has phantom power on/off buttons for each individual channel meaning you could
run a condenser microphone on channel one and a ribbon microphone on channel two because they have
individual phantom power on/off buttons it also has individual zero see monitoring on/off buttons
for each channel meaning you could run your microphone into channel one and have zero latency
monitoring on then in channel two you could turn zero latency monitoring off run your guitar into
your DAW and run it through an amp sim and you don't have that honky nasty di guitar tone playing
in your headphones and the last Pro in my opinion is something that every single audio interface
should have an on/off switch what a novel idea and now that I am done gushing over this interface one
feature I wish the m2 had was a mixed dial to mix between zero latency monitoring and computer
playback although they have not completely forgotten about that feature they did reserve
that for the m4 I just wish the m2 had it as well but if they added that who would need the m4 I
guess I was also a little bit disappointed by the wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey XLR ports and dials and
it comes with a rather short USB c2 USB a cable I'm honestly criticizing the cable lengths because
there's not much to complain about here and finally what I recommended this audio interface
if you couldn't guess by now 199 thousand percent yes I think that this is a perfect example of
a company listening to what the market wants looking at reviews looking at complaints looking
at features that people are requesting and putting them into an affordable package I honestly think
that I love this audio interface and it just might be the best option under $200 in terms
of features of course we do now need to wait and see what kind of longevity and durability this
interface has and what kind of support MOTU will offer in terms of updates and additional features
alright that's gonna wrap up for today so if you found this video fun interesting or cool go ahead
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these videos until next time thank you so much for watching thank you so much for listening bye