MOTU Traveler Portable Digital Audio Workstation

Markertek News Channel coverage of the MOTU Traveler Portable Digital Audio Workstation

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Closed Caption:

hi this is Jim Cooper with motu here at
the aes show in New York we manufacture
an award-winning line of audio interface
products for both Mac and Windows and
today we're going to talk about the
traveler this is a bus powered firewire
audio interface for both Mac and Windows
and it is an aptly named product because
it's already been used all over the
world for location recording so let's
take a look at some of the features on
the traveler so the traveler has a very
compact form factor it's only 15 inches
wide by about nine inches deep and as
you can see it's it's very light very
light piece and it's a it's very
portable in that sense of slides really
easily into a bag next to your laptop
computer
it's a very slim form factor it's also
rack-mountable however and so you can
attach to rack ears on either end to
mounted in a standard 19-inch equipment
rack so it's either desktop or rackmount
operation so let's start by taking a
look at the rear panel of the unit
and of course it connects via firewire
so it gives you this box is packed with
I oh it's got 20 inputs and 22 outputs
and it connects to the computer via
firewire so it's plug-and-play
connectivity it's also bus-powered so
you can run it off of your computer with
no additional power required we'll talk
a little bit more about the power
there's also some other power options
available as well the main interest of
the inputs is the for mic inputs got
four combo jacks for either instrument
or mic input so this is great for
location recording you can record up to
four microphones simultaneously so you
could to you know two sets of stereo or
even quadric ording for us around mixing
later on in a film or video project plus
there's lots of TRS io as well for other
inputs and outputs maybe you've got some
outboard gear you want to be able to
bring in because it box also has
built-in mixing so you can route route
external devices in and out as well
there's extensive digital i/o there's a
SUV you there is a spife and most rrc a
spife an optical spiff and also these
optical connectors double as a tad
optical connectors for a channel i owe
as well
there's a dat sync and work locks if you
need to resolve the the v3 2 i'm sorry
the traveler to another
audio system or camera so it'sit's
really got a ton of i/o now back on the
front panel
it's very simple operation we've got
four separate 48 volt phantom power
switches for the four mic inputs each
preamp mic preamp is equipped with a
digital gain encoder and you'll notice
that when you turn the encoder if you
look over here on the LCD it's actually
a digital gain knob so you can increase
or decrease the gain in one DB
increments this is a really unique
feature because most interfaces have
analog Mike regain and it's usually in
fairly inconsistent throw but you get
one DB consistency throughout the entire
range so when you combine this digital
trim we call it precision digital trim
with the 20 DB pad which you get by just
pushing the knob you get a total of
seventy three DB of gain range with this
product so it's a very flexible very
flexible powerful mic preamp box there's
also a headphone outputs and the whole
qmix mixer this allows you to mix
digitally inside the traveler itself so
if you have to do mixing in the field
with or without a computer run stand
alone in mixed mode that's also a
possibility there's also extensive
metering here on the front panel for the
analog inputs and the digital i/o
now let's take a look at the power on
the side panel we've got Midian and out
in case you're doing
maybe mixing with the control surface or
you've got me doing music production and
you have a midi controller of some kind
let's take a look at the power this is
where you can alternately power the unit
with the included DC power supply but
also we've got a regular industry
standard battery cannon Jack here so you
can power the the traveler in the field
with a 10 to 24 volt power supply
this is invaluable for those fields
shoots where everything is
battery-powered so the traveler is
really aptly named it San firewire audio
interface with 20 inputs 22 outputs and
it's a really meant for the road and
four on location recording and audio
capture
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