Motu is now shipping the UltraLite, a half rackspace, bus-powered FireWire audio interface that turns a laptop or desktop Power Mac, Intel Mac or PC into a mobile 24-bit, 96kHz recording studio with 10 inputs and 14 outputs.

Even with its compact, half-rack form factor, the UltraLite promises the same innovative design, proven reliability and high-end sound as the company’s other high-end FireWire audio interfaces.

Housed in a lightweight aluminum alloy, the UltraLite provides two mic/instrument inputs with preamps, 48-Volt phantom power, unique three-way pad switch (-36, -18 and 0dB) and front-panel Digital Precision Trim knobs that provide 24dB of gain in 1dB increments for a total gain range of 60dB.

There is plenty of additional analogue I/O via 6 balanced line-level quarter-inch (TRS) inputs (a total of eight analogue-ins) and 10 analogue TRS outputs. Also included are 96kHz stereo S/PDIF digital I/O, dedicated stereo headphone output and MIDI I/O for a controller keyboard and other gear. MIDI performance is sample-accurate with supporting software.

You can connect microphones, guitars, synths, keyboards, drum machines and even effects processors, and then use the UltraLite’s built in 8-bus mixer to monitor all of these live inputs via the UltraLite’s main outs, headphone jack or any other output - with virtually no monitoring latency and no processor drain on the computer, says Motu. You can even create up to four separate (stereo) monitor mixes for the main outs, headphones and other outputs.

Everything, including talk-back and listen-back, can be controlled from the included CueMix Console software, just like a conventional mixer. When using the UltraLite to mix without a computer, users can control CueMix directly from the UltraLite’s front-panel.

When you finish front-panel programming, the backlit LCD displays 8-segment level meters for all inputs and outputs simultaneously, providing instant and continuous feedback to the user, even in low light environments. The UltraLite can draw power directly from its FireWire bus connection to the computer (no AC required) or from the included DC power supply when operating as a stand-alone mixer.

You can further expand your system by connecting additional UltraLite, Traveler, 828 or 896 FireWire audio interfaces. The UltraLite provides two FireWire A (400Mbit/s) ports for easy and convenient daisy-chaining. The UltraLite also provides on-board SMPTE time code synchronisation features, which allow you to slave the UltraLite system to SMPTE time code (via any analogue input) without a synchroniser.

The UltraLite can also generate time code and send it to any analogue output. These sync features are provided by a DSP-driven phase-lock engine with sophisticated filtering that provides fast lockup times and sub-frame accuracy. The synchronieation features are crossplatform and compatible with all audio sequencer software that supports the ASIO2 sample-accurate sync protocol.

The UltraLite provides cross-platform compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3 or higher (including the new Intel Macs), Windows XP and any audio software that supports standard WDM/ASIO/Core Audio drivers. The included AudioDesk workstation software for Macintosh provides 24-bit recording/editing and 32-bit mixing/processing/mastering. The UltraLite is now shipping for around £495.

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BIOS, 03.04.06