Recording - September 2013 - 35

Installation is straightforward; you get an
installer CD with a serial number, and it takes
just a few moments to get up and running.
Working with the hardware
Anyone who’s used to the large and
informative LCD on most MOTU interfaces may find himself a bit at sea with
the Track16; it’s designed to offer a small
set of often-needed tweaks right from the
front panel, but relies heavily on the
CueMix FX software to do everything
else. That does tend to limit the Track16’s
usefulness as a standalone digital
mixer/effects processor; it works flawlessly without a computer attached, but you
can’t alter bus structure, change routings,
or anything like that.
The top five buttons let you choose the
input you’re working with: Mic 1 and 2,
Guitar 1 and 2, and Line In. For the two
Mic inputs, clicking the knob activates a
20 dB pad, and holding the knob down
turns on 48V phantom power; there are a
pair of small LEDs for each function
above those two buttons.
The bottom five buttons include
the three outputs—Main, Phones,
and Line Out—flanked by two buttons to toggle the Meters between
inputs and outputs and to power the
interface up/down. Clicking the
knob mutes the selected output; its
button flashes with alternating color
to indicate mute status. You can also
control the levels and muting of the
input buses for the internal mixer by
simultaneously pressing the relevant
input and output buttons.
In practice, this setup gives you
the ability to tweak any level you
need, mute outputs as desired,
and do some basic input trim and
bus muting in the DSP. For most
purposes, that’s plenty of control,
and if you need more, just bring
up CueMix FX and go to work.
CueMix FX—a quick tour
Since the Track16 relies so heavily on the CueMix FX software to
operate its DSP features, and we
haven’t discussed this software very
much in recent years, this is a good
time to revisit it. CueMix FX allows graphical control of the internal DSP engine of
any MOTU interface that’s so equipped.
While the Track16 operates perfectly well
as an audio interface without ever having
to mess with CueMix FX, there is a whole
raft of cool stuff you can do with it, and it’s
a shame to not take advantage of it.
The center of the software is the DSPbased mixer inside the interface; it lets you
create up to eight different mixes of all your
input signals, one mix for each of the interface’s output pairs: Main Outs, Phones, Line
Outs, four sets of stereo pairs of Optical Out,
and a bus for the Return, which is a signal

routed back into your DAW as an assignable input the software sees.
The advantages of a DSP-based
effects/mix engine might not be familiar
to entry-level users, but once you’ve
stepped up from a “zero latency monitor
mix” knob it’s hard to go back! You can
process and mix audio without burdening
your host computer’s CPU; you can provide a great-sounding monitor mix to your
players without the latency of going into
the computer and back; and the effects
can be recorded to your DAW, offering
an alternative to your plug-ins.
Why would you want to use effects
inside your interface as anything other
than for confidence monitoring? In the
case of the Track16 (and most other
MOTU interfaces), that would be because
they sound fantastic!
Every input and output can have its own
dynamics control and eq. Dynamics processing includes two different compressors, one of them a modeled Teletronix LA2A leveling amplifier, and the eq has

seven bands—high- and lowpass filters
and five fully parametric bands with four
different gain-vs.-bandwidth characteristics, two of which can also act as high and
low shelves. Take a look at the screenshot;
in the display on the right, there’s a
scrolling spectrogram of the frequency
content of the guitar signal that’s being
eq’d, lined up with the eq bands themselves, so you can see where to attack
problem frequencies. How cool is that?
By selecting inputs or outputs for processing, you can determine whether signals are
processed before going into your DAW or
only when sent out to the monitor mix. There’s

also a powerful, smooth global reverb with a
variety of send and return options.
In addition to buses and effects, there’s
comprehensive metering, detailed graphical editing of eq curves, a handy talkback/listenback function that lets you dim
or mute outputs with one click so an engineer can talk to the players and vice
versa, Mid/Side processing, phase invert
and channel swap, and much more.
CueMix FX on the Track16 gives you a
very powerful digital mixing console/effects
processor, and even when you’re not doing
mixing, it can be handy for studio analysis
and troubleshooting. Included in the package are a variety of audio analysis tools that
you might normally spend a lot of money to
get—or not bother with at all, because of
the trouble and expense.
There’s a full-on FFT and spectrogram display for analyzing your audio’s frequency
content, an oscilloscope for audio and electrical signal study, and an XY Plot and
Phase Analysis tools to better understand
your audio’s stereo information. If you’re
serious about learning how to work
with your audio and to get the most
out of your studio’s electronics, these
tools are practically worth the price
of admission on their own! (Oh,
and don’t forget the Tuner.)
Studio tests and final thoughts
If you’re wondering why I’ve left
the “how does it sound” to the very
end, it’s because sound is never an
issue with MOTU interfaces, and
the Track16 is no exception. I lived
with it for a month or so, and used
it as my main audio interface for
tracking and mixing as well as a
live electronica festival that I attended as a last-minute performer and
Internet radio DJ. It performed flawlessly, with clean clear audio and
up to 60 dB of clean gain on the
preamps—maybe not enough for
truly finicky ribbon mics but fantastic for everything else.
The CueMix FX software was
daunting at first... there are just so
many choices and features! But
once you grasp that it’s basically
a full-on digital console that doesn’t bog down your computer when you
use it, a universe of possibilities suggest
themselves. It’s a great supplement to
any DAW.
With all that power in hand and all that
great sound quality, your only decision is
if the Track16’s unique tabletop design
and I/O complement work better for you
than that of other MOTU interfaces. If
they do, then go for it; you won’t be disappointed.
Price: $595; breakout box, $129
More from: MOTU, www.motu.com
RECORDING September 2013

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Recording - September 2013

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