Women and Dreams: Resurrecting a MOTU 2408 with ADAT
This is MOTU 2408 MkIII, an audio interface. It's a frustrating thing. It was originally released in 2003, but despite being over twenty years old it's still pretty good. It has eight balanced 1/4" audio inputs, a bunch of ADAT, TDIF, and SPDIF ports, and it records 24-bit audio at 44, 48, 82, and 96khz.
But it's a pain to get working with modern computers. The original MOTU 2408 MkI came out in 1999, slightly before FireWire, at a time when USB was restricted to USB 1.0, so it connected up to contemporary PCs and Macintoshes with a PCI card. What's a PCI card? Ask your parents. They might remember their own parents fiddling around with PCI cards.
The 2408 MkII and MkIII had the same system. To their credit MOTU continued to update the drivers, but as of 2025 the only Apple Macintosh with PCI slots is the Mac Pro, and MOTU's drivers haven't been updated for modern Apple Silicon processors. MOTU's next interface was the 828, but that used Firewire, which is another story entirely.
It would be nice to still use the 2408. And there is hope! Even without a computer connection the 2408 still works as an audio interface. In standalone mode analogue audio that comes in through the 1/4" jacks is routed out to the ADAT, TDIF, and SPDIF ports. SPDIF folds everything down to two-channel stereo, but ADAT and TDIF transmit eight channels of audio at 44 or 48khz, or four channels at 82 and 96khz.
.jpg)
