Using Your Laptop in the Control Room

Aside from simply using the aux cable plugged into the PreSonus Monitor Station to allow your laptop to use the studio monitors as its output, you are now able to use the MOTU 828x (control room audio interface located on the bottom of the left rack) for your laptop’s input and output. As such, in addition to outputting your computer to the studio monitors, you can now record all audio that you would normally record in the studio (in the tracking room or control room through the rack-mounted pre-amps) into your laptop.The following is a description of how to set this up:

First, download the MOTU 828 x drivers and audio software from MOTU.com/download – the page looks like this:

To install the drivers and software, click the download button in the section labelled ‘MOTU Audio Installer’. Your computer will run you through the steps to install and will need to restart at the end.

Once you’ve installed the software (having restarted your computer), shut down your computer, the MOTU 828x, and the studio computer. Before turning them back on, connect your laptop using a USB 2.0 cable (located on the first shelf on the tall rack in the back right corner of the control room next to the patch cables) to the USB input labelled ‘MOTU usb in’ on the new rack-mounted strip above the patch bay (on the right-hand rack). Now, turn your computer and the 828x back on. Leave the studio computer off. Your computer should automatically start up MOTU Audio Setup. If it does not, then go to your applications and open this program to set up the 828x for use with your computer.

In MOTU Audio Setup, your settings should look like this:

Also, make sure the MOTU 828x clock sample rate is set to 44.1kHz (this is controlled in your MOTU Audio Setup settings so should be all good if you have correctly copied the settings above):

You shouldn’t need to worry about MOTU SMPTE Setup, MOTU PCI Audio Setup or PCI SMPTE Setup, or CueMix FX (though you may want to play with this last one – go to MOTU.com/download and open the 828x user manual (also under the ‘MOTU Audio Installer’ section) if you want to learn about this.)

If your computer has recognized the 828x and you have set all the settings to look like the screenshot above, open your DAW and change the audio input/output device to ‘MOTU 828x’. Your computer’s output will now come through the PreSonus Monitor Station V2 as ST1 (labelled motuMain – usually the computer output) and input is now the MOTU 828x input. You can now record to your laptop in the tracking room or in the control room just as you would to the studio computer.

Troubleshooting

If you are getting a digital artifact type of sound coming out of the speakers (bitcrusher-esque) AFTER you laptop has recognized and connected to the MOTU 828x, make sure the aux cable is not plugged into your computer as well as the USB connecting your computer to the MOTU. Also, check that the settings in the screenshot above match your settings (in particular, that ‘Clock Source’ is set to ‘Internal’ and that ‘Sample Rate’ is set to ‘44100’). Lastly, make sure your DAW’s sample rate is set to 44.1kHz.