SSL 2+ Versus MOTU M4 - A Side-By-Side Comparison

hey everybody how's it going let's talk about your home recording studio today we are gonna look at a side-by-side comparison of two very hot audio interfaces on the market today and those are the ssl two plus and the motu m4 now kind of full disclosure here i've never really done anything quite like this before so i'm not 100 sure of how to approach it so if there's anything big that i leave out that you still want to know let us know down in the comments below and i'll make an effort to address any outstanding issues also there are already some really good resources out there on youtube about these two interfaces i will link to a couple videos from julian krauss down below in the description and a couple of videos from podcastage who have both covered these two interfaces in very good detail i've also done a video each on these where on each of them i've recorded an entire music project from scratch so i'll link those down there as well but as far as a side-by-side comparison let's take a look here i guess the first thing to note here is that this is not really an apples to apples comparison between these two interfaces the ssl 2 plus is a 2 in 4 out and the mo 2 m4 is a 4 in 4 out so they're not exactly competing for the exact same thing here they're kind of two different classes of interface you could say but they both do feature two combo mic input preamps here so they both have the combo xlr trs ts so you you can input mic level line level or instrument level and that's true for both inputs on both interfaces so that's great the mo 2 m4 goes a little step farther and actually gives you a couple of extra line inputs on the back you've got inputs three and four here no such thing on the ssl two plus now they both do have four outputs the moto m4 has four balanced trs line outputs and the ssl two plus has two balanced trs line outputs and for whatever reason two unbalanced rca outputs i can't say i'm a fan of that decision why not just put two more balanced line outputs here they both have midi five pin in and out which is great they both have usb type c jacks on the back of them and they both have the kensington locks just in case your audio interfaces like to grow legs and walk away now you can kind of see a little bit of a size comparison between the two of them they're about you know the ssl two plus got a little bit wider of a footprint and it definitely has a deeper footprint than the motu here two plus is kind of a big chunky boy now the two plus is in this kind of desktop format this everything on the top kind of layout while the motu adheres to the more common everything on the front kind of lay out nothing on the top all right to improve our viewing here i have rigged up some very fancy pieces of rubber back carpet and prop these up a little bit so the ssl 2 plus comes with a usb type c 2 usb type a cable and it also comes with a usb c to c cable so just in case your computer laptop whatever only has c type c connectivity ssl has got you covered so let's plug in the ssl real quick all right so we get a quick little light show here on our led input gain indicators and the usb connectivity light comes on stays on now let's go ahead and plug in the m4 and we get a little motu logo splash screen there and then we get our four ins and four ounce display here on the lcd screen so number of inputs and outputs are going to be pretty much the primary thing that's going to help guide you in choosing the right interface for you pretty much impossible to work around not having enough inputs or outputs so i think that's kind of number one decision point number two is the connectivity type i believe so both of these usb both of them use type c and after that i think the drivers and how they kind of cooperate and behave themselves on your system on your computer is going to be very important as well and i have to say i have not had any troubles with either of these now i've used the m4 more extensively it's been over about the last year or so what i used to capture my voice and the stereo output from other interfaces for all the videos i make on my channel i've been very happy with it and it has been rock solid and has never failed me the ssl 2 plus i it's also stable i have had no troubles with it i just haven't used it nearly as much so i don't have quite as much perspective but no troubles at all they've both been rock solid they've both been great for me now kind of the other side to the software portion of what comes with these interfaces is latency and latency if you are doing anything music related anything timing related then the latency and how low you can get that latency is extremely important and i'm happy to say both of these interfaces perform admirably i would say they both fall into the average uh category as far as you know as far as latency i've recorded music projects through both of them and monitored entirely through software and at no point did they struggle or anything like that so i came up with this excel spreadsheet put it on a chart here so we could look at comparative latencies between these two interfaces and rme fireface ucx which is what i typically use in my own home studio at 128 sample buffer size which i consider kind of a good all-around setting it's not as fast and low of latency as any interface can generate but it's also unlikely to cause troubles with your computer and this chart is showing round trip even though the drivers will report input latency and output latency separately it's just easier to chart when i add them together and consider the whole round trip input input plus output so the orange line represents the data points of the motu m4 at various sample rates so the first data point is is at 44.1 kilohertz and then 48 kilohertz 96 kilohertz 192 kilohertz and then just to push it as far as i could i did another data point of 192 kilohertz at a 64 sample buffer the orange line represents how the motu m4 fared it was between 11 and 12 milliseconds of round trip latency which is yeah that's not great and at that same setting at 44.1 the ssl 2 plus came in just under 10 milliseconds and then my just as comparison my rme comes in at 7.4 milliseconds round trip kind of smokes them both but hey army is known for their windows drivers their low latency that's one of the reasons why i love them so much now 48 kilohertz we can see the mo 2 is still lagging behind here with a 10.7 millisecond round trip ssl has a 9.67 millisecond round trip at 96 kilohertz things get considerably faster just about twice as fast for everybody here and the m4 is looking at a six millisecond round trip the ssl is looking at about five and a half five and a third and then at the highest sample rates the mo 2 actually laps the 2 plus with a 3.8 millisecond round trip versus 4.67 millisecond round trip and then things didn't change a whole lot for the ssl 2 plus at 192 000 samples per second when i dropped the buffer size down to 64 samples we're looking at 4.33 millisecond round trip and then the motu did improve quite a bit for a 2.7 millisecond round trip but hopefully that gives you just kind of like a quick overview of how the latencies compare they're both very usable and i think they both fall they're both competitive with all the other interfaces i've used now another point of comparison is just the build quality the overall just kind of feel of using them now the ssl is plastic all the way around on the sides and has a metal face plate here and it's the other way around here the motu is metal all the way around with a plastic face plate all of the knobs on both interfaces feel terrific they have buttery smooth travel there's very little to no wobble on them i think the buttons or the knobs i mean are all the way around terrific on both of these interfaces they're just a pleasure to interact with on the other hand the buttons on the ssl 2 plus i think are all pretty terrible they're just not very fun to kind of push and interact with they just don't really feel very good they all wobble they're kind of scratchy when you push them in and out and that goes for every single button on the face of this thing the 4k buttons now the buttons on the face of the m4 they are all very low profile so they don't have very much travel but they still are satisfying to push satisfying to interact with they do uh just wobble a little bit like they don't fit 100 perfectly in their little cutouts on the face plate but since they're low profile you don't really feel that when you interact with them as far as the quality of the jacks absolutely no problems with any of the jacks they all feel nice and secure they hold onto cables tightly but not so tightly that i'm afraid that they're going to tear the cable apart as i try to pull it out i've had no issues you know both of the the quarter inch and the xlr on both interfaces it's just satisfying to click a cable into place the fit is just about perfect so i think they both do really well there as far as metering goes the two plus has five segment led indicators to let you know how strong your input signal is coming in so that will give you some guidance as you're adjusting your input gain that's nice but it has no monitoring on the output at all so maybe if you're troubleshooting a problem you don't really get any insight into the output section now the motu m4 has this beautiful one-inch lcd screen here and this is just unique in this price point for audio interfaces i'm not aware of any other audio interface near this price that has such a beautiful full color led it's high resolution it looks beautiful you get input monitoring and output monitoring i think it's highly useful it's definitely highly attractive i really really like that now as far as software that these come with the motu m4 comes with digital performer lite and in that diw there are some soft synths and you know plug-ins and things that it comes with and it comes with a license for ableton live light now the ssl 2 plus also comes with ableton live lite but also pro tools first and it also has a bundle from native instruments which includes yeah what is it i gotta look on the box to remember but it's a complete start and hybrid keys comes with a gig and a half of samples from loop cloud and what i think is just the clear winner of just about any audio interface i've used as far as the software that comes with it is a couple of ssl native plugins vst effects it comes with vocal strip 2 and drum strip 2. both are just drum strip not 2 both of which i used on the project for the video that i did with it and i was really impressed with both of them now ssl has also in the meantime released another couple of vst plugins that you can get for free with this interface or if you already own it now the downside to the plugins that come with the ssl 2 plus is that they rely on an eye lock so it's another 50 investment and then all the pain of going through all the obnoxious eye lock authentication stuff which i absolutely hate i've had an eye lock for years so it wasn't an added expense for me but if you don't already have one to use free plugins to have to go drop 50 bucks on a stupid little dongle just so you can use the plugins it's kind of disappointing honestly now i think just about the only other thing left to do is let's take a couple of microphones let's plug them into these things and let's kind of hear them side by side and see if we can't draw any conclusions about how they might sound different okay so what i've got here is a matched stereo pair of akg's c414 xls microphones these are relatively neutral sounding microphones factory matched stereo pair so they're going to sound as similar as two microphones could sound i have two of the same cables couple of proco xlr to xlr so it should be a pretty fair fight of what i'm feeding to each interface so this one's plugged into the ssl 2 plus this one is plugged into the moto m4 so i'll switch over here start turning up the gain until we get a signal and we'll hear what it sounds like through the two plus test test test one two test one two test one two test test test one two okay there we go getting a nice strong signal here not clipping or anything so let's see what it takes to clip it test one two test one two okay there we go and we'll back it back down so you know we could hear it distort there so we have some gain to spare now this is a large diaphragm condenser microphone typically having enough gain with these is not a problem if anything headroom was going to be the problem but it looks like just judging by where i am on the dial i am maybe about six inches away from the mic speaking a little loudly which i tend to do when i wear headphones and get a nice solid signal so let's kick on the 4k switch and hear that real quick all right there we go so the 4k um so let's try it without it definitely made it louder and okay it's back on and so yeah there's just a little bit more presence i would say somewhere in that maybe four to six kilohertz kind of range somewhere in there there may be a little something something up a little higher but that's just what i'm hearing real time over headphones okay let's switch over and let's hear the moto m4 i'm going to turn my volume down by just turning all the way to the playback and that should mute me as i go away farther okay test test one two test test one two there we go okay get a nice strong signal wow i would say even around the same percentage of gain like that sounds substantially louder than the ssl did so let me back off a little bit so we've got i would say this preamp has got a lot more gain on tap than the two plus does so let's turn it up let's see what it takes to clip it test one two test one two oh yeah wait why did i get feedback so we've got ample gain here to drive and even overdrive the preamp so that's actually kind of surprising i would say that the moto m4 has got a lot more gain on tap okay let's do the same thing i'm just gonna turn myself down by turning from input to playback and i should be disappearing and going going okay yeah that's actually a little bit surprising now is one other thing that we can take a look at here so we took a look at the inputs let's take a listen to the outputs while i can't really speak to the headphone outputs i know we're just going to have to go and watch julian krause's videos about these interfaces where he gives a really good idea of what you can expect with headphones of different uh resistance of you know different ohms i always use a pair of sennheiser hd 380 pros and i believe these are somewhere in the 56 ohm so they're relatively low impedance and man i tried to find replacement ear cups for these things a couple of days ago and i can't find them but uh yeah these things need it anyways i've got a pair of hd 650s on the way for christmas but i don't have them yet so i can't really test those with these but all i can say is with a pair of 380 pros i have never had a problem getting ample amounts of headphone headphone volume i can always hear myself very well as i'm tracking even loud instruments i can hear myself i can hear the mix and i have room to spare on the volume dial now with a higher impedance pair of headphones i'm not exactly sure if that would hold true but what we can test here real quick is the output volume that would be sent to your interface or i'm sorry to your monitors your speakers through the main outputs so if i flip over here and take a look so this is my my control panel for the rme this very top row up here is what we want to pay attention to these are the hardware inputs you can see this analog 3 is dancing because that's where my microphone is plugged in that i'm speaking into right now but the ssl 2 plus is plugged in on analog 5 and 6. that's the stereo left and right and the mo 2 m4 is plugged in analog 7 and 8. that's it stereo left and right so i'm just going to send some music from my computer out the playback and out the main outputs and let's dial the volume back on both of these and let's just kind of get an idea of how hard it's going to drive these line inputs on my rme that'll give us an idea of how much kind of power we've got going out to what would normally plug into your speakers okay so i'm just going to send media player and let's take a look at the sound options real quick and right now we are going to play through the ssl 2 plus so i'm just going to hit play and start dialing up the volume and let's see what it maxes out at on the meters fall out of a cab door drag yourself across the sidewalk okay so it looked like that was just coming really close to just about zero db and that was with the volume absolutely cranked there at the end so let's try the same thing with the m4 i'll switch over and i want to go out one and two on the mo 2 m4 now and let's pick it up where we left it off here and let's watch the meters in the dial other here [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so yeah we can see pretty clearly that the motu not only does it have hotter preamps you know more gain available on the preamps but also hotter output so i didn't even have to get it turned up all the way in order to drive well past clipping line inputs that are set just the same on my interface there so they should be the same sensitivity on all four of those line inputs the two that were driven by the outputs of the ssl two plus didn't clip even when the ssl two plus was cranked all the way up the two driven by the m4 did clip even before i got to 100 so that shows me that there's just more output volume coming out of the m4 now as one final thing here that i can think of to talk about today and that is the cost the price of these now both of these are kind of scarce on the market right now it's a little hard to find these in stock anywhere but when you do find them in stock the mo 2m4 runs for about 220 to maybe 240 us dollars and that's for four inputs four outputs the ssl two plus retails for about two hundred and eighty dollars for two fewer inputs and two kind of useless outputs out of the four so strictly from a hardware perspective i would say hands down the m4 is a much better value per dollar feature per dollar but then you start to add in the software and the quality of the software plugins that comes with the ssl two plus are just excellent and that does help kind of even the scales out a little bit i still think that the two plus is a little bit overpriced for what it is i think it's a wonderful interface i can't really find much if anything wrong with it but it is more expensive than any other interface um that has two ends and four outs at least that i'm aware of so to wrap this up i don't think that you're gonna go wrong i don't think that you are going to be disappointed in either of these interfaces if you're having trouble deciding between these or their very close brethren which would be the ssl 2 and the motu m2 i think these are very high quality interfaces i think they sound great and just like when comparing any two interfaces i don't really like to declare one better than the other because typically they're kind of going for different things and they're always just gonna sound so very similar now these do have a little bit of their own personality just like any interface does they do sound just a teeny tiny bit different but we're talking kind of a few percentage points you know out of 100 of difference between the two now you do get extra tone shaping with the 4k but you know this honestly isn't anything that you couldn't achieve with some eq and a saturation plug-in with any interface but it is kind of nice to just kerplunk and just have it right there just whenever you whenever you feel like it add a little extra sparkle to something just at the push of a button that is kind of nice and the the two plus does have just a little bit of uh attitude a little bit of character maybe in its mid-range there i would consider the moto m4 a little more clean and articulate but again this is splitting hairs like you know i can say these things out loud but i'm sure that i would never pass a blind uh you know a double-blind test of trying to tell the difference if something recorded with one versus the other pretty much all interfaces especially in this price range are going to sound very very similar because that's what they're designed to do they're designed to be clean and transparent so clean and clear low distortion low noise is really the point and both of these achieve that you could you could tell on both of them that once we drove it up past a certain point they were no longer clean and clear and since we're listening to them through analog outputs here it distorted but if we were doing that uh through the usb and into a track then it probably would clip instead and not sound you know kind of pleasantly fuzzy it would just sound horrible and you know digital clicks and pops and everything so my not so hot take here is that they're both great interfaces neither is going to let you down i think they're either one you choose is going to be a good choice but hopefully going through all the points we went through today will help you make a more informed decision if you're trying to choose between these just don't stress over too much all right well thank you so much for watching i really really appreciate it i think that will do it for me this time and i will see you all again next time

Channel: Your Home Recording Studio

Views: 42,806

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Id: xgAJGwfQOG0

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020