<<The Motu Traveler looks like a very nice piece of equipment, but I
want my gear
to be the lightest, most robust and simplest as possible. I believe
that a
combination of an audio interface with a laptop won't suit my plans.>>
The Traveler is very light weight. It appears to be an aluminum shell
with just a circuit board inside, no transformers. However,
portability is the main issue. At the very least one requires a laptop
& FireWire cable connection, & for any longer than the 2 or so hours
battery life of the laptop, when bus-powering the Traveler, you'd have
to add external batteries. So, all in all, not very easily portable,
nor the simplest.
Some years ago, convincing myself that I could make a laptop-based
system work for nature recording, I purchased a Sound Devices USBPre.
While its preamps are clearly superior to the Traveler, SD never
really sorted out their OSX drivers very well & it has proved to be
more trouble than it's worth. Hence the purchase of the Traveler,
whose OSX drivers are bulletproof, but whose dimensions roughly double
the bulk of a MacBookPro, & therefore make me unwilling to hike off
track with the whole set up.
Scott Fraser
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