MOTU MachFive - 2.0.1

Not happy. It has some fundamental flaws in the AudioUnit version of the app - and I wish I had done serious homework before having purchased.

In short:

• Poor installation due to current (1.2.3) product issues in the AudioUnits implementation.
• Missing functionality under AudioUnits, which eliminate the usefulness of some headline features.
• Buggy and crash-prone import tool.
• Stability problems with streaming-enabling.

I've written up a full product review of the first 48 hours of using it at http://www.ctoforaday.com/archives/000048.html - hopefully the experience will at least prepare someone else for what they might expect when they get it home - nothing else I read did.

What makes it worse is that some of these problems have been in the product for months now - and they're more focused on getting 2.0 out the door, it seems, than fixing these critical issues with the use of the product.

You expect better than this from a company like MOTU. Or I did, at least. Maybe 2.0 will be better - people who purchase after January 20, 2006 supposedly get a free update. What that means for everyone who didn't buy it before that date - well, I hope it doesn't mean they don't fix these problems, because they should. At minimum, it should be feature complete in the 1.2 series for AudioUnits before they think of sticking upgrades to users.

Dear musicMMan, I don't carry a pager, mp3 player, palm etc....
MachFive is, imho, unusable on a 1GHz G4 with 768MB RAM, the dongle is just one issue, performance another, GUI another, documentation another,integration with DP4 another,...Word on the web is that the software was not developed by MOTU, but by a third party - it certainly doesn't match the (excellent) quality of DP4. Contacted MOTU after returning the software to the reseller, their support was very friendly.