The race to go portable has one glaring absentee: the multichannel audio interface. Tiny two-in boxes are everywhere, but the moment you need real channel count — for an electronic live set, a modular system, a hybrid rig — the enclosure balloons and your gig bag with it. German newcomer Modular Audio Tools, founded in 2024, targets exactly that gap with the MAT 16X8, which it unashamedly calls “the world’s most portable 16-channel interface.”
The headline figure is the weight: 135 grams. Barely more than a smartphone, for a box that lines up sixteen inputs and eight outputs — that’s eight stereo line inputs and four stereo line outputs, on mini-jack, convertible to standard TRS via adapter cables. Add a full MIDI section (two TRS mini-jack outputs in Type A, one input supporting both Type A and B) and you’ve got the I/O nerve center for a whole rig, tucked into a jacket pocket.
The line-level bet
One point deserves to be spelled out, because it defines the use case: the MAT 16X8 has no mic preamps at all. Everything happens at line level. That’s not an oversight, it’s a design decision. The target isn’t the home recordist tracking a guitar or a vocal, but the electronic musician who needs synths, grooveboxes, drum machines and computer to talk to each other. For that job, conversion is quoted at 24-bit / 96 kHz with a 110 dB signal-to-noise ratio on the direct inputs — more than enough to run a stage set without a second thought.
The detail modular users will love: the line outputs are DC-coupled. In other words, they can send control voltages to a Eurorack system — driving CV straight from software, with no hardware in between. That’s exactly the bridge between the computer world and the modular world that’s sorely missing on conventional interfaces, and it puts this MAT close in spirit to a hybrid Eurorack module. A headphone preamp with a cue bus rounds things out for on-the-fly monitoring.
Plug-and-play, everywhere
The other strong card is compatibility. The MAT 16X8 is class-compliant and USB bus-powered: no driver, no power brick. It works plug-and-play on macOS, iPadOS, iOS, Android and Linux — an openness you rarely see stated this plainly — with ASIO drivers for Windows. For an artist who switches from laptop to tablet depending on the date, or who’s committed to a Linux setup, that’s real peace of mind.
MAT 16X8: the essentials
| Spec | Detail |
|---|---|
| I/O | 16 in / 8 out, line level (mini-jack) |
| MIDI | 2 outputs (Type A) + 1 input (Type A/B) |
| Conversion | 24-bit / 96 kHz, 110 dB SNR |
| Outputs | DC-coupled (Eurorack CV) |
| Compatibility | macOS, iPad/iOS, Android, Linux, Windows (ASIO) |
| Power | USB bus, class-compliant |
| Weight / price | 135 g — around $459 / £415 |
My take: reliability over gimmicks
I’ve spent enough years doing live sound to know what actually matters in a stage interface, and it’s almost never the spec sheet. It’s latency, driver stability, and whether the thing reconnects without a prayer when you’re repatching twenty minutes before soundcheck. A class-compliant, bus-powered interface with no proprietary driver to babysit ticks exactly the right boxes for a mobile musician. The all-line bet and the Android/Linux openness show the brand knows precisely who it’s for — the electronic artist who travels light — and refuses to weigh the product down with features that wouldn’t earn their keep.
At around $459, the MAT 16X8 isn’t cheap for a preamp-less box, and it’s no rival to a do-it-all studio interface like a Universal Audio Volt. But in its niche — channel density per liter of bag — it has almost no competition. For an electronic set on the road, or a hybrid rig that has to fit in carry-on next to the rest of the PA gear, it’s a clever answer to a real problem.
