Do you have your Atmos setup up and running Guy? I hope everything works as you hoped it would.
I upgraded my home setup to 7.1.4 Atmos almost a year a go. I bought an old RME Multiface 1 for $80, and a used Behringer AD8200 for about $100. This gives me 16 channels for less than 200 bucks. The RME is reliable and still supported.
Here’s a description of my setup:
I’ve worked on a Focusrite Scarlett 18i20 and unfortunately it pops in Protools. Just random pops every now and then, annoying as hell. I can’t recommend it. This was a couple of years ago and I searched the internet and found many to have the exact same problem.
Besides, the master calibration pot only affects analogue outs, and since there are only 10 analogue outs, you’d need an ADAT converter, and switching between calibration levels is a pain because there’s no way to control volume for the whole analog+digital ADAT out and you’d need that for a full 7.1.4 setup which tends to be the ‘golden standard’ for home studios.
I researched Motu 16A as well, and that should work. I was acutally looking into the 24ao as well, for a second pair of 5.1 outputs plus some extra headphone outs. but that one has no inputs.
Also AVB is a dying format. Problems with drivers, not enough support, etc. Dante is the right choice but there are complications as well.
What I ended up with – until something better comes along - is using my old Focusrite Saffire PRO40 plus a second hand PRO24 I bought and set up in tandem (cascaded firewire).
Dual unit saffires supposedly work at 48Khz only, but I have them running at 96kHz and no issues so far. Still early days though.
I get 16 analogue outs in perfect timing on the cheap like that, using texas instruments PCI-express card (startech, the one focusrite recommends) OR a firewire- to thunderbolt 2 adapter running into an old macbook pro, or into a tb2-thunderbolt 3 adapter in my HP zbook laptop.
Got Dante DVS working as well. It’s another pain in the behind if you don’t have any dante-powered hardware. I had to purchase separate USB ether net adapters (got 2,5Gbit ones) and I need to have two DVS and a third computer running Dante VIA (or a Dante-enabled ethernet adapter like a dante avio xlr out, which would serve as the master / leader clock) because dante virtual soundcard can’t work as the primary clock. That’s another can of worms and it took me a few days to figure out.
Also here’s a nice way to listen to Atmos mixes in the studio from Apple TV. It would need some tweaking though unless you have MTRX Studio! production-expert-1/how-to-listen-to-dolby-atmos-without-costly-hardware