MY ULTRALITE JUST WENT NUCKING FUTS!

[Teedub]

Shaman, I've found a fix which seems to have improved things. Only time and extended use will tell for sure, but I think I may finally be getting performance commensurate with MOTU's reputation.

I'd been using the Ultralite as my sound device for everything because that seemed like the thing to do - I mean I went into the Sound section in the WinXP Control Panel and set it up as my device for Windows sounds so I could listen to all computer audio, including iTunes, web pages, movies, etc. through my Ultralite instead of the usual laptop jack.
I now believe this setup was the source of my issues. If a webpage loaded or Rhapsody had a surge of throughput or what-have-you, that was a source of instability to the whole sound setup for some reason (probably because the new audio coming in would be at a conflicting sample rate or something), and the Ultralite would usually crap its pants at that point. Incidentally, this setup appears to be what forces you to use 11 and 12 as your main outputs in your sets, as well. Don’t ask me why – people say it’s a Windows thing and I guess I believe them, but it wasn’t that way with any other interface I’ve hooked up to this same system (M-Audio, Focusrite).

My solution, after removing & reinstalling the MOTU drivers just to be sure, was to:

- leave the Sounds And Audio Devices (accessed in the Control Panel) all set up the way it came: using Realtek sound (which Rain shipped your Livebook with) for everything. So basically, as far as WinXP’s Sounds And Audio Devices tabs are concerned, the MOTU doesn’t even exist and Windows won’t try to access it.
- Then go into Ableton and set up your ASIO audio like you normally would with those two drop-down lists in the hardware control panel - MOTU ASIO with the Ultralite as the device.

That’s it. Your iTunes, movies, web & other B.S. will utilize Realtek audio & come out of your regular laptop speakers (or plug-in speakers if you use those) while your DAW - and your DAW alone - will make exclusive use of ASIO on your Ultralite & monitors. This is basically the extreme version of turning off your Windows sounds so that other apps don’t try and horn in on your interface usage. Instead of telling your opsys “don’t play sounds, ‘cause when you do it screws up the audio in my DAW”, I guess what you’re actually saying is more like “Screw not playing sounds, just don’t even think for a minute about touching my interface, ever.”
Another upside to this Quarantine-style setup is that you don’t have that weirdo “11 & 12” thing happening with your main outs.

Seems to work beautifully so far. Last night I loaded up a fairly heavy-duty set, FX and CPU usage-wise, with plenty of choke-points and opportunities to get my Ultralite to flip out and spaz. I left the set looping and went out to dinner. When I came back, the Ultralite was still chugging along nicely, playing the song over and over again. Technically, it may possibly have wigged out and then recovered on its own before I came back (it’s done that before) but typically it doesn’t recover until I restart my system, so I feel pretty certain it just kept things going the entire time I was gone. More info later as I run and test it more.

-- Also, I forgot to mention that for good measure, I'm running the Ultralite through an ExpressCard Firewire 400 adapter that is spec'ed with the Texas Instruments firewire chip. This has never made a difference for me before - and it shouldn't because even if you're using a TI chip in that adapter, everything is still ultimately routed through your overall cardbus, which is still whatever your laptop was spec'ed with (only as strong as the weakest link). My audio went belly-up and crackled plenty of times before when I was experimenting with running it through this card. But I have heard that in practice, layering in a TI card can sometimes make a difference and better your odds, even if it doesn't fix things completely. I'm able to imagine a scenario where having unfettered, loony DICE2 signals hit your TI chip and get tamed a bit before they trounce your crappy Ricoh gear would result in more stable performance, so what the hey I'm game.

[thumperjack]

All of a sudden the output of my Ultralite sounds like one big digital distorted mess, and the meters in its display are jumping all over the place. And now it's happening even while no music at all is playing. A whole bunch of crackles and pops.



what the fucking fuck?!

Any ultralite users here had that problem? HALP!

i seeeeeee HD280pro? that is my setup dood. sux, i thought ultralites were bombproof. sure feels like it is.

[nuxnamon]

sorry to hijack the thread but I always notice everyones ultralite has brighter LED's in comparison to mine.. I can't even see mine unless i turn off the lights.. is there a way to adjust this.. i couldn't find anything in the manual..

[the shaman]

thanks for replying teedub. i shipped my livebook back to rain & they've returned it with the audio driver configured to motu (w/o realtek installed orginally). unfortunately, i don't know what version of the realtek driver they were supposed to ship. which one are you using? i'm gonna try to do this myself b/c i can't stand this anymore. hopefully it won't be a painful task. hit me back up. thanks again.

[UnitedElectric]

Teedub, I'm gonna give that a whack as a last resort. Never thought of it. I will point out that I have had moments with the Ultrafart when it suckered me into thinkig I had it done. The next thing I know, I'm in front of 200 people pushing my 'panic' button, reverting my setup to all-non-computer audio (decks, guitar, whatever I'm playing with at the time), sweating bullets, rebooting my computer or turning off-then-on my Ultrapoop (whichever the flavor of the day is - you never know until your set melts) and wanting to vaporize into the atmosphere in terror. Alas, I hate this stupid machine, but love its features.

I have done everything I could: pci latency check, process explorer, xp2 firewire downgrade, resolved all irq crap, disabled all unused hardware, I have the TI cipset, etc, etc. If this doesn't work, I'm going USB 2.0. This guy looks sexy: http://www.roland.com/products/en/UA-101/. Thanks for keeping this thread alive, people. I had gone back to my crappy m-audio unit. I should've switched it out two years ago, but I.. But I... I dunno.

[Teedub]

Hey Shaman, I don't think it's important whether you specifically have Realtek or not for your audio, it's just that we need to recognize that, as PC users, we don't have Integrated Audio like the Mac folk do. This simply means that whatever audio our PCs ship with, Realtek or otherwise, we need to make sure that our "other" processes never, ever try to access our DAW audio cards by setting up our audio as separate (NOT integrated). I think. Heh.
So, assuming I'm correct (big assumption), just leave your system audio set up to use whatever dorky computer audio app that thing shipped with (or, hell, NO audio - is that possible?) and have the MOTU ONLY on ASIO. It's a matter of running your "serious audio only" on the Important (ASIO) system and your unpredictable BS audio on your crap system, separately. Quarantine.
Mac users don't need to deal with this because they pay more for their TI internal firewire chipsets. Part of the cost of a Mac. Apple actually tried to go cheaper and spec'ed the unfortunately sketchy Agere chipset for a while but ended up shipping a bunch of notebooks with crappy firewire performance and bad audio. They apparently got a run of complaints so they had to go back to the more expensive, American TI chipset. They are forced to do this because when they run a system which ambitiously Integrates all audio that comes through, it won't work with anything but the most stable/reliable/expensive chipset on the market. We get by OK (for the most part) with our crappy Ricohs and other BS chips because Windows forces the more stable ASIO standard and routes crap internet & app audio to other resources - IF you know that's what you need to do.
The retarded thing is that MOTU doesn't include this as a caution in their documentation, giving themselves a bad name even though their boxes perform great when set up correctly. Granted, when you go through the process of installing and setting up your MOTU audio, they never explicitly tell you to go into your Control Panel and set up Windows audio to route though your Ultralite, so in a way, they haven't given you a bum steer TECHNICALLY. It's a glaring-ass omission though. If I ran that company, Christ, the first thing I'd say in the manual is "CAUTION: be certain to configure your Windows System audio in the Control Panel to use whatever audio shipped with your computer, NOT MOTU ASIO, and NOT through your new Ultralite. Unless you have a TI firewire chipset on your rig, it is IMPERATIVE that you quarantine your DAW audio from your system audio under Windows XP Pro!" Simple enough concept, for love of god. But it takes a long time to figure it out when NO ONE ON THE PLANET IS WILLING TO SPEAK ABOUT IT DIRECTLY. That said, it's probably more technically complicated than I think it is, but this is what I've been able to figure out on my own through research and trial and error.

I've really been having good luck with this Ultralite since a little bit after I posted my last update, though - Rock Solid DAW audio for the first time in 3-4 years. Like seriously, Solid for real, not a single poop-out for the last week and I've been running lots and lots of tracks with my brand-new pig-ass huge NI Komplete plug-ins 8P. What fun.

UnitedElectric: when I was ready to give up on the MOTU I went out and bought a Focusrite Saffire Pro 40. The sound was *awesome* and it was more stable than the MOTU. But all this meant was that WHEN IT SHIT ITS PANTS (and it did, about as often as the MOTU) it didn't turn into crap and gobbledegook for an hour at a stretch like the MOTU. Instead, it just dropped out for a second or two - much more "stable" but almost entirely as useless as the MOTU's habit of frying eggs at top volume if you really consider the situation. Also, there were odd CPU spikes that made no sense so I had to severely abbreviate my sets to get reliable performance without topping out. It did this drop-out behavior whenever I had anything - ANYTHING - other than control devices hooked up to my computer unless they were eSATA. Any hard drive that wasn't eSATA, even a USB hard drive or a keychain stick or whatever, if it wasn't my trusty eSATA drive, there'd be those mysterious dropouts. A web browser or Rhapsody opened would cause the same thing. It wasn't until I took it back that I put 2 & 2 together and realized that I bet if I just turned all audio that all those crap apps are using to some other resource than my Focusrite ASIO, things might work better. I was seriously about to pull the trigger on a $1200 RME Mutiface 2 (cardbus audio superiority still reigns supreme, apparently - at least from what I've read it's still the low-latency king as much as everyone loves to jape over firewire) when I asked myself if I'd ever actually run the audio separate on the MOTU. I had a sinking feeling that it would work (I really wanted that RME) and it did. You know, RME probably would have told me as much and then I'd have realized what I'd been doing wrong all along after I'd dropped the mint. Who knows, that Saffire may have been the best damn thing I've ever laid my hands on if I'd figured out to get rid of everything while it runs - maybe the CPU spikes even would have stopped.

Anyway, I think I'm actually happy now, working on a soundtrack for a friend with smoooooooth audio performance. Maybe I'll become so confident I'll end up on a stage sometime with my laptop. Either that, or, as soon as I'm proven completely wrong about this whole thing I'll be right back at this thread bitching again. Good luck.

[SubFunk]

I don't know if my contribution is from any sense at all, but i can say that motu is a pain under windblows, we have a motu v4hd at work and it's a great pain to get it working under xp, if i plug it into my machine (osx) it's a lovely performing interface...

[the shaman]

hey teedub. thanks for replying man. i've been trying to get support from both Rain/MOTU & i'm getting nowhere. exactly how do you install the Realtek driver? b/c even after i download/install one, i still don't see it. i'd like to try your suggestion b/c i've been researching for an answer all weekend!! only thing i know is that i no longer have an audio drive in my computer (the sound/game controller on appears when i install my motu firewire set). this is getting very frustrating. to be honest with you, i can proly do it myself but i'd rather a pro walk me thru it. can you help me out?
p.s.
motu gave a response in the techlinks and asked about reducing/increasing the buffer size....IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE BUFFER SIZE!!! (DAMMIT MAN!!!)

[UnitedElectric]

Hey, Teedub. Howz that fix working for you? Mine seems to be running okay after your sage advice..

[Goran@Irrupt]

Hey Shaman, I don't think it's important whether you specifically have Realtek or not for your audio, it's just that we need to recognize that, as PC users, we don't have Integrated Audio like the Mac folk do. This simply means that whatever audio our PCs ship with, Realtek or otherwise, we need to make sure that our "other" processes never, ever try to access our DAW audio cards by setting up our audio as separate (NOT integrated). I think. Heh.
So, assuming I'm correct (big assumption), just leave your system audio set up to use whatever dorky computer audio app that thing shipped with (or, hell, NO audio - is that possible?) and have the MOTU ONLY on ASIO. It's a matter of running your "serious audio only" on the Important (ASIO) system and your unpredictable BS audio on your crap system, separately. Quarantine.
Mac users don't need to deal with this because they pay more for their TI internal firewire chipsets. Part of the cost of a Mac. Apple actually tried to go cheaper and spec'ed the unfortunately sketchy Agere chipset for a while but ended up shipping a bunch of notebooks with crappy firewire performance and bad audio. They apparently got a run of complaints so they had to go back to the more expensive, American TI chipset. They are forced to do this because when they run a system which ambitiously Integrates all audio that comes through, it won't work with anything but the most stable/reliable/expensive chipset on the market. We get by OK (for the most part) with our crappy Ricohs and other BS chips because Windows forces the more stable ASIO standard and routes crap internet & app audio to other resources - IF you know that's what you need to do.
The retarded thing is that MOTU doesn't include this as a caution in their documentation, giving themselves a bad name even though their boxes perform great when set up correctly. Granted, when you go through the process of installing and setting up your MOTU audio, they never explicitly tell you to go into your Control Panel and set up Windows audio to route though your Ultralite, so in a way, they haven't given you a bum steer TECHNICALLY. It's a glaring-ass omission though. If I ran that company, Christ, the first thing I'd say in the manual is "CAUTION: be certain to configure your Windows System audio in the Control Panel to use whatever audio shipped with your computer, NOT MOTU ASIO, and NOT through your new Ultralite. Unless you have a TI firewire chipset on your rig, it is IMPERATIVE that you quarantine your DAW audio from your system audio under Windows XP Pro!" Simple enough concept, for love of god. But it takes a long time to figure it out when NO ONE ON THE PLANET IS WILLING TO SPEAK ABOUT IT DIRECTLY. That said, it's probably more technically complicated than I think it is, but this is what I've been able to figure out on my own through research and trial and error.

something is not clear to me... should i configure my Windows System audio in the Control Panel to use MOTU or built in audio?! couse at the moment, it's set to use built in thingy and i still get random noise at least once a day. it's really frustrating...
can you, please, write down exactly what we need to do to make it work.
i'm on XP Pro.
thanks.

[Teedub]

Click on Start > Settings > Control Panel > Sounds And Audio Devices

This’ll bring up your Sounds and Audio Devices Properties control box thing.

Click on the Audio tab.
On the Audio tab there should be 3 boxes with a drop-down list in each: Sound playback (with a Default device sub-heading), Sound recording (with a Default device sub-heading), and MIDI music playback (with guess-what-kind of sub-heading)

Set the Default device drop-down menu in your Sound playback section to your default sound card drivers for the ordinary, internal, consumer-grade, non-ASIO audio card that’s in your computer, be it Soundblaster, RealTek or whatever. Make sure this window is not set to use your MOTU or ASIO or whatever.

Set the Sound recording Default device drop-down list the exact same way.

I don’t know shit about MIDI, so I leave the MIDI music playback device set to Microsoft GS Wavetable SW Synth. It doesn’t seem to be broken so I don’t screw around with it. If anyone has a contrary opinion about this and would care to enlighten me please pitch in, I’d genuinely love to know more.

Now, in your DAW (I’m assuming it’s Live ‘cause you’re on this forum) go through and set up your audio to use ASIO and Ultralite (I think the top two drop-down boxes are in that order – I’m writing this from work so I can’t look at my DAW to be specific).

Now your crap audio from webpages and Media Player and System Sounds (if you think running with system sounds is a good idea) and all that other garbage will spew out through your crap audio card instead of interrupting your MOTU ASIO audio every time there’s a message beep or if a webpage thinks it might want to hijack your audio when you’re trying to work.


So, for god’s sake, Website!, configure your Windows System audio in the Control Panel to use built-in audio


If you’re still having problems, it isn’t because your audio is configured incorrectly (assuming I know what the hell I’m talking about). Like I mentioned earlier, I also got static and drop-outs (with the MOTU and the Focusrite, respectively) when I had a USB (yeeeees, or USB2) drive or a thumb drive or a firewire drive plugged in to my computer. I think this is because I likely have one of those absolute shit Ricoh Firewire chipsets in my machine. From what I have been able to gather, pretty much everything ends up being routed through that piece of utter garbage chipset whether it’s Firewire or USB – everything except eSATA, that is. My notebook has a built-in eSATA port (utter dumb luck on my part) which I use for my project drive and that seems to take care of things once and for all. This leads me to believe that eSATA is not integrated into the same sucky Ricoh controller chip and that eSATA actually routes through a designated chipset of its own. This would make sense when you consider the throughput speeds of eSATA2 are like 4 times as fast as firewire800 – seems like you’d need a separate chip just to handle all that bandwidth cause it’s a whole other ballgame.

So in a nutshell, what I have done is decided not to fight my severely handicapped firewire chipset. I do everything I can to coddle the idiot so it doesn’t start blubbering and drooling in a corner when I need it most. I’m set up to run literally Nothing from any storage device through my firewire chipset but audio from my DAW because any time it has to handle anything else, even the most minor of interruptions, it shits its pants because it’s a piece of garbage chipset.
I have to get samples and recorded audio into my DAW somehow though, so I route it through my completely separate eSATA hardware. Again, if I used USB or FW for my streaming DAW audio it’d have to go through the same genetically inferior, mentally incompetent chipset as my ASIO audio and then you have a moron dumping a load in his pants and rolling in it again.

Finally, just to hedge my bets, I am also running the MOTU through a TI-chipped FW400 ExpressCard, though I have heard it makes somewhere between “a little bit of” and “no” difference from different parties. Who knows.

Website!, Another thing that I imagine could be a dropout-causing issue is if you’re using a computer that has “Intel Integrated Audio” instead of a real sound card – where audio isn’t handled by a discrete audio card with its own processing ability, but is dealt with directly by your main CPU along with everything else. Great for cheapness, I guess, but seems like a bad idea otherwise. In that case, even if you had your system sounds going through a different audio source (IIA) than your ASIO stuff in your DAW, it’d still bog down your CPU and cause bottleneck. I bet, anyway.

Shaman, I don’t know a thing about Realtek or their drivers and it doesn’t matter what you’ve got under the hood anyway. Just set your computer so it doesn’t use your MOTU for system sounds. If MOTU is the only option and you can’t pick another one, well then yeah, I guess you need to get a driver on there for your other card, whatever it is, so that you have something to select. I have no idea what to do about that because I’m just some guy.
Maybe this thing will work (it’s like the first thing I found when I Googled RealTek):
http://www.realtekdriverscenter.com/ind ... 5QodwzaNfg
Good luck.

UnitedElectric, I’m glad it’s working for you as well. I haven’t had any problems yet with my new configuration, but I’ve also been pretty busy with other stuff and haven’t put in a serious amount of DAW time lately. But with what little I’ve been putting in it’s fair and accurate to say, “so far so good.”

The moral of the story for all of us who don’t have TI firewire chipsets is:
If you can at all help it, don’t ever let your Firewire chipset try to think about anything but audio from your DAW! Because it can’t!

Oh, here’s the other, more important moral for those about to buy a notebook PC for audio:
Don’t ever buy a “pro audio” computer from a company who can’t tell you flat out that the internal firewire chipset in the machine they’re trying to sell you is in fact made by Texas Instruments. You will regret it.

[Goran@Irrupt]

thanks Tee!
well, in my Control Panel > Sounds And Audio Devices > prefs i was always using built in Audio card, not MOTU. i'm not sure though, if that card is built in a motherboard (i guess so). maybe that's causing me the trouble. in that case, there's no cure?
i uninstalled Asio4all from that machine and we'll see if that will help.

the strange thing happened when i tried out my new laptop. it also has built in audio card (of course), but when i plugged MOTU it was the first time i was getting sound from the main outputs 1 and 2 (not 11 and 12!). don't know the answer for this...

[rikhyray]

Did I get it right, Livebook pro uses other then TI chip?

[Teedub]

rikhyray, I can't confirm it at this point because I haven't written to Rain asking that direct question yet, but yes, you are getting my drift - I think the firewire chipset in my Livebook Pro is in fact NOT a TI chipset because:

a) I've been having the problems I've been having
b) One of the blurbs about the computer on their website says something to the effect of "TI Firewire 400 included (on expresscard adapter)"

I will at some point email them and ask the question point blank. I have asked Asus (the Livebook I have is based on the Asus Z84j chassis) what kind of firewire chip they spec in that model and I haven't gotten a response. I'm really starting to think that the way people just do not want to talk about it across the boards tips their hand and tells me that there's actually something rotten going on concerning firewire chipsets, industry-wide.

Of course, if I find out it's a TI, I'll be prepared to call myself irresponsible in my prior posts
But I don't think that'll happen because why would people love the TI chipset this much if it performs the way mine does? This thing ain't no TI. If it is I will be flat-out astonished.


Hey Website!, I find that when I route ALL audio (including Windows/system audio) through my MOTU, the MOTU forces my DAW to use outs 11-12 for the main outs because MOTU has some kind of problem with Windows. When I hook my Windows/system audio through my internal sound card, thereby letting my DAW manage my MOTU exclusively, then I can have the normal Outs 1-2 for the mains which I feel l'm entitled to.
As for Intel Integrated Audio vs. a real sound card, what does the option in the Sounds And Audio Devices drop-down actually say? Does it say "Intel Integrated Audio" or "Soundblaster" or what? Or does it actually just say "built-in"?
Also, are you using a USB or Firewire drive for your music project files?

[funky shit]

+10 internetz for teedub, epic posting.