Dell and MOTU

Hello!
I own a Dell Inspiron 9300 laptop and I'm planing to get a MOTU Ultralite firewire audio interface.

My laptop uses a Ricoh firewire chipset, does anyone here has used a MOTU with this chipset?

MOTU's interfaces work ok on Texas Instrument or Lucent FireWire chipsets.
So in case it wont work with the built in firewire, what PCMCIA card with Texas Instrument or Lucent chipset do you recommend?

Any comment will be apreciated,
Thanks!

Except, I can only get down to 5.9 ms comfortably for latency. With the MOTU on my Toshiba lappy (TI chipset) I could get down to 2.9 ms comfortably. That is the only known drawback for me. So yeah, I think it's either 128 or 192 for the sample buffer I use... just use whatever one lets you get to 5.9 ms, and you should be ok.

thats a serious issue to me.
and you must be doing lite duty on that laptop as well. we have yet to get below 512 buffer with a ricoh chipset and a decent hitting project.

to the OP

NO Dell with ricoh sucks.

HI,
then run our sonar test and tell me you can get past 512 (clean no pops click or artifacts)
http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm
(bottom test)

unless of course low latency is not a big issue for you, which you basically stated.
for those who need low latency Dell or 99% of laptops on the market have ricoh chipset which does not work very well.

ORIGINAL: jcschild

HI,
then run our sonar test and tell me you can get past 512 (clean no pops click or artifacts)
http://www.adkproaudio.com/downloads.cfm
(bottom test)

unless of course low latency is not a big issue for you, which you basically stated.
for those who need low latency Dell or 99% of laptops on the market have ricoh chipset which does not work very well.

Ok... as I suspected any sample buffer lower than 256 (i.e. 192, 128... which gives 4.4ms and 2.9ms latency) I got the typically loooong beeps while the audio drops out. This happens at those settings no matter what project i'm running...

I played your file, as is... at 256 (5.8 ms latency), played fine. No pops, long beeps... nothing. CPU useage peeked at 41% I think... I let it loop a bunch of times too...

What was it supposed to do again?

PS: I never said low latency wasn't an issue... I need low latency for tracking softsynths, keys, guitars thru ampsims, etc... All I said is I couldn't go as low as 2.9 ms with the Dell lappy... I could get as low as 5.8, which is still pretty farkin low, wouldn't you agree?

My lappy is Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0 ghz, with 2 gig of ram. And 7200 RPM internal HD. Running SONAR on a boot partition of XP Home that is tweaked for audio.

Dave

ORIGINAL: Farbodelic

Yes that's a very good system tweaked for audio!
Thanks a lot for the information.

My actual tascam us-122 says "input latency: 7.0 ms and output latency: 21.7 ms"
is the MOTU giving me better latency for vsti's and plugins?

any other interfaces recommended?

Thanks!

I could be wrong, but it seems that most ASIO or WDM audio interfaces should give you about the same latency... I think whether or not your software can handle that depends alot on your computer (CPU, and maybe even the firewire chipset, etc...) and also how many tracks you are running and stuff... I would think with most newer PC's you wouldn't have a problem but all you can do is try...

Dave

ORIGINAL: RRabbi
I even tried buying a Belkin Firewire ExpressCard (TI Chipset) to bypass the Ricoh altogether.... DID NOT WORK AT ALL... no-one seemed to know what the problem was, either Belkin, Dell or MOTU.... so I just settled for the Ricoh...

PS. I even tried two different Belkin ExpressCard's... the one that has both Firewire 800 and 500 (TI) and the one that just has Firewire 400 (TI as well)...

I seem to recall Scott@ADK saying that the Ricoh chipsets are goofed up in their implementation of the PC Card interface for real-time use. That's unfortunate, if nothing else because of the number of laptops out there with these.

Very good. Thanks for chiming in, Scott!

I know I've heard bad tales about USB and latency. (Something about it using extra safety buffers because it's more "asynchronous" than Firewire, and it has to take up slack somehow.) Anyway, Im wondering if in your testing you ran across any that had better latency than others? (Maybe with built-in FX/routing too?)

(And blessings to you too, my fellow aspiring son.)

Fair enough. I figure that I'll probably just need to take a shot with one, and just be ready to return it if it's a dog for latency.

I have checked my system Laptop DELL Inspiron 1520 Intel CoreDuo2 Ghz , 2x 2GB Ram, RICOH FW chipset for two nights with different Songs and settings while using a MOTU Ultralite to hear my Studies.
After i have had to read many ,many issues with Rme People and cheap Computers, i decided to give it a thought or two...
I run the Sonar (test) Song "Room for clarity" with 128 Samples Audio buffer (2,9Ms!!!!) and the WDM driver, while the Cpu's cores are peaking at 68%. No distortion no glitches. I can move and scroll like a &/*()=er and it just runs very nice and smooth.......
Another test Song (FullOn Trance) containig about 70 tracks of 44Khz audio going 32Bit float while been rendered at 64Bit, will run smooth on 512 Samples (11 Ms) and 89% CPU usage ,which is compared to my last setup with a Rme HDSP9652 card and ADI 2 converter (13,? MS) much better. THANK YOU MOTU! I also recommend using Vista for the latest drivers.
AND what is VERY ,VERY important is to use a tool such as TuneUp Utilities 2008 ,which solves many problems of (unordered) Pcs!!!!!!!!!! It REALY makes a difference when the earlier mentioned software is applied to your system.
I DO NOT understand why People actualy recommend XP for audio -------- they must be a little old fashioned.
So my conclusion for the FW chipset is that RICOH works very fine ,even under very low latencys on a Dell Inspiron1520.
Have Fun!

Get a MOTU Interface ,because they have the Best firewire drivers and technology! And why does it sound so good???????

ORIGINAL: Farbodelic

Yes that's a very good system tweaked for audio!
Thanks a lot for the information.

My actual tascam us-122 says "input latency: 7.0 ms and output latency: 21.7 ms"
is the MOTU giving me better latency for vsti's and plugins?

any other interfaces recommended?

Thanks!