MOTU ultralite crackling

I am getting a constant crackling from my MOTU ultralite under the following conditions:

First, I should not that I don't get the crackling at all when using an HP laptop with an Intel chipset that's about 18 months old. I've recently purchased a Gateway with an AMD Turion64 x2 and something that says in the device manager "TI compliant" firewire device.

When I connect the ultralite to the computer, there is no crackling. However, as soon as Sonar PE5 is (5.2) is started, there is a constant crackling (heard through the main mix and shown on all the ultralite meters), even with the trim completely down on all. The crackling breaks up the sound coming in from monitoring point of view. I haven't tried recording and playing back yet.

I'm thinking I need to try (a) a new firewire cable and/or (b) a PC card firewire interface with TI adapter. Other thoughts?

I should mention, having read through the forum, that unlike an earlier post, I'm getting this crackling regardless of whether I'm daisy chaining a firewire drive off the ultralite.

Thanks for any suggestions.

Perry

All of the MOTU FW interfaces that I've seen suggest TI chipsets, and sometimes NEC.
In my experience, they are particularly picky compared to some other FW interfaces I've used (like Presonus), and even getting a TI card isn't a silver bullet, but it generally at least helps.

With my 828 Mk1, going to TI helped the interface performance, but didn't remove the frequent 828 reboots due to it just disappearing.
Others have reported that getting a TI chip totally fixed their MOTU issues.

So, it's worth a try, and they're not incredibly expensive, particularly with a board like the Ultralite.
Of course, it could be other things, like IRQ settings on the board in question, buffer settings to CPU power ratio, etc.

Here follows opinion:
MOTU driver developers prefer Mac. Of the two I've been around (Ultralite and 828Mk1, particularly the 828), their Windows drivers are flaky to say the least, and on 4 Windows systems over 4 years (for the 828)... both have been completely stable on the Macs they've been used on.

Here follows a rather extreme opinion:
I'm done with them, and won't buy another after the 828 dies or I get sick of turning it on or off for the drivers to pick it up (getting close to this one). In the 4 years I've used the 828, it's been the least reliable interface I've ever used, and their driver development for Windows has been laughable.
I know MANY others, however, who've had NO issues with them, and swear by their quality.

Here follows a little word of advice:
Keep copies of EVERY new driver you try with it, even over years. I frequently had to roll back to a less-flaky driver release when a current one was junk.

I'm really not sure what's up with MOTU, but I suspect that to some degree they test their drivers primarily on their extreme upper end and/or their newest hardware.

Take care,
- zevo

OK, a follow up. First, new cable didn't help, but getting a SIIG dual port cardbus (NN-PCM222-S4, per the website, but it says NN-PCM222 on the box) seems to work perfectly. The SIIG doesn't say what its chipset is on the box, but the website says other of their products use TI). Now the bizarre thing: according to the Gateway website, the computer I've got has a TI product that does firewire, USB, and cardbus! Maybe it's the combo that makes the problem? Anyway, I'm just happy I'm working now. I'll report if something goes wrong.

Couple of follow ups to above: 1. Internal (to the ultralite) clocking solely. Not using SPDIF yet on this machine and not needing to get digital timing between devices up to snuff.
2. I've used Presonus and MOTU firewire devices for audio and have generally had good experiences. I wanted the MOTU because it fits into my carryon easier. It runs rock steady very fast on the HP (and silent--with great sound). I like the Presonus (FirePod) a lot too, but there's the occasional light flanging effect that I can only get rid of by turning off the sound engine--and then it goes away). Anywho, I wouldn't abandon MOTU, but I'm old enough to remember they started as a company selling a wordprocessing program for the newly released IBM PC.

I'm not sure why the combo wouldn't work, but MOTU used to say NOT to use combo adapters.

Now, however, they say this (slight difference, but meaningful, particularly if your combo indeed uses a TI chipset onboard):
http://www.motu.com/techsupport/technotes/fw-chip-on-pci-and-pcmcia-cards/view?searchterm=firewire%20chipset

Who knows?
But it's fixed now, right?

Glad you like the Ultralite. My friend LOVES his... and the sound is excellent... better than my 828 (which is getting a little dated). He's using it with Logic Pro 7 (on his mac) & a Novation SL. It's an incredibly powerful setup, and very portable.

Take care,
- zevo

peisrael
Forgot to mention that I disabled the wireless internet in at attempt to make the crackling go away. Now, with the SIIG card, I have no crackling even with wireless enabled. Can someone explain to me why the onboard TI adapter, which is a combined USB/Firewire/Cardbus adapter, seemed to cause the crackling but when I put in a cardbus card for firewire that obviously runs back through the onboard combo TI adapter the crackling is gone??

 
THANK YOU!!!!! I got a TI chip FW, and  I was about to reinstall everything in a desperate attempt to solve this, now I don't have to!
 
 

My advice, because I have a mk 3 Ultralite, is not use Firewire...it's an obsolete standard, and is the reason your having troubles in my opinion...in fact I don't think I've ever run mine via Firewire.
 
Ben

RishiS
I was thinking between MOTU and RME to upgrade from Focusrite  Scarlett. But reading issues like these is making it easier to pick RME over MOTU.

we just had some issues resolved with the latest MOTU AVB (now it does connect reliably!) - it already had superb IO, routing and mix options, and extendability before ... I was considering RME first myself, but it looks like I had made the right choice with the AVB stuff (boy, this works awesome when you can simply recall a rather complex routing from the last drum tracking session and all is right there, up to custom IO labels inside your DAW)

gmp
No doubt the AVB is a truly amazing box. The mixer and IO stuff is fantastic. Even though the weird ring mod noise rarely shows up anymore, I'm still displeased that I get some occasional isolated pops every once and a while. Maybe 1 pop every 30 to 120 min. If that doesn't bug you, get it.
 
I've spent lots of time optimizing my computer and use is with USB nor firewire. Still no solution on the little pops.

Can't observe anything like that here and I have been tracking for hours in the past few days. I might get a crackle if I access it too early the first time after I booted everything ... it takes a few seconds to be properly seen by win10, but if I remember to be patient, it's fine ...

RishiS

gmp
No doubt the AVB is a truly amazing box. The mixer and IO stuff is fantastic. Even though the weird ring mod noise rarely shows up anymore, I'm still displeased that I get some occasional isolated pops every once and a while. Maybe 1 pop every 30 to 120 min. If that doesn't bug you, get it.
 
I've spent lots of time optimizing my computer and use is with USB nor firewire. Still no solution on the little pops.

I have a similar issue with my 1st generation Scarlett.Which is one of the reasons I want to move away from Focusrite besides ofcourse the main reason being latency, not getting below 10msec.

have you guys ever assessed whether these things appear on a regular basis (fixed time interval, certain times only), just thinking out loud but computers and equipment dont glitch for the fun of it, and issues that come on a "regular" basis often relate to something running in the background ...

Hi Gerry,
 
You can disable LAN in Device Manager (without having to reboot).
I don't think this will have any affect on the "pop".
 
Are the glitches recorded... or just heard upon playback?
If it's the later, are you sure you're not hearing an electrical noise (pop)?
 
 

I recently (a couple months ago) bought an MOTU 896mk3 Hybrid, which has both USB and Firewire interfaces.  I'm using USB (I had to use USB 2.0 as I originally had it on a USB 3.0 port and I would occasionally get crackling on the output).  I don't have a T.I. firewire chipset on my motherboard but it has a "VIA OHCI 1394 Compliant Host Controller" chipset.  I tried the 896mk3 Hybrid with this Firewire port.  Works fine but I can't go lower than 96 Samples per buffer with Firewire or I get dropouts.  With USB I can go to the lowest setting, 64 Samples per buffer.