UltraLite Mk111 Hybrid : Any Views?

[RonaldDumsfeld]

As I hope use my interface on a variety of machines I'm tempted by this new product.

However I have heard rumours of distribution problems and reliability.

Has anyone here had any personal experience with this divise yet?

Thx.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Well in the absence of any replies I will answer my own question because I went ahead and bought an Ultralite Hybrid anyway!

Reception has been mixed.

I got the firewire interface going pretty quickly. (lol). Basic I/O ASIO and non ASIO apps.

Could not and still cannot get a squeek out of the USB2.0 interface. Admittedly I'd tried firewire first and maybe there are some parameters that can live across an uninstall and re-install of the MOTU software but I couldn't find them and they shouldn't anyway. It's pretty bad too. Everything looks right but all and any application hangs within 1/2 second of starting. Cannot be killed by procexp or task manager. Even shutdown hangs??? Time consuming...

Heard nothing from MOTU as yet but it is the holidays and a busy period.

Might be something specific to me or my kit but I know of no issues otherwise.

Anyone with similar issues? or not?

Windows Vista home premium 64 bit, ASUS P6T deluxe m/b, using the install disc that came with the unit as the drivers are dated later than the one's on the MOTU download page.

Cheers.

[Muzicole]

I have just bought an Ultralite Mark 3 and I'm fuming because I've just wasted about three days trying to get the damn thing to work on my PC laptop with the USB connection - just like it ought to - with no joy.

I did get some sound and it wasn't distorted, but this can only really be acheived on my standalone version of Ivory by loading it with AsioForAll active and then switching to the MOTU once it's running. Then it crashes on exit anyway. If I try loading a VST host, the MOTU kills my whole USB system dead, except for my mouse. I discovered that even operating the CueMixFX controls does this as well.

In desperation, I've ordered an expresscard firewire adaptor in the hope that if I get the MOTU off of the USB system it might become stable...

But I've just found this forum and what I'm reading fills me with anger. It seems NO ONE is having any luck with this unit via USB. How can MOTU be continuing to sell a product that doesn't work? If the drivers are not ready for the PC, then they should be withdrawing the item from sale until they are. I really hope that the operation under Firewire is ok, because otherwise if I can't convince the retailer to take it back I'll be saddled with a £430 white elephant.

I could have got an Edirol UA-101 for less money, which wouldn't have been as good on paper, but at least it probably would have worked. But 'No', I thought, 'MOTU have such an impressive pedigree and I've used their products on pro tours with no problems (albeit on Macs)'.

Have I been foolish?

Does anyone have any happy endings to report about using this unit via USB at this time?

For that matter does anyone have it operating via Firewire on a PC?

Some positive words, please!

Muz

[eoneel]

I recently just got an mk3 hybrid this week. I have had great results using both USB, and firewire so far. Make sure you have a Texas Instrument chipset if your running it on a laptop via firewire.

Maybe try to re-install the drivers.
1. Load the drivers without the mk3 connected.
2. Restart the computer.
3. Power down the computer.
4. Connect the ultralite.
5. turn on the computer.
6. turn on the Ultralite.
5. Then you can finish the driver installation, by continuing with the wizard box that pops up. Make sure to uninstall all instances of the drivers before re-installing the drivers again. I know it's the obvious but thought I would mention it.

[Muzicole]

Hi there,

Which drivers are you running? Do you have anything else plugged into any USB ports on your computer?

Was hoping that trying to run on Firewire might solve the problem, but after further reading this evening, it seems that if I don't get the RIGHT Firewire adaptor for the laptop, I'm screwed as well. I'm not holding out a great deal of hope that the one I've ordered will fit the bill as it doesn't say which chipset it has - in fact, how can you even TELL that? I'm beginning to get exasperated and I may just return the MOTU to the retailer and go for something else. I'm not sure it's fit for purpose as it is.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Mine works fine using firewire and the configuration listed in post #1.

Given up on the USB for the time being. Part of the reason I got the hybrid was because it offered alternatives in case of problems. I've been lucky with my chip so i can afford to wait re: the USB.

Annoying to have had a tech link not simply unanswered but unread for 3 weeks.

Would the guy who has managed to get an UL and USB working be kind enough to supply other system details? OS Vn etc. Thx.

[eoneel]

I am running drivers 3.7.37320. I have one USB mouse hooked up. The USB mouse, and the mk3-hybrid are on separate host controllers. Try installing each driver manually by specifically pointing to the path. I don't know if this has any bearing or not to get the device to working properly, but I installed the MIDI driver first.
To see if you have a T.I. chipset look in device manager under IEEE 1394 Bus contorllers and it should say the type of chip it is. (T.I) However, the express card slot is on the south bridge and uses PCI to PCIe. So, I think that the onboard chipset interacts with how the express card behaves. That's why you hear people still having problems with the Ultralites even though they have a T.I. express card. I am running a ADK Q mini SR laptop. It has a onboard T.I. chipset. Windows XP,32bit, Sonar 7. I hope you get the USB issue figured out. I have mine running on USB currently with what seems like more stable results than the mk1 that I was using previously. RonaldDumsfeld, that is one of the main reason's I bought the mk3-hybrid as well. Also, I didn't like having the fragile express card always sticking out the side because it seemed like I would always bump it. Now it's just USB to the soundcard, and a 4 to 6 pin firewire cable for the external hard drive. Let me know what you find.

[Muzicole]

Hi there,

Further experimentation last night provided some interesting results but still no luck getting the interface to work on USB.

I was under the impression that the worst that could happen, should the sample buffer be set too small, was glitchy audio, but it turns out in fact that if I set the buffer size larger, I can actually get the driver NOT to crash the whole USB system long enough to run CueMixFX, turn on and off the pad and phantom power lights and even run a host with a plugin on it - the bad news is a latency of over 50ms - useless.

However, due to crashes and instability, the sample buffer size isn't always successfully communicated to the interface when set in the Audio Console, so the system can still crash, even if it APPEARS that the buffer size is set to a value that previously worked, because the MOTU itself is still set to too low a value.

Furthermore, a value that works one time can fail after a reboot if the driver is used while the system is busy - finishing Windows start-up, for example. I only ever managed to get it going this morning if the system wasn't doing anything else at all.

Having phoned up the retailer this morning and said that I might be sending the unit back, they were very helpful (although they were all 'Mac Guys' and the 'PC Guy' doesn't turn up until Thursday) and put me on to a company called Musictrack which handles tech support for MOTU in the UK. They seemed concerned about my problem and said they would pursue it with MOTU and let me know. They were also encouraging about the prospects of the unit working via Firewire when my expresscard adaptor turns up tomorrow. So I'm pinning my hopes on that for now.

It seems that a very few people are able to get the Mk3 to work on USB, but from here the driver looks like an early Alpha release and is only stable for a few moments when doing nothing at all taxing at latencies that are unusable for anything other than audio editing. It seems like there's no capacity to handle any data bottlenecks whatsoever and as soon there is one the system is kaput until the next restart. Even if some people have been lucky, it seems that MOTU have failed to consider the acronym USB (the operative letter being U - for universal) when producing this driver, and we can only hope that this will be fixed, and soon.

Muz

[haraleah]

I wish I'd found this thread sooner, as I have a near identical problem. I'd spoken to MOTU before buying a Mk III hybrid and they stated that there were no known incompatabilities with any motherboards etc (I want to use USB as I've never had any luck with Firewire).

Everything seems to install fine, and the config application works (setting buffer size etc), but otherwise, I can get a hard lockup (power/reset button) way too easily. Accessing CueMix sometimes does it, closing SONAR (using ASIO drivers) sometimes does it, switching between applications (SONAR and Sound Forge) sometimes does it. What especially does it is running CueMix (successfully, for a change), closing it and then re-opening it - almost guaranteed to lock the system. I've tried on multiple machines just to check it's not one machine in particular, which can happen, but it's consistent.

It's a great hardware unit in terms of specs, and there's nothing comparable out there, but it's unusable for me and seemingly for many others. At least I know it's not just a duff unit, so there's no point me doing anything other than getting my money back.

[haraleah]

Answering myself...

Just tried it on an old machine at work and it seems OK, which is somewhat annoying really. What I noticed though was this:

- The USB driver gets updated if it's an XP SP2 machine (which my studio machine is), an SP3 machine seems not to get it updated. I wondered if there was an issue with the later USB driver, so I rolled it back before running the CueMix and it worked fine. Not conclusive, but I can try the same thing on my studio machine.

- The 2 machines that it fails on use one of the ICH controllers for USB ports, the older successful one uses an 82801EB controller. Again, I wonder if the newer controller is problematic. This is obviously a lot harder to test!

I'm in two minds what to do now - it's the only device that does what I want/need in one package, but I can't guarantee I can get it reliably working in the near future and obviously don't want to leave it too late before taking it back if it isn't going to be reliable.

[haraleah]

Me again

On a 4th machine (XP SP2), I allowed the USB update to occur and didn't roll back. Worked fine. And it too has a 82801EB USB controller. My guess is now that more recent ones conflict. Can those of us on this thread check what USB2 controller they are using and whether the USB interface works for them?

For reference, my results are:

ICH9 (x2) - fail
82801EB (x2) - success

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Good work haraleah. Some movement!

Mine are ICH10 Family USB Universal/Enhanced Host Controllers (8 in total) on a ASUS P6T Deluxe Vn2 running Vista Home Premium.

All fail as previously described.

Not the end of the world. Firewire works for me so it's not urgent atm.

Disappointed my MOTU techlink hasn't even been read in close to a month. Like muzicole I called the UK distributor MusicTrack. Like they did with him they expressed concern, assured me they hadn't heard of any problems previously (hah) and haven't. When I called a second time I as told the relevant person wasn't about atm but they's leave a reminder from when he was.

[haraleah]

I try

It's lucky I've got access to different machines at work to test this kind of thing on. I've never had much luck with Firewire and knowing I can use USB means I can move it to a friend's laptop too.

[scstock]

Simon from Musictrack here.

Andrew, I've been investigating this but didn't have anything definitive to report back as yet.

Yesterday I spent two hours happily using a cheap Gateway laptop with a Centrino processor with the UltraLite Mk3 Hybrid, using Sibelius 6 playing back 16 Instruments in the MOTU MSI VI, with not a hint of a problem (as a died-in-the-wool MacHead, it was almost enough to convert me!). Also briefly tried with Cubase 4 LE, also fine. I could fiddle around with EQ, Dynamics & Reverb in CueMix FX whilst Sibelius was playing back, no problem.

The USB Controllers are ICH8, so that might be a factor. I will find out what I can and get back to you - thanks for your patience.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

The first stage in solving a problem is knowing how to recreate it consistently.

If will also help MOTU if they choose to look into it. Otherwise they may well characterise each incident as individual failure to read the manual.

So. On windows.

1) Firewire connection works using 3.7.37320 least as well as previous versions of h/w, s/w.

2) Not all USB 2.0 connections fail catastrophically but the proportion that do suggests an underlying issue rather than isolated individual mischance.

3) No one has thus far reported getting the ULH to work on a 64 bit system (XP or Vista or 7).

4) No all 32 bit configurations work either.

5) No one has confirmed their system works with an USB controller later than ICH8. At least some ICB9 and ICH10 controllers fail.

6) I think that's it so far. To be continued. I hope.