8pre noise after a while :/

[vinnydude]

I was running an old edirol da2496 for a while, but I no longer have a pci slot to run the compatible card.

So I decided top break out my 8pre (firewire) and run that. No problem I thought!!!

After about 15-20 mins of misc use, it will start to pop and crackle, panning alternatively. After about 10secs of this, it will grossly distort everything and make me poo a little.

If I close all open programs and load up the Motu console (thus stopping the drivers) it will sort itself out.

I'm on win 7 64bit and I understand that Motu have a history of issues with pc.

Has anyone experienced this one though? I'm running on the most up to date firmware and drivers. Should I rollback? I'm running it on Firewire 400 (I also have 800 on my board) should I run it on FW800 instead?

Any ideas?

[vinnydude]

Bump.

I found a couple of threads relating to similar stuff on different Motu units, but still not found a solution.

[krista]

I'm having a similar issue on both my Ultralite mk3 and my 896mk3 .... on both machines!

USB seems to aggravate the issue, and I can set the Ultralite off (haven't tried the other) merely by starting a stream (any stream, anywhere) and rapidly moving my mouse over buttons on in a webpage on either Chrome or Opera.

I've since moved the UL to firewire.... leaving the stream play for a few hours led to corruption, although the mouse moving over a webpage corruption seems to have disappeared. I'm now having issues getting sample rates other than 44.1 working..,... go figure.

I'm happy with the MOTU hardware (I've been using it since 1998 or soon windows), but their drivers have went from mediocre to terrible.

[vinnydude]

Agreed, the drivers for windows are horrendous at best. I've read all the way through the stickied thread at the start which says 'solved' and the closest I got to a solution was to take my graphics cards out........... erm no?! lol

But yeah, I've found the same as you 44khz seems to be slightly more stable than most.

It's infuriating as I was running an old edirol da2496 and it was solid as a roc, but I upgraded and no longer have a pci slot for the card it needed (rbus, presonus do a firewire unit that would work but it is rare as anything that one comes up!!!)

So yeah, I'm stuck with my 8pre. When it works it's great, but yeah, it's so unstable, I never know when I'm going to fill my pants due to an unexpected pop, crackle, or full blast of white noise.

[vinnydude]

I went through this earlier, a few hours later *touch wood* no annoyances.

Not sure if you're running firewire or not but it's worth a try if you are.

http://www.studio1productions.com/Artic ... wire-1.htm

[krista]

Thanks! I *am* on firewire now, and I also am on the legacy FW drivers. I initially tried a TI FW card..... which didn't work. So I tried a VIA FW card.... which also resulted in no sound playing, but communication with the device otherwise (such as changing sample rates) worked.

So, having started with USB, I decided to uninstall the driver, reboot, install them, reboot..... nothing changed.

I uninstalled the drivers *again*, went through the registry with a fine tooth comb and nuked all relevant entries and branches referencing "motu", opened up device manager, clicked on "Show Hidden Devices", then uninstalled every mention of MOTU (clicking "delete drivers from disk" when asked), and every disconnected USB device.

Reboot.

Install MOTU drivers.

Sound will play at 44.1kHz@512 samples and above latency..... no more "mouse over" issues, but the playback stream will corrupt after 120min or so (2channel) or, usually a lot, quicker on 8 channel playback.

Stopping the stream, waiting until *everything* has closed sessions to the MOTU, then restarting the stream results in an uncorrupted stream for about the same amount of time.

This is repeatable on either of my Win8.1x64 boxen, with both FW(legacy) AND USB, with either the Ultralite mk3 or the 896mk3, using Pandora Player (Adobe Air based), Winamp, and jRiver.

This bug does not occur with the onboard sound of either computer, the MOTU PCIe424-24io, or the crappy SIIG usb sound dongle I have kicking around.

I'm going to go back to the TI FW card (legacy drivers) tonight on the Ultralite mk3.....although I doubt it'll make any difference.

I have been unsuccessful using any *other* sample rates on the FW-Ultralite mk3 config aside from 44.1khz @ either 512 or 1024 samples buffer on the VIA FW (legacy) interface. Other sample rates would at least make somewhat correct sound on the USB2 interface.

FWIW: I'm on the latest drivers/firmware/bios of *everything*. I'll try using a USB3 port (as MOTU says they support it now), but I'm not holding my breath on this one.

[krista]

I suppose I should mention I'm using the 8ch Analog Out device. I haven't tried Main, or Phones.

[krista]

Success!.....or at least a *bit* of a thread thereof...


Configuration:
Win8.1x64
VIA FW Legacy Mode
MOTU Ultralight mk3
WaveRT OFF
44.1khz, 512 samples latency

Winamp will play a stream for at *least* 12 hours without corruption, as opposed to 2 hours with the WaveRT drivers enabled.

Tonight I will test an 8 channel stream. If this works, I'll play with latency, and sample rate. Essentially, I'll run over all my previous tests (Ultralite/896, VIA FW, TI FW, USB2, USB3, both computers, several players) with WaveRT Off.

I *suspect* that since WaveRT maps the HW buffer onto the circular buffer directly, there is an "off by 1" bug on the mapping when the circular buffer flips. I'll pull out WinDbg later and look into this.... knowing how big the circular buffer is, and how much data is being sent should tell me around when I can expect corruption.

[vinnydude]

I'm still getting problems

[krista]

Did you try turning WaveRT off in the console?

[vinnydude]

I have yeah, pretty much tried everything :/

It does seem to be more stable with a higher buffer though.

When I'm using asio, it's solid, I've never had a problem with it then. I use my computer for other things too though and it's then that I get the problems.

[krista]

If you have a recent Intel based PC, look into which slot the FW card is in. You will probably have to read the manual to find out which ones are which, but you will want a slot that *does not* come off the chipset, but originates with the CPU. PCIEv3 slots originate at the CPU. A 1x, 4x, or 8x slot that is PCIEv2 in a system with PCIEv3 will probably originate off the chipset.

The issue with chipset origination is that the chipset has a DMI2.0 connection to the CPU, which is essentially an 8x PCIEv2 bus. The chipset runs your USB, your SATA, the management bus, possibly some video, your network, keyboard, etc. Audio HW doesn't like wait states, and the chipset PCIE lanes have to go through a busy chipset and over a DMI2.0 bus to get CPU time, and follow this long path in reverse.... and this channel is *also* being used by almost every built in device in your PC. I'm not even sure *why* this slot is added to many MBs, as it ususally is nothing but trouble.

[vinnydude]

I'm using the onboard firewire, I have 400 and 800. I bought the board because of the TI firewire chip in case i bought any firewire gear, unfortunately motu doesn't apply to my logic though apparently.

[krista]

If you have an open slot and access to a PCIE FW card, it may be worth a shot trying it out, as onboard FW is using the chipset in most cases. I'm not *completely* positive the chipset connections are a problem, but they seem to negatively impact life on my end.

If there's a fry's or BB nearby, you could always buy a FW card and try it.... if it doesn't work, return it.

For the record, I've tried a Via card with my Ultralite mk3 and besides having to bump up the latency a notch it ran fine.... so if a Via is all that's available for an experiment, I'd testing it anyway.