Motu Ultralite Firewire and Ableton Live dropouts (Mavericks

[beedoola]

I'm running an 2011 MBP with 2.7 i7, 16gb ram, 256 SSD. Running Mavericks 10.9.5

I have an older Ultralite that is the firewire version only.

When using Ableton live 9, I will occasionally get a brief moment where the audio drops out. It is not consistent in that it won't happen every X amount of time. Some sessions it will happen more often, sometimes it won't happen.

I'm using using much CPU power when this occurs. Live has a CPU monitor and its rarely about 20%, usually less.

I use Live for looping my guitar. I'm not running lots of VSTs or anything of that nature.

As far as I know, the only drivers available for the Ultralite FW are a universal driver provided by Motu support/downloads, and that there isn't not any specific driver update for this Ultralite version - there is for the UL MK3 Hybrid, but not for this, as far as I know.

Is my issue a hardware/software one? - Motu drivers not working well with Mavericks?

I always turn off/close all other programs when running live as well as tool bar utilities like drop box, adobe updater, etc.

I'm not really sure what is causing this.

The issue also occurs in Live 8 - though the version of Live 8 that I haven't isn't recommend to be used on Mavericks.

Any thoughts/suggestions on troubleshooting?

Someone suggested I try a different FW cable as I had a 400/800 cable, and that I buy a regular 400 cable and get a 400 to 800 adapter; that has not remedied the issue.

Thank you.