MOTU, you broke my heart.

[Publius Enigma]

I really didn't want my first post here to be negative. I tried to think of all the ways I could put a positive spin on things, make myself seem like a functioning member of society rather than the surly drunk at the end of the bar that no one wants to talk to. But I couldn't do it. My heart is broken and I'm not going to pretend it's okay. I'm sorry if we get off to the wrong foot; perhaps we'll all be friends again someday.

I found you all in the delusion of rage that MOTU incited within me - a rage that you all helped quell through the helpful advice and knowledge encapsulated within the virtual walls of this forum. For that, I thank you - but I shouldn't need to be here in the first place.

I have this rather outdated expectation that, in an age where every Google product is in "beta" for the better part of its user's natural lives, that an expensive audio interface should just work. I know, my expectations are clearly ridiculous, but hear me out.

I purchased myself a MOTU 828mk3 - a rather expensive piece of kit here in Australia - and actually wasn't that surprised when it didn't work out of the box with Windows. After all, I'd had plenty of hardware in the past that took some minor tweaking to coax the best out of it. But when you get to 40 hours of minor tweaking, it's not really minor tweaking any more. I've written entire embedded operating systems in assembler in less than forty hours. In fact, I'm willing to bet that forty hours is more time than MOTU spent testing its entire product line.

I'm not going to bore you with the details, and I'm not going to let MOTU take all the blame (I'm looking at you Microsoft, enemies of FireWire). But I was stuck with an audio interface that squeaked, squealed, burped, cracked, popped, hissed and hummed at its own choosing. An audio interface that wouldn't work with any version of Windows I threw at it. An audio interface where the only channel that operated was the one connected directly to the seventh realm of hell.

In the end, my problem was resolved by downgrading to an earlier version of MOTU's drivers. Simple as that. Not so simple when earlier revisions aren't available on their website. But why-oh-why don't the latest drivers work? Sure, they have a tuner I don't really need. I would actually prefer the thing to be usable, you know. I don't need a $1500 guitar tuner. But I could almost forgive them if it was just the latest and greatest drivers that didn't work - I had to go back a good six versions (of the versions I know about) to find a set that work. And do you think these older drivers are available on MOTU's website? Nope, instead I spent my Friday night sobbing into my beer and guessing the URLs for old driver versions. Are MOTU so arrogant to think that their drivers are so faultless that no mere-mortal would ever require an older revision?

Of course, the drivers I have to use are so old they don't work with Windows 7, and the earliest drivers that were released for Windows 7 don't work at all. So now I'm relegated to dual-booting so I can make music.

Then there's the MOTU installers. I'm guessing that MOTU have a crack marketing team, because there's noway any self-respecting engineer came up with this god-forsaken orchestration of driver destruction. If you have two pieces of MOTU hardware, and they both only work with different driver versions (see previous paragraph) there is no way to install different driver versions for the two pieces of hardware. At least there's not without a lot of hacking of INF files. The driver for my USB microlite used to be approximately 600kb. Now it's over 20MB because it includes a driver for every other piece of MOTU hardware ever created, and stuffs in a full version of Digital Performer for good measure. If I install the latest version of the Micro Lite drivers, it kills the 828. If I install certain earlier versions of the 828 drivers, it kills the Micro Lite. Brilliant.

All of this would be tolerable if support actually knew how to fix your problem. I spent an hour on the phone (at international rates) to tell me it must be everything else under the sun than MOTUs excreted drivers. They even assured me that downgrading to earlier versions would not solve the issue as each revision is an improvement on the last! If they can't make an audio interface that works with Windows, I can accept that. But they should accept it too, move on and stop being so willing to screw Windows customers out of their hard-earned money.

Someone should also inform MOTU that the Internet can be used to communicate with customers. Seems to be pretty popular now-a-days with the younguns.

I know you've heard it all before. I know that you're probably getting pretty resilient and growing a thick skin to these rambling, wandering rants. But thanks to all of you for the forum and for making the internet the wonderful place it is. Collectively you're more helpful and more knowledgeable than MOTU will ever be. In fact, if you guys wanted to design your own equipment, I'd be a customer based on the strength of your support alone.

I'm off now to record some music on compact cassette - thirty years on it still sounds better than this MOTU junk. (edit: joking, the 828 is a great piece of kit for the money and sounds great - when it works).

[johnnytucats]

Since you didn't ask for any advice I won't give you any. I'm just going to say that whenever I've built a PC running Windows I've done research on what combination of software, hardware and drivers will work. After that, problems still arise. The same goes for adding hardware to a Mac system.

[Publius Enigma]

I'm just going to say that whenever I've built a PC running Windows I've done research on what combination of software, hardware and drivers will work. After that, problems still arise.

Johnnytucats, thanks for taking the time to reply. I absolutely agree with you. But I've never had as many issues with other audio interfaces or firewire equipment as I've had with the Motu (and I've had a few), and other manufacturers generally improve their drivers with each release, and make sure that their old drivers are readily available just in case.

This is the first piece of equipment I have ever had to call tech-support about (except for hardware that was physically faulty under warranty). And I routinely use Windows, Linux, NetBSD and Solaris systems with some pretty esoteric hardware.

That being said, I eventually did get the 828 up and running on Windows XP, and it sounds fantastic. The hardware on this thing is lovely for the money.

I'm highly contemplating going back to Mac OS X for my music production needs...

[FMiguelez]

That being said, I eventually did get the 828 up and running on Windows XP, and it sounds fantastic. The hardware on this thing is lovely for the money.

That's great! Perhaps you should tell us how you did it, you know? Surely someone else might benefit from your experience, and you may just save someone out there from madness

I'm highly contemplating going back to Mac OS X for my music production needs...

I would definitely encourage you to do that. I think is the best move you can do.

[Publius Enigma]

That's great! Perhaps you should tell us how you did it, you know? Surely someone else might benefit from your experience, and you may just save someone out there from madness

I'm in the process of writing up an end-to-end guide of things to check and do to get digital audio working well under Windows with the MOTUs. I'm also trying to put together a concise list of all the different firmware versions with a few notes on each.

I would definitely encourage you to do that. I think is the best move you can do.

As well as letting me use either DP or Logic Both of which are better than Cubase without doubt. But Macs are expensive here, even though the AUD is virtually at parity with the USD, and they don't have to travel so far from China

[Shooshie]

The only strange thing is that there are literally thousands of Windows users who run MOTU hardware, ranging from the 828, 2408, all the way up to the HD 196 and 896. While there are always people who have some problems, we hear surprisingly few complaints about MOTU hardware from Windows users.

When reading the original poster's message, I was thinking "as soon as he finishes this post, he'll go back and figure out the mistake, and it will work fine." Looks like that's apparently what happened.

Shooshie

[Saintmatthew]

I think part of the problem is that people gravitate towards wintel systems due a more scalble price structure with a lower entry rate. In the end, building a wintel system that mirrors the stability as an audio platform that OSX does requires a system that ends up being comparably priced due to the higher end components required. It's tough wading through the minefield of crap parts out there wheras with macs, Apple has done most for the work for you. I built and ran my own PC systems for years and then eventually gave up, mainly due to the one manufacturer blaming the other syndrome that made mixing and matching quality parts a headache at times.

[FMiguelez]

.

@ the OP:

So does this mean you've fixed your broken heart?
Do you love MOTU again?

[Publius Enigma]

In the end, building a wintel system that mirrors the stability as an audio platform that OSX does requires a system that ends up being comparably priced due to the higher end components required.

While I agree to an extent, in my specific case I don't believe the hardware to be the issue. The system is running an Intel Reference-design mainboard and has performed flawlessly for every task I've ever thrown at it.

I have used USB/Firewire interfaces from Lexicon, Presonus, M-Audio, MOTU and Digidesign, and all have performed flawlessly on the exact same system -- except the MOTU. The MOTU does work on the system, but only in Windows XP. These facts together strongly suggest to me it is a driver issue, rather that a hardware configuration problem or fault.

Also, Mac OS X is not immune from these problems either. The fact that most Mac OS X need to run as kernel extensions places a greater risk on the system from errant drivers than the Windows micro-kernel structure does. As you point out, the fact that Mac systems have less hardware permutations - and less third-party hardware available - does make them easier to test for, but that doesn't make it impossible to get hardware working under Windows.

As I said, Digidesign, M-Audio, Presonus and even Lexicon seem to have managed to work around the broad hardware base that Windows runs on, why can't MOTU do the same?

@ the OP:

So does this mean you've fixed your broken heart?
Do you love MOTU again?

It's currently working great in Windows XP, using 18 month-old drivers. Anything later than that and it turns to pieces. The sound quality is great (to my ears anyway), and the CueMix function has replaced the analogue mixer in my studio. It's wonderful having everything patched up to the one unit, I must say.

That being said, I still can't get it to perform at all reliably under Windows 7 - Even playing an MP3 from iTunes is too much for it to bare, with pops, squeaks and whines common. I may need to hang on to my M-Audio interface to use under Windows 7 for general day-to-day tasks.

[matthewgglover]

Under Windows 7, have you tried rolling back the Firewire card's drivers to the Legacy drivers?

[Publius Enigma]

Under Windows 7, have you tried rolling back the Firewire card's drivers to the Legacy drivers?

This was one of the first things I tried, after reading a suggestiong on the RME site about doing this. Before switching to the legacy drivers I would constantly get BSODs and complete freezes of the system - the first time I had ever experienced this on this PC.

I have been playing around more with windows 7 and believe I may have resolved the issue, although I'm not sure how. I'm going to compile a complete list of the steps I tried and then work backwards to see which one resolved it. I'll post that list on here once I have completed it. I found some quite esoteric things were causing different issues, such as NVIDIA's PhysX contributing to clicks and pops, to ethernet flow control contributing, and some Windows services not helping.

I've also put a list of all the driver versions I could find under the Windows Driver sticky. I wrote a script that systematically tried downloading sequential driver names from MOTU's site and ran it, so I think the list is reasonably exhaustive.

Finally, I would like to point out that I did find MOTU's phone support to be quite helpful. They answered the phone very promptly the first time I called and spent a good hour working through various things with me -- thanks Matt! On the other hand, my TechLink is still unanswered.

But on the whole, I at least have it working and have been really happy with it as a unit. Part of my frustration stems from an increasing trend for manufacturers to ship half-baked products that don't work. It's not just MOTU that I've had problems with. And I've had similar problems with Macs and various pieces of hardware/software too. I would happily pay a little more (or even a lot more) for products that were well tested and well made, but that's just me.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Sorry to hear about your problems and I appreciate your sober way of stating the problem without excessive exaggeration. I'm the drunk at the other end of the bar, BTW ... LOL.

It occurred to me while reading your post that there is a long term "solution" to your woes, but you won't like it.

Get a Mac. I know, lots of folks use Windows machines and do fine making music and Macs are no without their own set of woes. But I've found Macs superior in terms of music making. I'm just sayin...

I also realize you switching to a Mac is probably about as painful as switching to a PC would be for me. But if i was in accounting or had a million items in inventory (preferably dollars) and Macs sucked at that I'd switch to a PC. But I'm making music and it's all pretty easy, even on a lowly G5 that's about 6 years old or so.

Just a random thought from the other end of the bar. HEY! I order pancakes weeks ago; where are they?

Frodo?

[Frodo]

Frodo?

Hey, cut it out. That hurts!!


Seriously, let me re-read the thread so that I could find something intelligent to add.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Frodo?

Hey, cut it out. That hurts!!


Seriously, let me re-read the thread so that I could find something intelligent to add.

Don't hurt yourself! LOL!

[Frodo]

Don't hurt yourself! LOL!

Apparently, I don't have to when I can have it done for me!!