FIX: Running Motu FW devices in XP SP2, SP3

[casedawg]

Sure you found the right specs? I'm using Windows XP SP3 not Vista.

I'm pretty sure I completed the steps correctly.

Current driver versions listed in device manager for my firewire controller:
1394bus.sys: 5.1.2600.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)
ohci1394.sys: 5.1.2600.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920)
These have survived through numerous restarts since the procedure.

In the registry:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\1394_hc_hw_id\1394_instance_id\Device Parameters:
Default | REG_SZ | (value not set)
SidSpeed | REG_DWORD | 0x00000003 (3)

One thing I noticed...in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\PCI\1394_hc_hw_id\1394_instance_id\
There are 2 DWORD values of note:
Capabilities | REG_DWORD | 0x00000000 (0)
ConfigFlags | REG_DWORD | 0x00000000 (0)

Could it be possible one of these values is related to the firewire speed or SidSpeed? Do you know of a good resource that documents what registry entries and values correspond to?

Here are my complete specs:
MB: Asus A7N8X Deluxe (nForce 2 chipset)
CPU: Athlon XP 2500+
RAM: 1GB Corsair XMS
Video: Radeon 9500 128MB RAM
PCI Firewire: SIIG NN-440012-S8
OS HD: 80GB 7200rpm IDE (WD)
Storage HD1: 500GB 7200rpm SATA (WD)
Storage HD2: 640GB 7200rpm SATA (WD)
DVD: 16x NEC burner
PSU: Enermax 431W
Mouse: USB Optical
Keyboard: PS/2
USB Printer
USB MIDI Controller: Evolution UC-33e (not connected right now)

Applications that use audio:
Foobar2000
Media Player Classic
Firefox
Ableton Live 7

Good news. I brought my Ultralite to a friend who uses a PreSonus Firebox with a Macbook Pro without any issues. We installed the Ultralite and everything seemed to work fine. He's going to test it out for a day and let me know if he encounters any problems. Looks like the Ultralite itself is functioning properly.

Interesting news. I brought my friend's Firebox home and installed it. No installation problems. I opened Foobar2000 and began playing music, then opened Edit Pad Pro (plain-text editor) and spammed my keyboard. After a bit the audio dropped out! The dropout was a split second. Much shorter than with the Ultralite and barely noticeable. There is NO high pitched noise following the dropout ever. The dropouts occur most frequently when typing, just like with the Ultralite. It has happened multiple times while writing this post in Firefox.

This tells me that there is something in my setup besides the audio interface causing these dropouts. It is likely related to firewire because I never experienced these problems using a PCI sound card. The Ultralite's much more dramatic reaction to the problem compared to the Firebox tells me the Ultralite (or at least its Windows drivers) is much more sensitive or picky compared to the Firebox (and likely other similar interfaces, from what I've read).

If I can't sort this out by Sunday I'm going to reformat my OS drive and do a fresh XP install. If there are still problems with only the bare minimum amount of drivers and programs needed to get sound, then the problem is likely hardware related. If that's the case I could be SOL until I get a new motherboard/processor combo. I hope not!

[TheRealRoach]

Hi casedawg,

The specs you listed make sense so far as I can tell. Can you tell me how many processes your system is running on idle? (when you hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up task manager it will give you a process count... hopefully in the low to mid twenties.)

The fact that you're still experiencing a pop/click/squeal with the firebox - even if at a reduced intensity - is a testament to firewire interface "issue" falling into the Microsoft/Windows court... not Motu. When the bandwidth is maxed out or exceeded, the FW device in question will F up. The farther the device exceeds the available bandwidth, the more it f's up... MOTU units seems to require a little more bandwidth than the typical low budget firebox or equivalent.

I'm not sure how much more help I can be without actually sitting in front of your system. Every system is different.. the wonderful world that is Microsoft PCs. I will tell you though, that your answer lies somewhere in those damn SP1 drivers / registry editing procedures.

Here's one last ditch attempt:
You'll notice that the file that I posted on a previous page had multiple "*.sys" files. Replace ALL of the sys files with those included in the file downloaded from my site. To do this MOVE all of the files to a temporary external storage device like a USB flash drive or something... they have to be physically off the computer. This was not necessary to remedy the problem on MY system, however it was required for others.

Report back with your findings!

[casedawg]

I have 22 processes running when idle, including task manager. From that point, I launched Foobar2000, pressed play, launched a plain-text editor and started typing. I still experienced very small drops (still using the Firebox).

I used all the files from the zip you posted when I originally reinstalled the SP1 firewire drivers. I repeated the reinstall process once more today just verify that the old drivers stuck. They did, but the problem is still there.

I also tried disabling AGP Fast Write in the BIOS.

I'm going to get the Ultralite back, reformat and reinstall Windows XP then see where I'm at.

edit:
I did a thorough run through my BIOS settings and made a few changes. First, in the same vein as disabling AGP Fast Write, I forced the graphics card to run at AGP 4X instead of AGP 8X. This has a negligible effect on performance, but others' problems have come from AGP cards, so I figure I'll try everything to minimize conflict between the AGP and PCI bus. Second, I enabled USB Legacy Mouse support. From my understanding, this lets the USB mouse be used in DOS-like apps, but it seems like enabling it has changed how the keyboard and mouse are structured in Device Manager. Third, I disabled the FSB Spread Spectrum, which was set at 0.5%. The FSB Spread Spectrum makes constant very very slight changes to the FSB frequency in order to reduce EMI. I'm not sure why this was enabled, but constant FSB adjustment, however slight, seems like something that could upset a firewire interface.

So far so good with the Firebox! I haven't done extensive testing yet, but I haven't had any drop outs while spamming a text editor or while typing this edit, so that's good news. I'm going to go grab the Ultralite and see how it holds up with these settings. If everything is all good, I'll narrow down which specific setting was the culprit in hopes that it'll help someone out in the future. I suspect it was the USB Legacy Mouse support or the FSB Spread Spectrum.

edit2:
So far so good with the Ultralite! I'll stress it with Live tomorrow and see how it does. Thanks for the help. I'll check back when I figure out which setting was causing the problem.

[eveninhisyouth22]

Hello this is my first post. I have been on the forums looking around for a while on this issue. I have a motu 896HD, with XP SP2 TI Chipset, Nuendo 3. I went ahead and reverted to the SP1 drives. Uninstalled the drivers, deleted them, and when i rebooted it asked me to find the drivers. Then I diabled my motherboard firewire card. Second I went to registry. There is where I'm not a %100 i did it correctly. The step I fumbled on was when I input the Value data. Do i just put 1, 2, or 3? Do i pick dec or hex? If someone would clear this up I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Stewart

[TheRealRoach]

*snip*
Second I went to registry. There is where I'm not a %100 i did it correctly. The step I fumbled on was when I input the Value data. Do i just put 1, 2, or 3? Do i pick dec or hex? If someone would clear this up I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.

Stewart

This is referring to step [2.6.1] in my original post. You should enter in value 3 as it represents the fastest bus speed. Leave it on Hexadecimal.

Report back with your findings!

[whentomorrowfails]

would doing step one cure me of the "no motu found" blues? i've got a traveler, xpp sp3.

for some reason it doesn't like th motu drivers, and never installs them, so if i try to "add new hardware" at the end of it installing the drivers, my system blinks a blue screen with i have no idea what on it, and reboots, but then the drivers are there afterwards, but it still doesn't see that the MOTU is ithere.

[TheRealRoach]

would doing step one cure me of the "no motu found" blues? i've got a traveler, xpp sp3.

for some reason it doesn't like th motu drivers, and never installs them, so if i try to "add new hardware" at the end of it installing the drivers, my system blinks a blue screen with i have no idea what on it, and reboots, but then the drivers are there afterwards, but it still doesn't see that the MOTU is ithere.

Unfortunately that sounds like something else altogether. Do a search for threads on "Windows recognize Motu". There is a workaround/fix somewhere.

[dpisarcik]

Hey this fix totally worked for me. Thanks TheRealRoach. All I had to do was roll back the SP2 1394 drivers to SP1, my registry settings seem to have already been set appropriately. I've had 2 896HD's for some time (a year or two) and I've been working around my problems because I've had my 896HD's wired together via Optical ADAT, so I could circumvent the skips/clicks/pops/etc. I could record 12 analog channels simultaneously, but now I can use all 16, free up my ADAT optical channels if need be, and also use two AES-EBU devices simultaneously. Thanks again! -Dan Pisarcik, The Alice House Recording Studio, Portland, OR

[eveninhisyouth22]

[/quote]

This is referring to step [2.6.1] in my original post. You should enter in value 3 as it represents the fastest bus speed. Leave it on Hexadecimal.

Report back with your findings![/quote]

Before I read your post I had actually set it to 2 and continued to have problems, but then I remembered that I had updated the drivers as well. So i went back to the orignal drivers that had came with the motu. 3.6.7 i believe and it has worked perfect for the past three days. I'm scared to go back to the registry to change it to 3, but will that improve the speed that the 896HD runs at?

[TheRealRoach]

Before I read your post I had actually set it to 2 and continued to have problems, but then I remembered that I had updated the drivers as well. So i went back to the orignal drivers that had came with the motu. 3.6.7 i believe and it has worked perfect for the past three days. I'm scared to go back to the registry to change it to 3, but will that improve the speed that the 896HD runs at?

Changing it to 3 won't make a lick of a difference. Speed 2 is described as FW400, and Speed 3 is FW400/800. The motu FW units are only FW400 units so you would see NO added benefit by changing it. The only added benefit would have nothing to do with the MOTU/audio but rather if you use FW800 external hard drives.

I'm very happy that the fix worked for you. Were there any areas that you felt the steps could have been more clear?

Hopefully Motu will take notice of this thread and finally post a similar fix on their official site, similar to how RME did for their customers.

[eveninhisyouth22]

Were there any areas that you felt the steps could have been more clear?

Everything was pretty clear except for that registry part because i'm not fimaliar with that portion of windows so i was kind of lost. Thanks a again.

[MichaelDevin]

I had this problem after I added an Ultralite to my Traveler. I got frustrated with the dropouts etc I sold the unit at a loss. MOTU advises people to downgrade to SP1, which then causes problems with other software...

Thanks for the support MOTU!

[TheRealRoach]

I had this problem after I added an Ultralite to my Traveler. I got frustrated with the dropouts etc I sold the unit at a loss. MOTU advises people to downgrade to SP1, which then causes problems with other software...

Thanks for the support MOTU!

Yup unfortunately in the day of mutli-core processors, SP1 doesn't really support it. I rode it out on my old single core processor machine as long as I could take it. It was running Sp1 and probably the most stable set up i've ever had.

[derZorn]

Hi,
after a number of problems with getting my 896hd to work (which actually was a defective FW port in the 896hd) I'm finally running a MOTU/WinXP system.
I'm really happy with it..... Mostly.
From time to time (seemingly random) I get a number of squeals and dropouts and was hoping to find the answer to my problem in the answers found in this thread.
Well, so far I'm out of luck - the SP1 drivers won't stay installed on my sys for example, but one thing that is obvious to me is that it's
not the unit that has problems, but the system.

When I connect an USB-Stick to my onboard USB ports I can provoke the high pitched squeal every time.
I tried that with a number of different sticks and ports on my ASUS M2N-E with Nvidia 570Ultra chipset.
The squeal is there for like a second while the device gets detected, then stops.
Sometimes audio sounds somewhat distorted after that.

So maybe our problems don't lie with the FW but somewhere in the USB hub ?


Specs:

MB Asus M2N-E / Nvidia 570Ultra chipset
CPU AMD X2 4600+
RAM 2GB Corsair CM2X
Vid: Nvidia 8600GT 256 PCI-E 16x
PCI Firewire Texas Intruments
USB Devices:
Logitech G11 keyboard
Midiman(M-Audio) Midisport 2x2 USB

Motu896HD with 3.6.8.1380 driver (

[Mark S]

anyone have a link to the SP1 drivers? Both my XP machines came with sp2. And I have not yet been able to find them on the net.

And why is there no fix from MOTU for this. SP2 has only been out since '03?