Ultralite mk5 digital issues and MacOs Sonoma

[Calagan]

Hi there

I'd like to know how much of you using the Ultralite mk5 on an Apple Silicon laptop have issues on MacOs Sonoma now.

Since I started to use my Ultralite mk5 on my M1 pro, around 2 years ago (at the time my MBP was running Monterey), I had various issues that were depending on the drivers and OS changes.
These issues are well documented here and elsewhere : clicks, pops, quantization noises, digital noises, random delays... etc. etc.
I did found that some tricks were making the issue less frequent : the most interesting one was to use a hub and a usb2 cable (usb-c to usb-a). But still I had some issues from time to time and it's not an option when using this interface on stage.

I reached a plateau in stability when installing the 93305 drivers, released in june 2023. I still had (at the time) random delays on the inputs, but less frequently. Until now I keep these drivers installed.

Then, in last november, I was forced to upgrade from Monterey to Sonoma (my MBP was bricked by a basic Monterey update - a well known issue with proMotion disabled, I don't even want to discuss how Apple are making my life harder).
I did the upgrade because I was obliged, but I was very scary to have many issues with this fresh Mac Os.

But to my surprise, after that upgrade to Sonoma, my problems with the ultralite disappeared !!! (and I didn't have any compatibility issues with plugins - almost...)
And so far my Ultralite issues didn't come back. I'm now running Sonoma 14.1.2

Reason of this thread is the following : I'm a bit scared to change anything in my system now (Motu drivers or MacOs update) because it is finally stable.
I did read here and there (and had some discussion with Motu tech guys about that subject) that the new Apple computers had issues with usb and that Sonoma did fix these issues under the hood. I must say : I didn't read any new thread with similar Motu device issues recently from someone running Sonoma...

So maybe it's safe to update : I'm actually quite interested in the last driver and its new features.

So, my question : do any of you that run Sonoma on an Apple Silicon MBP have problems ?
Did it fix issues you had previously ?
If it's stable or previous issues were fixed, what MOTU driver and what MacOs version are you using ?


Please let me know, me and the community...

----

Below, the people I noticed that had problems and the associated threads

viewtopic.php?t=72506
@chrisdm1978 @Airbusjoerg @jfmusic @Obermotu @jeem @VitcoMusic

viewtopic.php?t=69107
@jazzsnob @julio @dezem @adamcluck @labman

viewtopic.php?t=68762
@Babak @lp1990 @mr_woland

viewtopic.php?t=70902
@LondonMike

This thread is about the same issue in Windows
viewtopic.php?t=69407

[VitcoMusic]

That’s good to know. I always wait before upgrading the MacOS. since it is working for you, I may as well make the plunge.

To date, I have simply been running the Ultralite Mk5 in class compliant mode. It has been working fine in DP. There are occasional clicks and pops when streaming audio on YouTube. So I live with it. When recording audio in DP, The timing in playback is spot on. This was my biggest issue.

Dan V


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[Calagan]

thanks for the feedback vitcomusic...

By the way : I don't recommend upgrading to Sonoma. Actually it worked on my side, but the more I'm into informatics, the more I think it's alive and impossible to predict.
So it may work... or not...

I'd be glad some people I mentionned participate to this thread, so we can see if Sonoma actually helps, or if the fix to these issues is still unknown...

[mikehalloran]

The MOTU drivers situation is entirely an installation issue. Once properly installed they work great. Sometimes, you have to let Support walk you through it but there are threads where I and others have posted the correct info.

It boils down to this. The various audio installers are painless as long as you follow this:

https://motu.com/techsupport/technotes/ ... igh-sierra

MOTU MIDI installers work but, if you have MOTU Audio drivers installed, they must be removed completely. Once you get MIDI working, then you can reinstall Audio.

Although MIDI can be installed onto a bootable external drive connected to Apple Silicon, you cannot install a MOTU Audio device. Must be the System drive only. Apple does not allow certain .kxt files to be installed onto attached drives and there is no known workaround.

There are major Sonoma conflicts with Adobe still, especially Acrobat Professional. Let's just say that I'm not happy about that at all. The partial workaround is to do everything involving the Text Tool in Preview — unfortunately, that is not an ideal solution.

[Calagan]

mmm.

I don't think you can associate the various issues people had with the Motu interfaces recently (on both Mac and Windows by the way) to a simple installation issue.
To install drivers is a pretty basic procedure, and I guess most of us are following what MOTU is recommending (I did, at least).
By the way I don't have any MIDI drivers on my machine.

If you check the various links I put at the end of my first post, you'll see a lot of different situations. Of course I don't know how people did install the Motu drivers, but personnaly I installed them exactly like Motu told me to do so. And I had many issues on my M1 pro machine I didn't have on my Intel one (an old mid-2012 MBP on which I used the Ultralite during few months before upgrading to the M1 pro).
By the way, I also own a Motu M2 and never had any similar audio glitches with it...
I'm pretty psychotic when it comes to audio computer stability (I use my MBP on stage so it needs to be 100% reliable) and I don't make funky things when it comes to using audio interfaces, plugins, DAWs and so on.
Reason why I didn't touch my system since I discovered it was finally stable (but I'd like to update to the last drivers).

The difficulty of the situation is precisely that for each individual problem, it's impossible to pinpoint where is the issue, because on identical systems people had issues or had a perfectly reliable interface.
The issues people had also were different, and myself I had many different type of issues depending on the drivers and who-knows-what-else : clicks, then glitches, then random delays... etc. etc.
Again personnaly, I spent more than one year exchanging with the Motu support. I tried all the things they asked me to do with no results... beta drivers, new drivers, uninstalling drivers, re-installing drivers, sending the interface to the Motu lab...
At the end, I was even said by the shop I did buy the interface from that the Motu support told them that the new Apple Silicon Macs had issues with USB and that the Motu interfaces were actually not supported on these machines.
Of course, it's not an official statement (and what about the people not having issues ?), but I was pretty amazed and it could have some truth in it. I was desperate !!!

All this mess until I upgraded to Sonoma, and discovered one day that everything was suddenly working fine.
But how can I be sure that Sonoma (and not another unknown circonstance) is the cause of the fix of my problems ?

So, with this thread, I would like to know if there's at least one person that has issues while running Sonoma, because if I found many exemples of issues on Windows machines, Intel macs, Monterey or Ventura, so far I didn't read any testimony of someone having issues while running Sonoma...
But of course, it's still to be proved.

Coming back to my experience, I had various issues with my Ultralite, and these issues were changing depending on the drivers. At some point, the 93305 was the most stable driver version, but was still not completly reliable. And as soon as I upgraded my machine to Sonoma : pooof ! Issues were suddenly gone !
But as scientists know : correlation is not causality...

Hence my call to feedbacks from people using the Ultralite while running Sonoma.

P.S. : I did read here and there, coming from the RME forum, that Sonoma did something with the kernel aspect of usb management, that may have fixed the issues people were having with RME, Motu and other manufacturer's audio interfaces.
I don't even know what kernel is, but it seems it has to do with usb management and usb audio drivers.
One clue the issue was coming from some usb problem is that changing the cable (best fit is for me is a usb2 / usb-c->usb-A) and using a hub was actually improving the situation (counter-intuitive right ?)
Another clue it was coming specifically from the drivers is using the interface in class compliant mode is fixing the issue (at the expense of loosing low latency and many Cue-Mix features).

[Calagan]

A guy from gearspace oriented me to this video from RME, explaining why the drivers from many manufacturer had issues recently on recent MacOs systems (since the switch to new security processes, I think since Catalina ?), and why Sonoma could have introduced some fix with these issues...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Ilkwtb2MKrM

It's about Kernel extension drivers vs system extension ones.
But see in particular the top post from RME in the commentaries : it seems Sonoma did make the System Extension drivers as robust and efficient as the old Kernel Extension ones...

[aflynt]

I'm running an Ultralite MK5 on Sonoma with an M3 Pro MacBook Pro. I initially had an issue getting the system to use the MOTU driver instead of the class compliant driver. I eventually had to delete the actual driver file and empty my trash and reboot before installing. I think this was due to me upgrading from an M1 Mac Mini using Time Machine, though and the driver extension file being present w/o an actual "install". That or a conflict with my Presonus Quantum 2 drivers. Which leads me to the other issue...

Once I got the UltraLite drivers working the drivers for my Presonus Quantum 2 didn't work anymore. I don't know why, but it seems that they can't both be active and working at the same time... which kind of sucks. I've just stopped using the Quantum 2 and use the MOTU for everything now.

Anyway... I've got the MK5 working just fine now and am using the latest drivers with zero actual performance issues. On this new machine I actually get slightly better latency performance than the figure MOTU quotes. I never really used the Ultralite much with the old M1 Mac Mini (used the Quantum on that primarily) so I can't really compare its performance on other systems or OS versions.

-Aaron

[Calagan]

ok, so it seems nobody has any problems anymore with the Ultralite...

[mikehalloran]

ok, so it seems nobody has any problems anymore with the Ultralite...

It does appear that the latest drivers and firmware are working for the Ultralite mk5 — finally.

I don't think you can associate the various issues people had with the Motu interfaces recently (on both Mac and Windows by the way) to a simple installation issue.

Those of us who have spent hours on the phone with MOTU Support (thanks, MOTU) do not believe for a second that it is a “simple” installation issue. That we do get things working after following all of the steps in the correct order does prove that these are installation issues.

Only two MOTU interfaces have Sonoma installers and those are only a few weeks old. It’s hoped that the other three audio drivers will have Sonoma compatible installers soon. Till then, there’s MOTU Support and those of us who post all the steps here.

Besides the audio driver installers, a Sonoma compatible MOTU MIDI installer needs to get around the fact that the installation fails if the MOTU audio drivers are present. This was not an issue in Ventura and earlier. Not guessing here—I saw it and can duplicate the condition.

[Calagan]

Please Mike, re-read the thread and follow the links provided.

Since the release of the Ultralite mk5, there have been a lot of reviews of such issues (clicks and pops, glitches, random delays) and they were not fixed with proper installation.

Personnaly, I did spend more than one year exchanging emails with the support team. None of what they told me fixed my issue.
Eventually, an OS upgrade to Sonoma did partially fix my issues (contrary to what you seem to imply speaking about the freshness of Sonoma compatible drivers) if and only if I plug my interface to a hub with an usb 2 cable.
Again, it's contrary to any common sense with using audio interfaces, but like that it works.

I'm still using an old driver (93305) and I will eventually update soon, but it's the first time I found a stable system so I will only do this after some gigs I've got in the next weeks (I rely on the stability of this interface because I use it on stage).

I'm not a tech guy, but I'm using audio interfaces in a pro environnement since more than 10 years and I never had such issues. I never had any reliability issues with Focusrite interfaces on my Apple laptops.
I know how to follow instructions and I know how to read a manual or a support email, thanks. None of this helped.

So don't tell me these issues are installation issues : my opinion is there is a mix of Apple issues with managing usb ports and Motu drivers issues. If you check the history of ulmk5 drivers updates, you'll see they all the time fix the issues I'm speaking about (without actually fixing them : proof is they need to fix it again).
It happens also on Windows, so it's not an Apple only issue.

In conclusion, the last drivers may be the ultimate fix to all my problems (I'll see that next month). But so far, it's been a big challenge to run this audio interface without issues on my machine...

[jess77]

heyy, I was also having lots of problems with audio popping playing audio through the mk5 ultra lite - I'm on an M1 Mac and op system Ventura. I am always nervous of compatibility issues on upgrading the operating system. However, just to report, in case it helps others, I just downloaded the latest Motu Gen 5 installer (released Feb 6) which mentions in the changes that it has improved the usb error recovery routine.. since installing virtually all the pops have gone, even without upgrading to Sonoma.

worth a try before you upgrade to Sonoma, if you haven't already

[VitcoMusic]

Thanks for mentioning that. I’ll download the latest driver and give it a try.

Dan V.


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[James Steele]

Thanks for mentioning that. I’ll download the latest driver and give it a try.

Dan V.

Please report back if that works!

[Calagan]

@jess77 thanks a lot for your feedback.

I'll also install the latest driver at the end of the month, after the gigs I've got this month (I can't risk anything now).
I'll report also if everything runs fine.

Just for memory : I'm now running Sonoma and the driver 93305 on my M1 pro. It works fine only if I use an usb 2.0 cable plugged to a hub. If I use an usb-C cable (usb3) directly plugged into the usb-c laptop, it generally works but I had one time a random 500ms delay on the inputs (after I tried it maybe 3 or 4 times in this configuration), so it's not 100% reliable (20% chance of issues is not acceptable for my use).
I hope the last driver will finally fix all the issues, because I love this interface, and the last features will be very useful to me.

[VitcoMusic]

Just installed the latest firmware update & driver for my Ultralite Mk5. No more snap, crackle and pop. I will see how MIDI instruments are recorded now from their audio output. It was unusable before with the timing offset required.

So far so good!

Dan V.
Mac Studio Ultra
DP 11.31


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