motu drivers and windows xp

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:19 am

Hi everybody!

I am going to post a summary of what I experienced myself with my 828mkII over the past years and what I read on this board: If you are a Windows user and own MOTU hardware, it is very well possible you will expercience trouble with the drivers resulting in reduced functionality and/or system crashes. I challenge everybody here to prove me wrong. (I doubt you will be able to ;)

These are my arguments:

- MOTU says users should use Windows XP SP1 instead of SP2. SP2 is the current version of Windows XP. It is shipped at this patchlevel when you buy it (and you can't go back then). Many applications require SP2. For reasons of security it is obligatory. Despite the fact that there is a difference in the firewire drivers, this requirement can't be taken seriously. Mac users, imagine MOTU would ask you to use OS X 10.1 instead of 10.4

- MOTU requires you to use a TI chipset based firewire card but only makes fuzzy statements like: It might not work with others, it probably works with a TI chipset. So if you migrate to a TI chipset, in terms of logical reasoning you haven't gained anything. On the other hand, if you don't have a TI chipset then you take the blame. This looks like politics rather than logic.

- Theres are no Release Notes throughout the different driver versions. New drivers are released infrequently but it remains unclear what issues were resolved and which new features were implemented. Never have I encountered a behavior like this from any other manufacturer of professional hardware.

- If something doesn't work right and you went through these issues mentioned above, tech-support usually blames Windows or Steinberg (or whatever company supplied your favorite software). We all know that Windows from a technical point of view is nowhere near perfect. But the strategic decision to support it was made by MOTU. Hence, in the terms of customer service it is their duty to make sure their hardware works under Windows. Even if the error lies within the scope of Windows. Other suppliers prove that there are workarounds/fixes. It is simply unacceptable to shift this responsibility to the customer. If MOTU is unable to solve these problems they should simply admit it or no longer support Windows and just do the Mac thing.

Why do I write all of this? Simply to inform possible MOTU customers about what problems they might run into when they read this board to make up their minds. If they encounter any reasonable arguments against my points within this thread then they will still go on with their plan because my point was disproved. But as I said, I doubt anybody can. A single "but my system works" won't do the job because all of my statements are of a more abstract level. I tried to reflect the problem in general and not focus on a specific issue since it is not possible to predict the chance if the setup will work in your case or not. And that's exactly my point. Chances should be very high it works for you and even if it doesn't, you should be getting the support you need to get things running. In fact, you're likely not to get it.

fnord

arth · Post by **arth** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 10:40 am

I'd just like to add that Windows XP SP1 is no longer supported by Microsoft, and you can't special order it either. Even suggesting that one should use it for a new product is like suggesting one should downgrade to Windows Me (which went out of support at the same time as XP SP1).

On MOTU's download page, they confuse Windows XP 64 Edition with Windows XP Pro, apparently not understanding the difference. From there it goes downhill. The lack of a WDM mixer, the inability to flush buffers when changing sample rates (with the resulting SZHKRQSSTZZ every time you do so) are all rather revealing. These guys only do Windows as an afterthought or a gimmick -- it's not really a professional Windows product, IMHO.

GearNostalgia · Post by **GearNostalgia** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 1:02 pm

Ok, theese are serious allegations. If nobody picks up this ball and settles the argument I for sure will abandon my plan to buy Motu gear. The chances of malfuction seems way too high!

JadeLatrell · Post by **JadeLatrell** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:05 pm

I havent had any problems. I have run the MOTU Traveler in both Windows XP Pro and x64 and it has been flawless.

That is with Sonar 5 and 6. Everything has seemed to be straightforward to me.

arth · Post by **arth** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 3:48 pm

JadeLatrell wrote:I havent had any problems. I have run the MOTU Traveler in both Windows XP Pro and x64 and it has been flawless.

That is with Sonar 5 and 6. Everything has seemed to be straightforward to me.

Do you ever switch sample rates?

neuronic · Post by **neuronic** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:36 pm

I join to club of a useless product with useless tech support!

I bought a ultralite about a month ago and i get the crazy LED dance/static every 5 mins. After reading endless posts and trying every possible tweak/fix/tech support i put it down to the firewire chipset (running on a LG S1 notebook). Even tho the chipset on the notebook is TI i still went ahead and bought a Belkin pcmcia firewire adapter as recommended by many people on this forum and others.

This didnt help the problem at all, so i contacted MOTU tech support, after a week i got no reply, so i sent another email. They got back to me with "Because you purchased the ultralite from australia, you will need to contact our distributor in oz" no other suggestions... bah

its a real shame coz its a damn nice piece of hardware if it worked!!!!!

Atardecer · Post by **Atardecer** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:37 pm

arth wrote:
Do you ever switch sample rates?

What's with that? In Cubase SX, you cannot change sample rates in the MOTU control panel otherwise it crashes. You have to do it via the Cubase project setup. No big problem, but just curious as to why this is the case?

Regards

Jidis · Post by **Jidis** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:10 pm

Atardecer wrote:What's with that? In Cubase SX, you cannot change sample rates in the MOTU control panel otherwise it crashes. You have to do it via the Cubase project setup. No big problem, but just curious as to why this is the case?

Look man, it makes more sense than having to hold some antiquated Windows 3.1 port of a patchbay app (Clockworks) open continuously, or your MIDI interface might drop off the system mid-session.

Changing rates from the host app makes sense, but it obviously shouldn't have the ability to take down either app if you do otherwise. The two should ideally either be sync'd together somehow, or the unusable areas should be inaccessible or greyed out. Notification via dialog boxes is a friendly touch too. I have a feeling there are provisions for some of that stuff within the various Steinberg protocols.

Close enough is not always good enough.

George

PS- Look on the bright side. There are now newer versions of the industry standard Steinberg protocols headed our way (brace for impact).

mke52 · Post by **mke52** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 12:13 am

I couldn't agree more! I posted a similar 3d some weeks ago... by the way I had to change the traveler twicw! I never got any serious reply from Motu customer care but got great assistance from the Italian importer.
At the end I've swtched over to Mac and it works fine.
It is true to say however that it's not only Motu that has problems with the firewire interface; most firewire cards don't like XP and give more or less the same problem. The problem must be related to some HW configuration and I'm not talking about the TI firewire interface but there must be some other factor that Motu should look at.
My Traveler works fine with my Dell laptop but there's no way to make it work with the desktop even though I reformatted the disc and loaded ONLY win XP SP1 and nothing else. Media player just freezes.
With Mac it's fine and you can really apreciate the quality of the converters.
So IMHO the issue is related to some other factor that is the only explanation as to why some PC's don't give any problems and others just don't work.

GearNostalgia · Post by **GearNostalgia** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 10:09 am

Ok, I have read enough. I just recently decided that don't want to risk it and placed an order for a RME hammerfall and some Alesis AI3. Motu lost this order on the web reputation. True or false, call me a covard, but thank you for the warning.

LEX · Post by **LEX** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 11:35 am

arth wrote:I'd just like to add that Windows XP SP1 is no longer supported by Microsoft, and you can't special order it either. Even suggesting that one should use it for a new product is like suggesting one should downgrade to Windows Me (which went out of support at the same time as XP SP1).

On MOTU's download page, they confuse Windows XP 64 Edition with Windows XP Pro, apparently not understanding the difference. From there it goes downhill. The lack of a WDM mixer, the inability to flush buffers when changing sample rates (with the resulting SZHKRQSSTZZ every time you do so) are all rather revealing. These guys only do Windows as an afterthought or a gimmick -- it's not really a professional Windows product, IMHO.

I don't think they are confusing XP64 and XP pro.
XP64 is a pro version.
Granted they could have labeled it differently like "Xp 64bit" and for the 32 bit drivers, XP home/Pro.

LEX

arth · Post by **arth** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 4:36 pm

LEX wrote: I don't think they are confusing XP64 and XP pro.
XP64 is a pro version.
Granted they could have labeled it differently like "Xp 64bit" and for the 32 bit drivers, XP home/Pro.

XP 64 Edition is a Pro version, but the opposite is not true: In fact, most XP Pro versions are 32-bit, and if you just say "XP Pro", people will assume that you mean the 32-bit version.
I see that they now have clarified by putting "X64" in the header too, but it's clear that they initially didn't know the difference -- this can be seen from the download descriptions, which universally state "Windows XP Pro" when they mean Windows XP 64 Edition. Sometimes they list both "Windows XP Pro" and "Windows XP", which really doesn't make sense, considering that Windows XP is a family that includes Windows XP Pro. It's as silly as saying that a product works with MacOS X and Tiger, when you really mean the Intel version of Tiger.

I love my MOTU for the hardware. But the Windows drivers they provide quite frankly stink, and the lack of any bug fixes after 8-9 months tells me that MOTU has no noticable Windows commitment.

neuronic · Post by **neuronic** » Fri Oct 27, 2006 5:12 pm

GearNostalgia wrote:Ok, I have read enough. I just recently decided that don't want to risk it and placed an order for a RME hammerfall and some Alesis AI3. Motu lost this order on the web reputation. True or false, call me a covard, but thank you for the warning.

If your PC, you did the right thing! im currently in the process of trying to swap my ultralite for a fireface 400!

fnord · Post by **fnord** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 3:32 am

As I predicted.. Many replies. No disproval. To repeat my point: I never said, the drivers don't work under Windows. It might very well be that you're lucky and never experience trouble. On the other hand, it might also very well be that you run into one of the problems documented in this forum. This isn't a disaster in itself since we're dealing with technology. The disaster is, that you are very unlikely to get the support you need to get things running smoothly. I'm not even saying MOTU doesn't want to provide it. It seems they don't know how to fix it or are unwilling to invest the time and resources to get there which is also documented here and can be confirmed by my very own experience. This is why you get the lame recommendations (SP1, TI chipset, obscure driver versions, etc) and are left hanging afterwards. If that doesn't influence your byuing decision and/or you're willing to take that risk, you get a very nice product. I never agued that.

If you do own it already and are experiencing trouble there are only three things you can seriously do (after trying out the standard recommendations which might work but probably won't):

- live with it and try to arrange
- migrate to a mac
- buy a different soundcard (if you read this forum you know where to look at)

Everything else is a waste of your precious time.

fnord

mke52 · Post by **mke52** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:29 pm

fnord, this is one of the best threads I've ever seen. It sythesises all the other threads of this forum and comes to a logical conclusion.
Thanks!