UltraLite and Ricoh FireWire chipset on Dell Vista 32?

[ImpactEE]

Hello, all
I've been interested in the MOTU UltraLite, but I've also been reading the material about FireWire chipsets, so I thought I'd ask before I try to do this. I've read about wanting to have the TI chipset, and that there doesn't seem to be an ExpressCard version of a FireWire interface that works reliably.
I have a Dell XPS M1710 running Vista Ultimate (32 bit), and I have confirmed that it has the Ricoh FireWire chipset, and the four pin FireWire connector (no power). I'm running Sonar 6 SE as the DAW. The laptop only has an ExpressCard slot; it doesn't have PCMCIA slots.
Has anyone been able to get the UltraLite, or for that matter, any of the MOTU audio interfaces to work with a setup like this? Are there any tests I could run in advance of a purchase to tell me if this would be successful?

Thanks in advance!!

[Guitarmuzic]

I'm using a Dell Inspiron E1505 with a Ricoh Chipset onboard Firewire 4 pin. It seems to work well for recording medium projects with about 6 audio tracks and 3 MIDI tracks with VST instruments in 24 bit at either 44.1 or 48KHz. When I try to work in 96K I start to expierience more dropouts and the connection over firewire seems to get lost so I am forced to restart the system to re-establish the connection and resume working on the project in 96KHz.

All in all it seems to be working fairly well with the Ricoh onboard chip at the 24 bit, 48KHz. I have also used the ultralite a few times for playing canned music through a PA system over the firewire and controlling the mixer with cuemix and so far have had good luck - all with my Dell E1505 and Ricoh chipset.

I have not had any luck with the Expresscard slot and my ultralite. I have a SIIG firewire expresscard with a TI chipset that has worked with my Dell laptop with other firewire interfaces (M-audio Firewire 410, Alesis Multimix) but will not work with the Ultralite. When I plug in the ultralite to the expresscard the entire system locks up and I am forced to do a power down reset and even after rebooting the drivers for all the sound devices are messed up. I have yet to solve this problem, so I am sticking with the onboard Ricoh chipset for now, and just recording mostly in 24bit, 48KHz.

Hope this helps - Good luck!

[BradLyons]

Understand that when it comes to Windows PC-systems in general, a HUGE variable is the computer--because there are no standards whatsoever and companies like Dell change their designs as often as I change my socks... you can't truly say yes or no. However if you are using an off the shelf PC, then Dell would be about as good as anyone. Now throw in VISTA and you're dealing with other variables.

So to best answer your question, if you get an Ultralite it "SHOULD" work--but understand the computer you have wasn't designed for audio nor is VISTA truly ready across the board for digital audio, thus why I say "SHOULD" and not "YES, absolutely". Don't forget the other part is a dedicated firewire hard-drive for your audio.

[ImpactEE]

Thanks for the info, Guitarmuzic! That helps a lot. That gives me an idea of about what to expect. Did you find that you had to tweak/disable extraneous devices or did it pretty much work out of the box?

To Brad's point, I understand that there are a *HUGE* number of variables that determine whether this works or not, and there isn't a "Yes, this will definitely work" or "No, not a chance", but the fact that Guitarmuzic has some degree of functionality with the UL and the Ricoh chipset is good to know. So, Brad, most people use an external FW harddrive to record instead of the internal? I thought that since I had a 7200RPM SATA 100GB internal, I was probably good to go.

Thanks to you both for the input.

[pfschaefer]

Hello, all
confirmed that it has the Ricoh FireWire chipset, and the four pin FireWire
Thanks in advance!!

I have an ASUS G1 that uses the RICOH chipset, and am running Vista Home Premium. For the most part, my Ultralight works just fine. However, I occasionally get interruption of the audio stream. I get a lot of disk activity, and get this "beeeeep click-click" that repeats 6-10 times, then the audio resumes. There's likely some scheduled service that I haven't deactivated yet. It's possibly related to some networking features or chaching of something. I go days without experiencing this anomaly, and it's relativey short.

Bottom line: It works pretty well (around 4msec latency), but I wouldn't want to be trying to make money with this setup. I wouldn't yet use it to record a concert or anything else where you get one shot.

This problem might have an easy remedy, but the MOTU tech support guys are pretty much useless in helping me figure it out. I'm thinking that their tech support guys get most of what they know from browsing this web site. If I ever figure it out, I'll post something to a new thread.

[rwandering]

Glad to hear this is working. Can you tell me: how many cores do you have?

I'm running on a Core 2 Duo with Vista Ultimate and can't get it to work reliably. I ask because I wonder if this is a problem with the MOTU drivers running on dual cores.

Thanks,
Robert

[ImpactEE]

Thanks for the info pfschaefer. This is sounding a little iffy. I'm wondering if I ought to give MOTU a miss and check out RME's FireFace. My understanding is that they do their own ASIC for the FireWire interface. I wonder if it's worth the price of admission.

Robert, I have a Core Duo as well. When yours doesn't work, what does it do? Is it the standard popping and clicking that I've been reading about, or does it manifest as a connection problem?

[rwandering]

Robert, I have a Core Duo as well. When yours doesn't work, what does it do? Is it the standard popping and clicking that I've been reading about, or does it manifest as a connection problem?

I've heard of two issues:
1. some popping and clicking; and
2. crackling on all outputs (with the output meters going crazy). This is the one I have.

[pfschaefer]

Thanks for the info pfschaefer. This is sounding a little iffy. I'm wondering if I ought to give MOTU a miss and check out RME's FireFace. My understanding is that they do their own ASIC for the FireWire interface. I wonder if it's worth the price of admission.

My notebook is a Core 2 Duo (T7200), and I'm not running into ANY popping/crackling problems. I'm convinced that I'm just getting interrupted by some higher priority system task. The computer came loaded with bloatware, and it took a while to clean out all the junk, but the Ultralite was working mostly OK right out of the box. In hindsight, I would have done a clean install of Vista. I just don't think there's quite enough knowledge about how to set up a Vista machine for audio yet. All it would take is for one software component (some system service or firewire driver) to be set to an insufficiently low priority for something like my anomaly to occur.

I'm not necessarily going to tell you to steer clear of the Ultralite, as my problem is VERY intermittent. It appears only once in a while and there are often days between occurences. But it's a wierd one, and the intermittent nature will make it very hard to track down.

[rwandering]

I'm glad to hear that this can work at all; I do suspect it is some problem with a driver or some other process taking over at some point. Very frustrating, really.

The thing I can't figure out, though, is if aside from driver issues, is something actually wrong with some of the Ultralites (in terms of my "crazy" issue). MOTU seems to blame everything on 3rd party hardware, drivers, OSes.

I suppose if I should to completely dumb down my laptop (i.e., make sure absolutely nothing else is going on), and then try my tests again.

BTW: here is a link to a (lousy) movie I made of the way the Ultralite looks when it goes crazy:
http://et.cairene.net/UltralightOutpusCrazy.3g2
Note that the meters shouldn't be registering silence only.

[ImpactEE]

Thanks, pfschaefer. It sounds like you're up and running without too many issues. That's encouraging.

I guess what's bothering me about MOTU right at the moment is that it seems like there are a lot of people that are having troubles (from minor annoyances to major problems) with their FireWire based equipment, and MOTU doesn't really seem to be that concerned about it (judging from traffic on this forum and looking at their website). About the only thing I've heard them say is that we need to be using the TI/Lucent chipset. I thought the whole point behind a interface standard like IEEE 1394 FireWire was to allow different devices from different manufacturers to work together. Maybe MOTU is just not all that interested in sales to Windows PC users.
Perhaps I have unreasonable expectations, but I am not wanting to be spending major amounts of time troubleshooting a device interface after laying down $500-$600. It seems like RME has this problem solved.

Thanks again for your help and comments!

[pfschaefer]

traffic on this forum and looking at their website). About the only thing I've heard them say is that we need to be using the TI/Lucent chipset.

It also seems like their chip recommendations are not really based on anything substantial, either. Lots of people are having problems with TI chipsets. It seems a shame that we all end up being unpaid software testers.

[ImpactEE]

Yes, that's a good point. I've heard that the TI/Lucent chipset is supposed to be *better* somehow, but I haven't heard a good explanation of why that is. I think you're right that there are folks out there that have the recommended chipset that are still having trouble. Also, I don't think I've heard of anyone with an ExpressCard FireWire interface with a TI chipset getting it to work properly.

So, how about it? Does anyone out there know what characteristics of the TI/Lucent FireWire chipset make them better suited for digital audio?

[majdid]

add me to the list, i just got a belkin expresscard firewire, and it is not working! same here, HP DV6000/vista 32/ricoh FW chip, working but not wihtout high pitched sounds from time to time. the bellkin which HAS the so famous TI chipset is giving a nice blue screen of death everytime i switch on my 828 MK3.

a small note, i have a second laptop which is toshiba and is using the TI chipset, performance seems to be ROCK solid, even tough its an old one, i can still record 12 chanels while playing back around 14 ones with a buffer size of 512, and im sure it can still go down...