Ultralite sends gibberish on all channels (& latency)

robbm · Post by **robbm** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:59 am

Hi,

I've got a couple of problems with the Ultralite that I bought recently.

The biggest issue is that the Ultralite has a habit of "playing up". It'll be working fine (just repeatedly playing a loop in Ableton Live, for example) then will suddenly start sending gibberish (pops, crackles, bursts of white noise, etc.) to all the outputs - including those outputs that Live doesn't even have enabled! Or occasionally, it'll just stop and/or crash Ableton Live (my installation of Ableton Live never crashes, so I have to attribute this to the Ultralite). I can't trust it not to do this during a gig. And that's too big a risk to take...

Also the latency isn't as low as I'd like. 384 samples seems to be the minimum for noise-free performance. At 64 to 256 samples there's what sounds like vinyl crackle (minimal at 256 samples, but very significant at 64 samples). And 32 samples is a complete non-starter - I just get white noise.

My retailer said they'd give me a refund if it didn't work out, but I need to take it back by tomorrow for this to be valid. So anyone got any ideas how I might resolve these issues before then?

I'm using the latest drivers and Firmware from the MOTU web site. My system is a MacBook Pro 15.4" with a Core 2 Duo 2.16GHz (T7400) CPU and 2GB RAM. I'm running XP SP 2 under BootCamp. The Firewire controller is Texas Instruments (good) but shares an IRQ with the SATA controller (probably bad). It did share it with an unused USB Controller too, but I've disabled that now. The system is pretty well tweaked using the advice from site such as http://www.musicxp.net and I've disabled wireless networking and Bluetooth.

Thanks,

Robb

solconnection · Post by **solconnection** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 6:56 am

ahh crap, i finally got my ultralite working on xp (after useless motu support not helping at all i figured out i needed to install a bunch of xp firewire hotfixes to get it running)...and discovered this in ableton, thought it was because i needed a restart but dissapointed to hear im not the only one ...

anyone have any ideas? think ive got a pretty similar setup to poster above.

15.4" MacBookPro core2duo 2.2, windowsxp via bootcamp. abletone live 6

have a nice day and thanks in advance for any help
-Dan

robbm · Post by **robbm** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:04 am

What Boot Camp version are you using? Mine went back before I managed to resolve the problem. But latency with my 01X is better in BC 1.4 than it was in BC 1.3. So probably worth making sure you're using the latest version...

Nevandal · Post by **Nevandal** » Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:26 am

What motherboard is your new PC using?

solconnection · Post by **solconnection** » Mon Oct 08, 2007 7:34 am

Hey mate, im on a macbook pro (though im in xp via bootcamp), not exactly sure what motherboards they are using...some sources seem to think they use the intel 945PM chipset but i dont know for 100%, id be interested if anyone does know.

would love to hear anyones thoughts on this problem....im not getting any latency issues, infact, it will run like a dream for about an hour and then just explode and crap out, even when just running media player... restarting the motu is the only way to stop the crackles.

thanks in advance for any help
-Dan

rynol · Post by **rynol** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 7:44 am

Experiencing the same problems. When i'm listening to some songs i can hear cracks and pops, usually at the choruses in rock songs, oddly enough. I mean, it's definantely a driver problem, just as the driver says, "•••• what a load of music, i don't have the energy to process it all, so i send som cracks instead".

It's not a buffer issue, i have it set to 1024.

robbm · Post by **robbm** » Fri Nov 16, 2007 9:15 am

Although I got rid of the Ultralite, I ended up with similar problems on an Audiofire 2. Turned out that my USB Card Reader was causing the problems (I don't know how, but it was definitely the cause). So maybe try stripping your system back to the bare essentials to see if that helps, then add your other devices one by one to see what breaks it...

philbar · Post by **philbar** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 2:25 am

if you are using a desktop pc and have a few things on the same pci bus as the fire wire card that you use (i use a belkin with a ti chipset) then you will find its better to run your pc with just the firewire card by itself.

i had a wireless card that caused some horrendous spikes in my sound and removed it and bingo everything sounds much better now!

rynol · Post by **rynol** » Sat Nov 17, 2007 10:43 am

philbar wrote:if you are using a desktop pc and have a few things on the same pci bus as the fire wire card that you use (i use a belkin with a ti chipset) then you will find its better to run your pc with just the firewire card by itself.

i had a wireless card that caused some horrendous spikes in my sound and removed it and bingo everything sounds much better now!

Hi there. I don't really understand what you mean by running the pc with just the firewire card. Do you mean disconnect everything connected to the PCI slots? I only got my graphics card and the firewirecard connected

philbar · Post by **philbar** » Sun Nov 18, 2007 1:42 pm

thats what i've done...

i had a d-link wlan card on my system that chewed up resources.

it got replaced...

ralfk · Post by **ralfk** » Wed Nov 28, 2007 2:36 pm

I have the same problem: gibberish on all channels, usually when a big screen refresh occurs (i.e.: Cubase scrolls project window; popping up a window in Reaper; etc.).

This is with an AMD x2 4400; Asus A8V motherboard; Windows XP SP2 with Firewire hotfix. I am using a Firewire card with a Via chip (yes, could be the problem) with its own IRQ on an unshared PCI slot.

However, the Ultralite works well when I disable the onboard LAN.