828 Mk2 USB Audio drop outs and PC boot freeze

timmytubby · Post by **timmytubby** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 1:20 am

I've just recently bought a 828 MK2 USB, but I'm having 3 issues with it.

1) if the 828 is switched on before PC power up, it will cause the pc to 'hang' at the desktop and no icons will appear. If the 828 is switched on during power down, it will hang again and not switch off.
I've consulted the instructions and it talks about not installing the WDM driver. However, during install there is NO options to which divers can be installed. So how do I remove the WDM drivers?

2) any audio coming from either of my two CD/DVD drives will simply drop out after a few a minutes. It does come back, but the pc doesn't seem to think there is an issue as the disc will keep going, and the visuals will keep going. Under my old sound card (M-Audio DELTA) this never happened!

3) I'm running Cubase 4.1 and when I try to set up an external FX's track the 828 doesn't want to route the signals. I know I'm setting up Cubase and the hardware correctly. Also, when I alter the main LR output level in Cubase it has no affect on the volume I'm hearing. Why is this??

dkalna · Post by **dkalna** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:19 am

Hi timmytubby,

1) well, I don't use MOTU as a standard Windows Audio/MIDI Device but will try that at home

2) what is your samplerate and buffersize?

3) are you sure that you are not hearing/monitoring your MOTU inputs?

Regards, Dalibor

timmytubby · Post by **timmytubby** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:43 am

Hi,
Thanks for replying to my note.

To answer your questions, I'm running at the defaulted buffer size of 512 and sample rate of 44.1.

I could be hearing the monitor outputs from the MOTU, but I haven't had time to check that out yet

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:47 am

USB doesn't have the sustained throughput that firewire has, even though on paper that USB2 looks faster than Firewire400----in reality, it's not. Why did you buy the USB model instead of the firewire model? I'm guessing, based on experience, that what is going on is that what is going on is just plain dropout over the USB bus.

Is your audio on an ATA bus, USB or Firewire?

timmytubby · Post by **timmytubby** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 6:59 am

Brad,

I'm running the audio through the USB. I purchased the USB version simply because it's cheaper. I'm thinking I should send it back and save up the firewire version.

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 7:43 am

It's exactly the same price, how much did you pay? Where did you buy it from? Maybe they were just blowing them out... I'd definitely return it for the firewire.

timmytubby · Post by **timmytubby** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 12:06 am

The USB version is going for around £320, while the firewire is around £480

addict · Post by **addict** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 3:38 am

i have also bought the usb version doing to its lower price and thinking (idiot of mine) that motu only sells hardware that matches its known quality standarts.

the usb card is the worst piece of hardware i ever purchased. stability issues, MIDI driver issues (or lets say, MIDI just doesn‘t work, it crashes every time), cracks in the audio (running on a 512 buffer), etc etc.

i could not give back the interface because i tested it, seemed to work fine and then i couldn`t test it again after about 2 weeks later, started to see the issues and it was too late.

if i am honest my older m-audio card was waaaay better than the 828 usb.

i know i should have gone for the fw version but honestly i didn‘t expect motu selling crap.

timmytubby · Post by **timmytubby** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 11:13 am

Ok, so here's what I've done to date.

I've emailed Music track, and they've been most helpful. I've disabled the GISF device and uninstalled the GISF drivers. This has made a huge improvement, but I still think the device itself is faulty because after a while of playing CD's the internal routing will just re-patch itself and send the computer audio out outputs 7 and 8 for no apparent reason.

Does this sound more like a hardware fault to anyone? Music track said they would swap one over for me. And Dolphin Music said they will give me a refund. However, I can't afford the new MK3. Does anyone know where I can get MK2 firewire one from? (aside from eBay, which I'm tempted to do!)

Thanks

robleighton22 · Post by **robleighton22** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 5:06 pm

my stability issues hav def improved. not perfect. but i blame windows vista and bad drivers.

heres things i did:

disabled any unnecessary hardware such as internal soundcard, a fax modem, and anything that could cause an interuption. also i play sound and record at 48khz as opposed to 44.1,khz (this weirdly seemed to hav a really instant improvement on stability...and obviously things sound a little better). I also am using the windows vista sp1 rc, which seems slightly faster.

when ive used a program which is quite intensive, such as ableton, i usually switch the motu off, wait 30 secs, and switch on again. if i dont do this and then use another audio intensive program, it seems to crash the pc. but not always. the instability is now fairly inconsistant for me. however the audio dropouts really dont happen often. but used to happen loads before i tweaked my pc. ive got a motu 828mkII on vista.