ultralite problems (yes,im one of the many)

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 6:47 pm

hello guys. just purchased an hp pavillion dv9710el laptop with dual amd turion tl-64 2,20 ghz, 3gb RAM.
the firewire driver is reported as RICOH OHCI compatible IEEE 1394-
the port is a 4 pin.
i run windows vista home premium 32 bits.

i bought a motu ultralite, downloaded the 3.6.8.1 drivers for vista 32 , installed.

all my audio applications see the device and work with it correctly except that , as many other users, every now and then i got the bloody crackles ans squeaks.

i posted a tech link,waitin for reply.
i noticed that a few windows events are surely linked with the device glitches:
-when the screen goes to "sleep" (only the screen i mean, disks are set to never go to sleep) the motu starts crackling
-obviously the ultralite is powered via dc adaptor cause of the 4 pins firewire port, so it doesnt need any power from the laptop, but if i unplug the dc adaptor from the laptop, it starts crackling.
hope this helps and also would like to know if there are known issues about RICOH OHCI firewire controller drivers or with pavillion dv9000 series in general.
also:
installing the service pack 1 for vista could be worth tryng?(it doesnt ship in my language and its not included in my automatic update cause of the onboard audio device drivers,conexant hd audio)

thanks for the attention.
g.

mills · Post by **mills** » Sun Apr 06, 2008 10:25 pm

Monitor your DPC Latency Checker: http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

What you want to do is run this at startup and leave it going (don't close it). Anytime you hear a problem, switch over to it and see what it says, as usually the problem you described is caused by DPC spikes. Let us know what you see with this tool, and we can go from there.

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:23 am

thanks!i'll do it right now and report back!

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:53 am

ok, checked. in fact the glitches correspond to spikes in the dpc latency.
the biggest one (happened accessing the windows audio manager to switch from hd conexant to motu as default) was 38495 microseconds.

by the way, last night windows update made available the updated driver for the conexant hd smart audio 221 and it seems to me that things are slightly better.
the outdated driver is in the blacklist of drivers conflicting with the vista service pack 1 (which i dont have yet cause the italian version isnt ready yet)

anyway the average dpc latency is about 75 microseconds, as i thought the spikes are linked to windows events (i managed to reproduce the glitch caused by the screen goint to "sleep mode": it causes a spike of less relevant value, about 1050 microseconds)

if you can help me i'll appreciate it very very much

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:57 am

p.s.:
i partially managed to reproduce the other source:
unpluggin dc adaptor from the laptop (with motu powered via her own dc adaptor) causes vlc audio drop out and subsequent glitches and spikes of not much more than 1000 microseconds.

the same doesnt happen alwways using daws like cubase sx or ableton 8at least, today i wasnt able to reproduce it on those two applications)

p.p.s.: average latency with vlc streaming audio: about 105 microseconds

more: accessing and surfing web pages (with latest mozilla firefox) causes latency spikes of about 1000 microseconds (with one huge 2505 single spike at one point) in particular wwhen loading pages content (at least it seems so)

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 7:47 am

more:
i identified that disabling the nforce networking driver lowers the amount of spikes in a relevant way.
the w-lan driver doesnt seem relevant.
so, no emule while making music

it seems the problems are separated:

1- the dpc latency (almost resolved disabling the ethernet card)
2-electricity and energy management (i cannot use the ultralite with the laptop runnin on batteries but keep in mind im powering the ultralite via her own dc adaptor because of the 4 pins firewire)

i dont think it is normal that one cannot play with laptop runnin battery powered.seems like the driver is influenced by things that shouldnt influence it.

sorrry for the monologue but i really want to solve this irritating problem.

mills · Post by **mills** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 9:42 am

Yeah, the DPC spikes are generally caused by badly behaving drivers. You can try disabling various things, and different versions of drivers.

What size is your MOTU buffer set to? I'm guessing 256? You can try increasing it to 1024

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:57 pm

it was 512.
but i can manage to use also 96 to record without major problems.
fact is: i paid 600 •‚¬ for a semi pro audio interface and i have to set the buffer to 1024?????
no way.
motu, put yer engineers to work and give us good drivers.
damn.

mills · Post by **mills** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 2:54 pm

If you are getting DPC spikes, that's not MOTU's fault. A DPC spike will affect any audio interface.

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 10:41 pm

mills wrote:If you are getting DPC spikes, that's not MOTU's fault. A DPC spike will affect any audio interface.

so you're basically tellin me that my new laptop with my new motu is a worst and less trusty system than my old desktop (one amd 2 ghz processor 768mb ram) with my very very old echo audio gina????
sorry but its hard to believe!

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 5:07 am

Fekete,

I'm going to be honest with you---HP computers are about the worst choice for doing audio period. Sorry if that's too blunt, but it's the honest truth. I'm a Windows guy, but I use professionally built audio PC's that were meant for audio. I run (2) systems, both with PRoToolsHD---and one with Sonar, Cubase4, Nuendo, Samplitude, etc. I have various interfaces I will use and test including EVERY MOTU interface. I don't have as much as a single issue, but that's because I'm not using an off-the-shelf-PC computer. When you get to a laptop, there isn't a single Windows machine out there that I can say without a doubt "YEP, this rocks", because it doesn't exist. Windows is a general OS that anyone can build a machine for. MOTU takes a lot of flack for issues on the PC, but 9.5 times out of 10 it's not MOTU at all---it's the computer that end-users choose to put it on. With laptops, you can't customize the way you can a desktop. So if you want a reliable laptop for audio, get the $1,099 MacBook. I have one myself, I run Windows XP on it and it's run Windows better than ANY laptop I've ever used---including $3,000 Dell's, HP's and Toshiba's.

And that's WinXP, but start talking Vista and things get worse---MUCH worse. So much so, that Microsoft is dropping Vista this summer for Windows7. Vista has never been reliable, especially for audio. So factor in Vista on an HP laptop and you have disaster. I'm sorry mate, not trying to tear you down here---just being honest with you

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 7:09 am

thanks for the feedback brad i appreciate it a lot.
well, i must say i have no more that much troubles, i can record with buffer down till 96 samples (at 64 the glitching appears due to large cpu usage) and after identifiyng the nforce lousy driver if i shut down the ethernet i have (till now) no more glithes appearing,unless i unplug the dc adaptor.
but i see the point in what you say.

im interested in this:
you say you run xp flawlessly on the mac.
but you can run the motu drivers under xp on the mac and use audio applications?
i ask because i never made the switch to mac cause of some windows only audio apps i cannot live without.

if i could be able to use both osx and win and the motu under both environments and the relative apps i'll be the happiest person and i'll consider switching.
if not, ill stay on my laptop and hope to see better drivers and less conflicts in the near future.

thanks for all the good infos and sorry if i sounded flamey.

arth · Post by **arth** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 9:02 pm

As a long time system administrator, I can verify what Brad says. HP consumer products aren't built for performance, they're built for economy and large number sales. If HP can save 60 cents per PC by substituting cheaper capacitors, they will do so. And if they get kickbacks from Symantec by pre-installing trial versions of their products on the box, they will do so too, no matter whether the system can handle the extra load gracefully or not.

That said, you can make a HP system more reliable by removing all traces of HP software on it, especially HP Update Service and similar (which is near worthless anyhow because of how infrequently HP provides driver updates). And, if the system was delivered with Norton Antivirus (or Internet Security, or Systemworks), get rid of it ASAP. It's probably the main cause of performance problems on PCs. If you really need antivirus on the box, there are far nicer alternatives that won't bog down the system to a crawl. ESET Nod32, for example, has both far less CPU and memory use and much higher detection rate in tests than Norton.

Run msconfig, and check how many things are started in the background without you actively starting them. There should be very few things listed there. On HP systems, there will be a dozen or more, until you start uninstalling and sanitizing the system.

I hate to say it, but buying a consumer HP computer for music production is like buying a $99 M.I.C. guitar at Wal-mart for the same purpose. It may be good enough for casual home use, or to start out with until you develop a real interest, but that's it.

(HP delivers decent servers, though. But then again, corporate customers aren't as forgiving as consumers, so HP has to provide higher quality for the business segment. At a higher price, of course.)

fekete · Post by **fekete** » Wed Apr 09, 2008 10:45 pm

thanks arth, as soon as i got the laptop i started tweakin it,
immediately gotr rid of norton and installed avg,immediately starterd disabling useless services and uninstalling junk programs and games and in fact now i can make it run smooth, but its still not 100% trusty as i like it to be....
you guys are makin me think seriously bout the switch for the very first time.

BradLyons · Post by **BradLyons** » Thu Apr 10, 2008 3:40 am

Fekete,

Let me clarify----on the Mac, I am running WindowsXP, I have PC software on it---but I don't use it for that. I do use PC audio software for testing, but not true audio recording on the MacBook. If you have Cubase, then you have a Mac version. If you're running Sonar, then you should just switch to Digital Performer if you get a MacBook. But before you go there, check this out:

http://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/ts/ ... timization