I've owned the Ultralite mkI since April and am now really getting to work with it. I've scanned the MOTU Technotes and the forums here, installed the latest drivers and firmware, installed Windows XP SP3, and would like your thoughts on the following:
"Crazy faders" - I've seen that others have this issue with the lcd faders of all outputs reacting for about 10 seconds while the audio pops. My laptop is on an audio hardware profile that has the network, wireless adapter, cd/dvd drive, and other things disabled, like virus scanning, etc. - things that everybody does to optimize Windows XP for audio.
High-pitch noise - this stopped when I swapped my laptop power adapter from 3-prong to 2.
Rear panel connections - wow, bad design. The 2 firewire ports and the power supply are so close you cannot possibly have them all plugged in at once. Since I'm using 4-pin, I have to leave the inside firewire port empty and switch to using my external drive as eSATA through the laptop's ExpressCard slot - which actually works very well, but you may want to reconsider if you use a firewire external drive or other device.
Rack mounting - anyone do this yet? With the supplied rack ears I can't see how I can mount it in a 2U SKB rack case.
I'd appreciate any comments on the above issues.
Ultralite mk I issues and observations
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Discussion related to installation, configuration and use of MOTU hardware such as MIDI interfaces, audio interfaces, etc. with Windows
Discussion related to installation, configuration and use of MOTU hardware such as MIDI interfaces, audio interfaces, etc. with Windows
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tonewheeltom
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sun Jun 01, 2008 1:56 pm
- Primary DAW OS: Unspecified
Ultralite mk I issues and observations
Computer: PC Dell Inspiron E1505 notebook, circa 2006 (Intel Core Duo T2300 @ 1.66 GHz, Windows XP SP3, 2 GB RAM, 100 GB/7200 rpm internal drive, 4-pin Firewire/1394 IEEE OHCI compliant)
DAW: Native Intsruments Kore 2 software w/ Kore 1 controller for live playing - no recording/sequencing
DAW: Native Intsruments Kore 2 software w/ Kore 1 controller for live playing - no recording/sequencing
I too have the "crazy faders" problem. Stangely, it only occurs perhaps on 50% of my bootups; the other 50% it runs solidly without a single click or pop. Typically, I boot up and then execute my DAW (Reaper in my case). If the Ultralite's meters go crazy upon playback of a project (along with distorted audio), my only recourse is to shut down and the boot again. If the Ultralite does not misbehave fairly early on, it remains stable for the entire boot session.
I really wish I knew how to systematically diagnose the problem. It does seem to be related to the graphics card, for when the Ultralite is misbehaving I can make it go "crazy" by moving things around on the screen. As mentioned before, when it is not misbehaving, it remains solid regardless what I do.
My system: Asus A8V; AMD X2 4400; 2G RAM; ATI Radeon 9600; ADS Pyro PCI64 firewire card (TI chipset) on its own IRQ; Windows XP SP3 (problem also occurred with SP2 with firewire hotfix); Ultralite version 1.1.5; using previous drivers (sorry, not in front of my DAW at the moment) since newest drivers apparently increase hidden buffers/latency?
My system is optimized for audio: I use a hardware profile with networking disabled and unnecessesary background services disabled (although problem occurs on default profile as well).
I have looked at adjusting PCI latency, following the advice of various articles. I've tried various combinations, including bumping the firewire card to 64 and the ATI card down from 255 to 64 or 128. Never seems to make any difference.
Could anyone offer any advice on how to proceed from here?
I really wish I knew how to systematically diagnose the problem. It does seem to be related to the graphics card, for when the Ultralite is misbehaving I can make it go "crazy" by moving things around on the screen. As mentioned before, when it is not misbehaving, it remains solid regardless what I do.
My system: Asus A8V; AMD X2 4400; 2G RAM; ATI Radeon 9600; ADS Pyro PCI64 firewire card (TI chipset) on its own IRQ; Windows XP SP3 (problem also occurred with SP2 with firewire hotfix); Ultralite version 1.1.5; using previous drivers (sorry, not in front of my DAW at the moment) since newest drivers apparently increase hidden buffers/latency?
My system is optimized for audio: I use a hardware profile with networking disabled and unnecessesary background services disabled (although problem occurs on default profile as well).
I have looked at adjusting PCI latency, following the advice of various articles. I've tried various combinations, including bumping the firewire card to 64 and the ATI card down from 255 to 64 or 128. Never seems to make any difference.
Could anyone offer any advice on how to proceed from here?