828 MKII USB,pops,squeals WORKAROUND-READ ENTIRE THREAD!

[thehowler]

Of course, if you bother to read the whole thread, you would see that the problem was in fact caused by using an ACPI HAL and a faulty hard drive. The solution was to install a non-ACPI HAL and to replace the hard-drive. That article points out that without using diagnostic tools, you cannot begin to understand the nature of the problem

It also offers a lot of assistance of which tools you can use to help diagnose your problem

That is, of course, if you bother to read the whole thread...

There's so little information out there to help people with Windows / MOTU problems, I felt it best to offer a documented thread of my hours of diagnosis and research.

Like I say, if you read the WHOLE thread, you might understand its purpose re. problem and solution.

Perhaps if I rename the thread "Fixed for me and nobody else, so don't even bother attempting to understand what's going on - just start from scratch yourself" you would be happier?

BTW, once again, if you read the title of the thread and all of the posts, you would see that this is USB, not FireWire

[gothbin]

The only MOTU stuff I have is a Timepiece AV and a fastlane. Iread your posts, and wonder if I ever going to buy a MOTU audio interface.

Right now I'm stuck to Roland R-Bus stuff for my 24track recorder DAW VS2480CD. In the future I want to go back to do all my stuff in Cubase again. To avoid all kinds of problems related to PC/Mac DAW's I started using the VS2480CD and a Yamaha RM1x sequencer. Nowadays PC are stable enough to make the most out of Cubase or any other DAW.

It is good that people like you do the effort of reporting and keep everybody informed. Thanx for that!!!

[robleighton22]

am i right in thinking that the fix was to do with replacing the hard drive? how would u fix this issue with the crashes and audio pops/clicks on a laptop?

[thehowler]

The fix was partly the hard-drive, and partly the Windows installation re. IRQ and sharing.

If you have this problem on a laptop then you would have to replace the drive and reinstall Windows.

As far as the IRQ sharing goes, you would have to reinstall Windows and selecting a different Hardware Abstraction Layer (F5 on boot from CD)

[robleighton22]

The fix was partly the hard-drive, and partly the Windows installation re. IRQ and sharing.

If you have this problem on a laptop then you would have to replace the drive and reinstall Windows.

As far as the IRQ sharing goes, you would have to reinstall Windows and selecting a different Hardware Abstraction Layer (F5 on boot from CD)

too much effort on vista. gonna hav to live with the probs until i can afford a mac. ridiculous that such a high profile piece of kit is so buggy. thanks for the advice

[tonester]

Just for kicks, I have an open TechLink with MOTU to see their advice - I'll post their response(s) in due course...

Sucks that you had to go through all that to find out it was a clocking issue!

Not to rub your face in it, but that's the first thing i usually try. When I had the Tascam FW-1082, if I didn't have the proper clock source, I got nothing but clicks and pops similar to what you mention

Live and Learn, I guess

[thehowler]

It wasn't a clocking issue...

[tonester]

Sorry, thought I read that in there somewhere. My bad!

[d-brane]

hi

just buy the MOTU 828 mkII USB...
same problems...
and it seems to me that solutions are too complicated for the price I paid

do you advice me to send back the soundcard to the shop and buy something else?

->clearly disappointed

[tonester]

Maybe it's the USB. I have the MK3, which is FireWire, and once I set it up properly (it took some time!), it runs very smoothly.

Believe me, CueMix is not easy to grasp at first, but eventually you have one of those "AHA!" moments, and it all becomes clear.

[d-brane]

and if I have this problem with 828 mkII USB & XP, does someone know if I'll have the same problem with firewire?
as thehowler seems to say that the problem is not properly linked to USB....

[thehowler]

Hey there, d-brane,

To tell if the problems you're experiencing are similar to those that I experienced, you should install ProcessExplorer on your machine to find out what's happening to your CPU when the problem occurs. You'll know it's the same problem as you'll see a rise in the percentage of CPU time spent on Interrupts and DPCs (Deferred Procedure Calls).

This rise is due to Windows XP having to marshall the interrupt requests between your 828MKII USB port and other devices that share the same IRQ number.

If this is your problem, then you will most likely have it with FireWire too, as when you install the FireWire adapter it will be granted an IRQ by Windows. Windows will most likely share the granted IRQ with one that is already in use and attempt to marshall the resources "on-the-fly". This is not good news for your MOTU 828.

You need to have complete control over your IRQ resource allocations, and the only way I know how to do that in XP is to install a non-ACPI HAL version of Windows (F5 on XP install)

I know it's frustrating to have to do all of this when you have just paid £x for the MOTU gear, but it makes sense that ANY high-end audio interface needs to be isolated from the rest of the activity on your computer. So, I could not guarantee that this will not occur with an M-Audio device, for example.

Windows XP and Vista are not yet, in my opinion, capable of providing a solid platform for a project studio. And that's quite understandable really. Windows out-of-the-box is a general purpose OS and not tuned towards being a platform for a high-end Digital Audio Workstation - you have to tweak it. Have a look a dmcoran's post (sticky above this topic). He explains very well how to get your XP setup just right for DAW work.

[d-brane]

Hi thehowler,

thanks for your answer.
It's not the first USB soundcard that I use, I test, not particularly on this computer, and I can say I have experience with mid-range USB soundcard. I admit it's not always perfect, I met interference between WIFI and M-AUDIO Fast Track Pro on a laptop during recordings, a problem of recordings within a corporate software with Terratec Phase26, some silence marks when the recordings start on Sound Blaster Extigy and Lexicon Omega, problems on hercules DJConsole always corrected by new updates... but all these interfaces were working and their support team answered when I had a problem.

Here I wanted to buy a more professional (and expensive) interface from a manufacturer with high reputation and I can't even listen to a mp3 fully, my posts to the support site are not even read and moreover the official MOTU site doesn't talk about these problems at all, thing that I can understand for marketing purposes, but it's not fair.
I also test the interface on an other computer with different configuration, the soundcard seems to work normally but I hear clicks sometimes, even in this case I can't accept such a behaviour.

But during the few seconds I listened to something, I have enjoyed the quality of the phone output comparatively to my previous soundcard (Hercules) and this makes me think that it's a good idea to change my sound card and to buy a professional one. But which one? USB range is limited, Firewire seems more reliable...

what about Focusrite Saffire or TC Electronic Konnekt 24D?

Finally, I must say I'm really impressed by the work you did this last year, trying to find a solution to these problems. But do you think this is your job to do it for the price you paid?

eh sorry for my non-native english, I hope I was clear

[tonester]

Wow. Sorry you had to go through all that crap to find out it was a video card issue. i would have never thought that, although I will tell you that had nothing but trouble with the GUI of MOTU's MSI and Ethnic insruments on my PC with the ATI video card i was using. My cure was to get a Mac, and now everything runs beautifully, including my 828Mk 3, but that's probably more of a drastic solution than you need. I had fried a motherboard in my home made PC, and decided i was just done.

[disco]

Hi all,

This is all complete nonsense. I have used my 828MKII(Firewire) on my Mac Pro with no problems, but now I have an RME FF800 on that, I switched the 828 over to my PC running windows XP SP2 and started having the squeals. I built and configured another PC, and had the same problem. I then resorted to the previous driver that was made available somewhere in this forum, and things improved no end. I have just purchased a quad core intel PC, installed Vista Ultimate on it, put in the latest Motu drivers, guess what? Squeals. Although, I can actually raise and lower windows without getting all sorts of clicks and pops compared to the 2 previous PC's I had it installed on. I remember years ago wasting time installing the computer in standard pc hal etc, yes, it worked, but that was like 7 years ago. It's quite simple I reckon, the Motu drivers are Pi** poor. Why is this a sticky? Motu, sort it out.