Ultralite MK-3:Highpitched noise thoughts summary?

[Bulletride666]

First of all,Hi everyone!

It's been about a week I own an Ultralite MkIII. I didn't have a single problem,but yesterday I joined the club of dropout\HP noise listeners. I did not do any changes to my system hardware since first installation of MK3,nor did I install any new drivers\software.

I own an Intel Q6600 2.4 with 8 GB Ram,running Vista 32 and XP 64. Dropouts occur in both. I dont have any firewire ports on motherboard,so MKIII is connected via PCI-Firewire controller(VIA chipset).

Questions are,
1.Should I buy a TI-chipped controller,does it make difference?
2.Are there ANY people running MKIIIs without these dropouts?
3.Did anyone receive response from MOTU TS? Except stupid suggestions like try turning the volume down\turn on the PC?
4.Those who DO have this problem,how do you woork with it?? In my case dropouts are very often and could last for 3-5 secs!
5.What other MOTU products are plagued by the bug?

I think it would be a good idea to sticky this or similar post with an overview of this problem and all possible solutions,as I found it hard to search entire forum,and there are very many people around net with this problem.

By the way,I wanted to listen to music without noise,so I decided to install my old M-Audio card,and while doing so,I changed PCI slot of FW controller where MK3 is connected. Surprisingly,while typing this post,I already listened to 3 songs through MOTU without a single dropout... MAybe it helps someone- maybe there's really an IRQ conflict and moving FW card helps...

[reeper]

maybe there's really an IRQ conflict and moving FW card helps...

yes, that, and a multitude of other stuff like motherboard drivers,chipset,installed software,badly configed OS etc etc.

[Bulletride666]

yes, that, and a multitude of other stuff like motherboard drivers,chipset,installed software,badly configed OS etc etc.

So,having a TI Firewire card is a must have? Or were you talking about MB chipset?
And does anyone figure out what combination brings best results? I think it's not very individual,as the bug is the same on very different systems,so I guess we could find what there is in common between them and maybe fix the noise cause...


By the way,thanks for drivers and cuemix mod,works great so far!

[maza]

I'm owner of 828MK3 and I do have same problem. I have tried my MOTU in Fujitsu-Siemens Xi2528 Laptop which doesn't have TI chipset and I will get those dropouts and HP noises time to time. I have tried my MOTU with Dell D400 Laptop which has TI chipset and the problem remains. I have done reglamation in MOTU's web-site but so far I haven't got any solution. They do give responce but usually it is something like "have tried this or that". My MOTU has even been at MOTU's service point (Or so I was told) but they didn't fix actual problem. Only thing that they were able to fix was that it doesnt happen that often tha earlier.

[casedawg]

This is the response to my Ultralite-mk3 techlinks post about this issue:

What Firmware version does the 828Mk3 display when you first power it on?

The most recent version of the Firmware is version 1.06. If yours displays an earlier version you should down load the 828Mk3 Firmware update from the downloads section of the motu.com website.

A TI chipset might help, but that's not a guarantee. I have a TI chipset firewire card on its own IRQ and I still occasionally experience dropouts and squeals. They used to occur frequently when I was typing, but after much tweaking of the OS and BIOS they're gone for the most part. The only time they really occur now is when my computer has been on for days straight. A restart fixes everything in that case.

The dropouts and squeals happen when the the audio stream to the Ultralite is interrupted. This can be caused by many different things as reeper mentioned. It's a problem with the system not the MOTU drivers. When I was having a bad time with the drops and squeals, I tried out a friends Firebox and experienced the same thing. There was no squeal or a much less intense squeal associated with the dropouts using the Firebox (could be because the Ultralite is more "complicated" or the Firebox just handle drops in streams better), but they were still there. I think some motherboards are just not ideal for firewire/usb audio interfaces.

If you get a TI firewire card, make sure the card isn't sharing IRQ, tweak Windows for audio (checkout the thread about reverting to SP1 firewire drivers if you're using XP) and tweak your BIOS, then I think you should be able to get to a place like me where there are no dropouts 90% of the time. Changing 2 BIOS settings that don't seem to be audio related is what finally got rid of the frequent drops for me. Switching "USB Legacy Mouse support" to enabled (I use a USB mouse, but that setting isn't required to use a USB mouse in Windows...) and switching "FSB Spread Spectrum" from its default value of 0.5% to Disabled are what did it for me (I made both changes at the same time, so I'm not sure if both were needed, or just one). Really go through your BIOS and disable every component that you don't use (on-board audio, game ports, serial ports, COM ports, etc.) and experiment with unessential settings (check your MoBo manual or google the settings if you aren't sure what they're for).

[ahavah]

Hello there, I just read everything, but the guy who says he found a way around this strange annoying dropouts and highpitched tone, Associated with motu and firewire problem. Can he be more precise and guide others to practically handle this issue?. Like say you do tis first and then that next. Because not everyone is guru on computer complications. I am a musician and maybe not ready to learn to become a computer technician. And for God's sake when will computer technology come to stable and realiable place?. Anyway anyone outhere who can help with information as to how fix those noises and nonsensical crackles will be appreciated.I just returned a tc konnekt live for motu ultralite mk3. Pls HELP!!!