WORKS! Dell XPS M1210 and MOTU Ultralite

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Discussion related to installation, configuration and use of MOTU hardware such as MIDI interfaces, audio interfaces, etc. with Windows
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aharbani
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Feb 23, 2007 1:44 am
Primary DAW OS: Unspecified

WORKS! Dell XPS M1210 and MOTU Ultralite

Post by aharbani »

I just wanted to post my experience, since I'm sure this would help other people looking for portable MOTU solutions.

Hardware/software:
  • Dell XPS M1210 laptop, 4GB RAM, 320GB 5400rpm 8MB cache hard drive.
    Dell drivers from support.dell.com
    Built-in Firewire (Ricoh chipset).
    MOTU Ultralite original
    Windows XP x86 with SP3 and latest patches as of today. Clean install.
    MOTU 3.6.8.1400 drivers
    Reaper, Cantabile
Tweaks done:
  • I disabled the modem, wired Broadcom, wireless Intel, and Bluetooth through BIOS.
    Disabled unnecessary Windows services. I did *not* turn off the Themes service.
    Checked with DPC Latency Checker (http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml). Green all the time, about 300uS max latency. There were periodic giant spikes when wireless network was still enabled.
    About 180MB memory usage after finish booting Windows, before loading any audio apps.
Basically, I turned the laptop into a barebone DAW-only machine with no network connectivity. I only enable networking when need to do Windows Update or something. I got sample-based piano VSTi working *great* with 4ms latency (MOTU ASIO set to 48khz 96 samples). It's been about 4 days now, playing every night, and I have never heard the usual MOTU pops/crackles with this configuration, so far. The key is: run DPC Latency Checker. If it's not *always green*, then something (a device or app or service) still needs to be disabled. I still see green all the time even when running DAW and the VSTi.

Note: operations like copying some files from an SD card using the built-in card reader will result in large latency spikes. So make sure there's no SD card in the reader (because Windows seems to read it occasionally).

Firewire/MOTU is definitely no longer the bottleneck now. Glad I figured this before spending money on a TI Firewire Expresscard! The only thing now I think I need to upgrade to 7200rpm 16MB cache (or SSD :( ) to accommodate giant piano samples.
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stjohn
Posts: 14
Joined: Fri Mar 13, 2009 3:18 pm
Primary DAW OS: Windows

Re: WORKS! Dell XPS M1210 and MOTU Ultralite

Post by stjohn »

thanks for the info...
ive been trying to de-spike my new laptop/ultralite combo. what OS are you running?

here's how i stand..

laptop:
Core™2 Duo T9400 (2.53GHz)
2 x 7200rpm 250GB hd
4gb RAM.
Ricoh FW chipset.
vista and XP.

Vista : everything i can think of is disabled except the FW port of course. i mananged to get slightly less than 1000ms latency, just about in the green, with loads of spikes and nonsense. i must try the BIOS disabling.

XP: HOLY ••••.. everything is well in the red... like waaay out of order... What the heck?? again i tried disabling from the device manager, but theres obviously something wrong here..

ive tried to use RATTV3 to find where the problems lie... but i have no idea how to use it.. any ideas?
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