UltraLite Mk111 Hybrid : Any Views?

[haraleah]

Latest drivers work for me under USB in both XP (SP2 - 32 bit) and Windows 7 (64 bit). Yay!

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Solved for me too. Vista 64 & ICH10. haraleah had ICH9 as I recall.

So it looks to be fixed.

I was due to the fact that the driver could not cope with some but not all of the variety of USB controllers available. latest models failed.

I reckon it would still be good for users to post up their experiences. There may be USB controllers it still cannot deal with, for example.

[Mus]

Good to hear the progress under USB2.

I was thinking of buying this fairly shortly, so any views on performance, latency when triggering softsynths via MIDI would be appreciated...esp. under Win 7 64-bit.

cheers

M

[Muzicole]

Hi there,

Went up to London today and spent several hours testing at Digital Village.

The good news is that with the new driver, the ULH worked immediately, in complete contrast to my experience before (My laptop has an ICH9 USB controller).

Not only that, but the performance seems to be equal to or better than any other interface that I could test, such as the Cakewalk UA-101.

I still couldn't get it to work at all with Firewire on my laptop (it just crashes the machine), but I couldn't get any other interface to work either, so I suspect that my Firewire express34 adaptor is not working as it should, or is incapable of operating at full bandwidth due to some sort of conflict (despite having a TI chipset).

Under USB, the playback of most things seems to be largely glitch free at a buffer size of 256 samples (around 6ms latency). I think I would be able to get that lower in support of solo performance with no glitches, if I set the laptop up to be a bit meaner and leaner.

At the end of the day, I therefore re-ordered the ULH, despite all the problems of the past since, now it works, it is still the best unit for the job and certainly easier to use than the competition, as well as having better spec, more outputs etc.

I will be using it to play VST synths and samplers live in shows, using Cantabile software.

I hope MOTU continue to work on the driver as I'm sure it has still a small way to go - for example I'd like to see a greater choice of possible buffer sizes. At the moment the next setting after 256 is 512, which is too much of a jump. Why not allow 288 or, for that matter, pretty much any value?

Anyway, there you have it. Happy ending.

[Mus]

Thanks Muzicole, interesting. Which branch of Digital Village was that?

Can the machine go down from 256 samples under USB2? Did you manage to test triggering softsynths via USB2?

I believe that even if your expresscard is TI it still has to go through the chipset of the laptop controller so it may make no difference.

How do you tell that you have ICH9?

Does anyone have a view on the quality of the converters?

Cheers

M

[Mus]

Is the USB connection bus-powered? The specs I've seen only mention firewire bus-powering the unit...

Ta

M

[1nput0utput]

No, the interface won't work with USB bus power. You'll have to use the DC adapter if you're connecting it by USB.

[Mus]

No, the interface won't work with USB bus power. You'll have to use the DC adapter if you're connecting it by USB.

OK thanks, thought as much.

[Mus]

I don't suppose you can do something freaky and draw the power from a firewire cable yet be using USB for the audio connection?

[1nput0utput]

I don't suppose you can do something freaky and draw the power from a firewire cable yet be using USB for the audio connection?

No, I don't think so. I think the interface forces you to disconnect the FireWire cable before it allows you to switch to the USB mode.

[Muzicole]

Did the testing at the Clapham branch of DV. Can't really say that they were that helpful (they were Mac people and looked at me the way cats sometimes look at dogs), but at least they left me alone all day to test the unit to my satisfaction, as well as allowing me to unseal and open new items from Edirol for testing.

The unit is currently working quite well at buffer sizes of 256 and 512. I have to really use 512 when working with Sibelius, otherwise it glitches quite a lot, but seems to glitch rarely with Cantabile even at 256. I think it has to do with how much screen activity there is, but I haven't played around much with optimising it at this point.

The latency at 256 in Cantabile is acceptible and I'm using it with Ivory and Goliath and a few other virtual instrument VSTs with no problems.

I'm gearing up to use the system for a live show for the first time this week.

I'll let ya know how it goes.

Muzicole

[RonaldDumsfeld]

I am a rtd. software engineer so when I first bought an Ultralite Hybrid and discovered the USB connection did not work, the input level metering is inaccurate and a number of less serious software faults I was not impressed.

The fact that it took me 6 weeks to get through to MOTU and that so far they have only fixed one bug (USB) and logged a couple more for possible inclusion in a future release didn't exactly inspire confidence either.

So in all fairness I have to report that 3 months down the line I am finally starting to warm towards the little bugger. It really is a fabulously versatile and useful bit of kit.

[Mus]

Firewire 400 on my laptop doesn't work.

Once I had set the USB power saving mode off for USB on my laptop the unit has worked fine.

It wouldn't be much good for playing softsynths live with a MIDI keyboard since there are pops and crackles at 64 samples but that's good enough for me to play my Johnny-One-Note piano parts recording my tracks. It's not good enough to key in drums though, but I wouldn't anyway with EZDrummer etc.

Perhaps there is room for improvement in the drivers?

[WayneM]

Honestly, although a I haven't had extensive experience use lots of other brands of USB2 soundcards I suspect they all would struggle to run at 64 even on the fastest of computers without drop outs.

Firewire soundcards from what I have experience running in an average size project have drop outs when run at or under 128. So real world buffer settings for both USB2 and firewire are 256.

PCI soundcards are probably the best for running low buffer setting stably. But then its not as portable USB or Firewire.

The best way to lower you latency time is to increase your sample rate. But then it uses more CPU. There is always a trade off in pursuing extremely low latency times.

[Mus]

Well, I have heard that the RME Fireface UC is one that can run at 64 samples but I think it's rackmount and not terribly portable, also almost twice as expensive as the Ultralite.

Mind you any interface with a bit of functionality won't be USB bus-powered and so that reduces true portability.

The Ultralite is just about workable for me. Would be better if I could get my laptop's DPC latency down a bit.