best system to run MOTU ULTRALITE MKIII on windows xp

[greitzlechner]

hi,

because of several problems i ran into, running the MK3 on windows xp with usb 2.0, i decided to buy new hardware ( i need to buy new hardware anyways). my main musicprogramm is Ableton Live and i am going to buy Cubase 5 in the future.

1. a lot of ppl in this forum saying, that the MK3 is not working really with usb 2.0. better solution here is Firewire. my first question is.. which Firewire-Card should i buy and wich Chipset.

2. any suggestion on motherboards/cpu (quadcore) and ram?

3. which graficcard should i use. right now i have a real good nvidia card. but from what i heard, sometimes its better to use the onboard grafic cards. dont know why really. is this right?

4. is win xp still the best os on windows for audio. i heard that vista and windows 7 are still causing problems.

if somebody has good hardware configuration that works fine with the MK3, please post it here... that would help me a lot, thanks

[RonaldDumsfeld]

I'm not an expert by any means but I'll do my best mate.

1) The USB 2.0 issue was fixed with the latest driver release. 3.7.39083. If you have evidence to the contrary please let us know.

The TI firewire chipset issue has been extensively covered in this forum already. Rather than repeat the same information and potentially cause confusion please do a search and bump the relevant thread if necessary. That way it all stays in one place and the previous good work of others is preserved.

2)Your MOTU interface will work perfectly well with any device currently on the market except perhaps with one of the very very cheapest netbooks with single core Intel Atom chips.

My current rig is an ASUS P6T Deluxe Vn2 - BIOS 0302, Intel i7-920 - D0 stepping & 6Gb Corsair CM3X2G1600C8. Works perfectly apart from a number of niggles with the MOTU drivers but even if you pay 3x as much for your device you are still liable to expect less than perfect drivers. It's just like that.

The above is massive overkill for a DAW and with the i7 consuming 140W of power (not even including the graphics card) it needs fans running constantly. So I'm in the process of building an (almost) silent rack mount based around an Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H, Intel i3-530 and OCZ platinum low voltage OCZ3P1333LV4GK and a passively cooled GPU I have not identified yet. This new chip consumes less than 65W and will still run over 140 channels if needed.

I did consider something even smaller and quieter based on a mini ITX board and an Intel Atom N3330/NVidia Geforce 9400M (totally silent even the power supply) but decided it was a bit too cutting edge for my current skill level. YMMV.

3) Any current graphics card will do for a DAW. You should choose on the basis of what else you intend to do with the PC (games?) and how much noise you are willing to tolerate. I suspect the reason people have suggested using on board graphics with a DAW is because they do not usually need a fan for cooling and are fast enough for the job in hand.

4) XP is only regarded as the best windows OS for audio because it has been around longest, is the most stable and is consequently the most extensively tested. If you get a high end multi purpose PC I's go for windows 7 64 bit but maybe stick with XP pro on a lean build. I have Vista 64 bit atm and, aforementioned MOTU driver issues (which are not the fault of the OS) aside it works. You need to read a few guides on how to stop it running all sorts of extraneous •••• in the background if you have a slow CPU but it's fine otherwise.

[TheRealRoach]

*snip*
3. which graficcard should i use. right now i have a real good nvidia card. but from what i heard, sometimes its better to use the onboard grafic cards. dont know why really. is this right?

I use an nvidia card and after much trouble in the past I discovered that the card's driver version is of great importance. In the event that you suspect a videocard-related audio problem (i.e. pops, squeals, stutters in the audio, when windows are minimized, moved, selected, etc) the first thing you should do is try newer and older drivers. After about a dozen different driver tests I found one particular version that worked (and it wasn't the newest).

4. is win xp still the best os on windows for audio. i heard that vista and windows 7 are still causing problems.

I'm using WinXP Pro SP3 and think its great. Haven't even tried Win7 yet, and had dabbled with Vista last year but found it difficult to configure.

[Ultrabra]

Hi greitzlechner

Did you get your new system sorted now? Can you post some feedback, as I am now in exact same position you were in previously, so anything useful you could advise would be appreciated.

[greitzlechner]

sorry for getting back so late. but after installing the new driver from the motu side i still got problems. crackling noises and crashes 10 times the day.. ableton freezed. the only thing i could do was switching off my the motu and kill the ableton process. long time i thought the problem could be related to ableton (the latest version 8.13 has a lot of problems) or i thought that the problem could be related to my harddrives because i used a lot of audiotracks (up to 30 somtimes) with 24bit. but lately i discovered that ableton is still freezing (with no audio tracks, only MIDI with an external synthesizer). the only thing it seems i can do now is buying a firewire interface, someone from the ableton forum was so nice to give me an advice wich chipset i should use:

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=140781" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

(texas instruments) TI XIO2213

i hope it is going to work after the installation. with 3 crashes/freezes the day i think i can live with.. but not every hour

thanks, steve

[greitzlechner]

right now i got my new firewire card and installed it on my machine. i did the right jumper settings so the firewire card gets its power from the power supply. after starting the computer, no audio is working and when i start CueMix this message appears:

The device is on a bus that cannot support this transfer rate.

i searched this forum and found a post that says:

Are you running XP SP2? If so, there is a known issue with FireWire speed and SP2. There's a full article about this, and how to resolve it in this MS Knowledgebase Base article http://support.microsoft.com/kb/885222" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

i am running xp SP3 and was not able to install the fix.

do you have any suggestions?

thanks for your time, steve

[greitzlechner]

i installed the "AVT 1394 Bus Driver Package v1.0"

which you can download here:

http://www.alliedvisiontec.com/de/produ ... ckage.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

installed it like described in this thread:

http://www.motunation.com/forum/viewtop ... rs#p349802" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


my soundcard is working... i am testing now.. will be back with the results.