Third Party 1394 bus controller drivers for XP and Vista

[TheRealRoach]

I'll be guardedly hopeful. I will install it at some point today on my XP pro X2 system.

I hope this works,...

Me too man. Although my SP1 drivers seem to be doing the trick on my XP SP3 system, I still wouldn't say things are as flawless as on my trust old P4 2.8 XP SP1 system.

I'll try to get testing on my main system today but I'm having video card driver issues that are more pressing. It never does end does it?

On a side-note: I was wrestling with the ubCORE driver - first mentioned in this thread - to get them to recognize the MOTU. I got halfway there through manually editing registry entries and driver instructions, and it got it to recognize the MOTU but it failed to install all of the correct drivers and I could never get it to work. The pain in the ass is the it would probably only take a half hour of programming on their end to change a few things around so that it would recognize it. They seem to have built in a simple limitation, but luckily these AVT ones don't appear to have it.

[nikbee]

so the avts also work much better for me, but as long as i dont turn on my second ultralite.. after a few seconds computer completely freezes.. on both systems, xp and vista..

???

[Mark S]

This is a test in XP Pro with X2 dual operton 175 MSI Neo II Platinum.

Uninstalled Motu drivers to precious restore point.

Installed avt drivers per instructions.
Installed Motu drivers per instructions (3.6.7.4) without the steps that refer to Vista.

I have not run an exhaustive test but post install has avt drivers seeing both MOTU units.

Changing bitrate, sync is responsive playing with some projects not in Sonar7.x to see how it responds. Could not get asio working previously with this driver so we'll see,..

[Mark S]

spent a few hours trying to cable up a test. Problem for me is I have the 896 hd and an 8pre so the test as defined is a little more complicated than explained. The 8pre's have no outputs so I have to figure a way to split the outs from the 896 to feed both he next input and the 8pre. I may have to enlist the aid of a 16 channel analogue mixer if I can figure out where to get extra the cables.

Still, I set up all channels for 16 track recording of mostly silence and had no trouble. Getting one with legitimate sound will take a bit of effort. There were a few buzzes out of Sonar, mostly when I was pushing buttons in the program. A buffer setting should take care of that.

So far so good

[pagehite]

No joy with AVT drivers on XP Home SP3. System locked on installation of driver for second 828mk3 and crashed with a BSOD when rebooted with 828mk3's still turned on. Went back and followed process for restoring SP1 FW drivers and at least all 3 828mk3's will sync now. Will wait to see if any other driver solutions appear on the horizon.

Regards,

Page Hite

[Mark S]

first time only I had bsod on reboot with units turned on. Turned them off and rebooted with no trouble (hey and that's way less than anything so far). Absolutely no trouble since. And the sp1 drivers causes other weird boot/shutdown issues for me. (Must turn units off AFTER shut down)
six of one,...

Latency is the same of earlier attempts.

Mine sync, and the drivers accommodate multiple processors.

others mileage may vary?

[Mark S]

Posted the drivers on the Sonar Forum here:

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=1679286

I've had forty hits in two days and one reply, but it's a decent one. Jim Roseberry is noted with his DAW building skills and his use of MOTU, and his honesty of his difficulties with MOTU support. And most importantly, his generosity helping.

This driver still looks good here. More data is better. Post this about!

[TheRealRoach]

Very good so far.

I still have yet to try the AVT's because I was dealing with some video card nonsense yesterday and ended up re-installing my system. I'm going to be updating my FIX as well.

[TheRealRoach]

Thought I'd give this one a bump. Any of you guys had any more luck - or problems - with the AVT drivers?

[Mark S]

will hopefully be installing on my mobile rig this weekend. Pentium M system. I'll report back. Everything still working nicely on the X2 Operton system. Really, like a dream come true after all the rigmarole.

[timocc]

success with the AVT drivers! ..... (well maybe not... read whole reply! )

problem was this:

i run a motu 8pre with both, my pc (which has Texas Instruments firewire chip), and with my laptop (whch has via firewire chipset)

when i got the motu i tested the hell out of it, to ensure it will work with my laptop. and it worked.
it worked flawless for over 1 year. i got latencys around 5ms, so i could use amp-simulations while recording drums e.g. recorded up to 16 tracks simultaniously. and did overdubs with projects up to 30 tracks or so.

until.... well until motu announced new firmwire (1.03) and in ordr to get that, you had to update your drivers. i did and was now running driver version 3.6.8.1359.
everything went fine, except .... a noticed some crakles and the loss auf audio playback when watching youtube videos... but when working with my DAW (cubase SX3) no dropouts ever occured.

then came the day that i had to use my mobile setup again for a multitracksession, so i tried it out in advance. then realized, the old motu drivers on my laptop won't correspond with the new firmware.
so i installed the vicious 3.6.8.1400 which gave me more problems.... from now on i had more accidents of sudden clicks, cracks, pops and then high squeals than before the new driver ainstallation.

then i tried everything from setting up windows from scratch, to SP1 driver rollback, to older versions of the motu drivers (3.6.7.0 and 3.6.7.4 and 3.6.8.1394)

the problems were always there, PLUS that i now had latency issues. the software reported around 5ms of latency but it was definitely more than 40ms. you could hear it.

then i relized that on my pc i had this 3.6.8.1359 version installesd, which was the first version that came with the firmware update. i searched for it and found it still on the motu server. jsut copy the link to the new driver and change the "...1400" to ..."1359" to download it. this driver gave me back the correct latency. ...but still all of the sudden it squeals like hell.

my next step was to realize; ok... motu says their devices only work with texas instruments chips.... although i had mine working perfectly without it, it's time to realize that with new firmwire, and new driver this will no lnger be possilbe, so i should check for a pcmcia-firewire card.

i got it today, and...ahm.... that IS no pcmcia slot, but a expresscardslot... FXXX!!!! so i went back to this forum and saw THIS very thread...

i followed the instructions step by step and installed the new firewire drivers, then did that 1000cables test... for about 20 minutes long.

what can i say.....? it worked! everything was fine. no cracks no squeals no dropouts, nothing.

well the only thing is... while writing this reply, sitting at my pc, while my laptop still is connected to the motu, suddenly.... it squeals again...

my conclusion is now to return that pmcia card, get a expresscard, and try again.

[TheRealRoach]

Man that totally sucks. Trust me I've been through the whole process of re-installing a system following the word for word instructions that lead to success before and had things mess up.

One thing I would check is to run DPC latency checker while you are running the "1,000 cable test" (hah). What is almost a sure thing is that the squeals, crackles, dropouts, pops, loss of sync, etc is due to a lack of adequate PCI bus bandwidth. What has become apparent is that even with a perfectly functioning system (i.e. one that is free of all the above-mentioned playback symptoms) one can still force a perfect system to dropout/pop/squeal/etc if you run the system at near peak load.

Anyway, bottom line is that I think you're pretty much there, but there may be something else on your laptop that is interfering and momentarily tapping the PCI-bus, which is why your MOTU's worked for 20 minutes. Check the obvious first: kill antivirus, any background apps that automatically check for updates, kill WIFI, reduce acceleration on your video cards and disable basically everything that isn't vital for audio work. Then try the 1,000 cable test with DPC latency checker running.

If there is still no luck then I would suggest a fresh install of the whole OS and software... *groan*. The installation of the DAW in its entirety is pretty much a performance unto itself! One mistake in the hours it takes to install everything will tarnish system stability indefinitely. That's been my experience anyway.

Computers suck.

[Mark S]

Update report on installation of avt drivers on my Pentium M 2gig laptop:

XP home
1 gig ram
Sonar4 (for now)
896hd
8pre

Installation worked well units synced immediately.

Attempted to install 3.6.7.4 driver and all is good when the 896 is on but the 8pre causes Sonar crash when it is turned on IN ASIO only. In fact, the asio drivers do not appear to install. Turning off 8pre and rebooting and changing driver mode in sonar, then reboot with 8pre turned on allow functioning.

This is the same thing that happens on my X2 system, so I thought it might be an issue with the driver package (or the firmware of the 8pre with the older driver) so I installed the 3.6.8.1359 drivers that came with the 8pre. Same thing again however the asio drivers are there when I work with the 896hd.

On two systems I cannot get asio to work with daisy chained motu units. BTW, this also happened on the X2 system when I did the rollback to spi drivers, before the AVT drivers were installed. So, I don't think it's the AVT driver, but something is funny with the install of the asio driver, or my install.

I'll go back the the technote I was working on with MOTU to double check there proceedures.

Net result, in WDM getting less than 5ms latency on both systems, and though I'd like the asio to work, for now I'm okay.

Now for that 16 channel test

[TheRealRoach]

Cool I'm glad they're working so well. I'm still hesitant to switch over to AVT as my system is running great right now, although if there are performance benefits then I'll give it a serious shot when I get the time. Can't really afford the down-time right now though if things go tits-up.

I'm actually surprised that no other audio companies have taken the initiative to re-write third-party FW bus controller drivers, especially RME since they were one of the first to identify why so many Firewire devices were going haywire when XP SP2 came out.

The sad reality is that things will likely only get worse for windows users. Firewire is a MAC, USB is Microsoft. USB 3.0 is slated to be released in the near future. Within the next four years I predict a total drop of support for firewire from the manufacturers. That's gonna leave all us FW users stuck using older operating systems and relying on unofficial trading of legacy drivers and continuing this socialist type support that we have going on here. hah.

[Iceblade]

Unfortunately, things are just as bad with AVT, if not worse. I'm using a MOTU Traveler (first generation, not MkIII) via FW into a WinXP SP3 PC. This sucks.

Thanks,
Jeff