Thanks! & Ricoh Firewire Chip Set Compatibility???

[DrXparaMental]

OK, you have helped me a TON. Last question to determine if keeping the Traveler is the thing for me to do.

Is the Ricoh Firewire Chip Set perfectly compatible with respect to my 6pin (MOTU)to 4pin (Dell/Inspiron/Ricoh Chip Set)? When I think about it, I could care less about Bus Power. I really don't need the excess heat via energy transfer in my laptop. I actually prefer AC/DC as it separates the two. For me, that seems more so ideal than Bus Power with respect to maximum audio quality/computer efficiency anyhow.

What my HUGE concern is at this point is whether there is any form of incompatibility in application of 6pin (MOTU)to 4pin (Dell/Inspiron/Ricoh Chip Set).

I sure hope not. The most popular computer manufacturer on the planet (DELL) is using Ricoh in their laptops for the most part.

Bottom Line: Is this potentially SCARY incompatibility of NEC chip sets specifically relevant to Bus Power only? Or are there other operative concerns as well?

Thanks!
Jeff

[calaveras]

I actually was going to buy a Dell at Bestbuy. The whole Ricoh chip thing scared me off though. I wasnt able to find any info about teh Ricoh chip anywhere on the web. Nothing positive or negative. No horror stories about it not working. No success stories either! Even at teh Ricoh website you have to really dig to find any internal info about them. One thing that scares me is that Ricoh makes chips that handle firewire in addition to several other functions like smart card reader USB etc.
Most folks in the desktop world have reported difficulties getting stable clean audio out of USB+firewire PCI cards that are based on a single chip. So I would infer that it is a bad idea to use a ricoh chip IF it is the multi-functioning kind.
I dont know for sure, and honsetly it seems that these Ricoh chips are fairly new. Please keep us upadted if it works... or doesnt!
Another issue that I only became aware of a short while ago. Make sure 1394 is not enabled as a network interface under network connections. This happened on a friends PC and it took me a while to suss. It seems that windows will periodically send a blip down the firewire if it is enabled.

[Guitarmuzic]

I am using an Ultralite with a Dell Inspiron E1505 that uses the Ricoh chipset on board 4-pin firewire. It is an interesting and confusing thing... This combination is working fine so far. I have recorded a few projects with several Audio and MIDI tracks and have not experienced any problems. That is not to say it will always work perfectly, but so far it is!!! (I hope it keeps it up) Before I bought an Ultralite, I used an Alesis Multimix Firewire mixer and an M-audio Firewire 410. I read everywhere that Texas Instruments Chipsets were the best to use for Firewire Audio, so I bought a SIIG 2 port Firewire Expresscard with a TI chipset. This worked fine with both the Alesis Mixer and the M-audio 410, however, I have not yet been able to get this Expresscard to work with the Ultralite. I struggled for a week trying to just get the drivers loaded with the firewire connection through this expresscard since it has the TI chipset. Every time it would completely lock up the computer. Then I decided to just try the on board firewire port with the Ricoh chipset and it has worked flawlessly.... I'm guessing there must be another conflict with the expresscard and the MOTU drivers, but I haven't solved the problem yet. Hopefully the Ricoh firewire port will continue to work and I will not need to use the expresscard. From everything I've read though, TI chipsets are the best to use with firewire audio, especially MOTU.

[calaveras]

yeah MOTU explicitly states that we should use Agere/Lucent or TI chips for firewire. They haven't updated that info in years though, so who knows which brabds are currently the best. Mys stuff is working great on my old Gigabyte K8ns Ultra 939 Nforce3/Opteron 165 based DAW. It has a TI firewire chip like most Gigabyte boards. But in my research I noticed on the TI website that they make DOZENS of firewire chips. I find it hard to swallow that ALL of their firewire chips are equally as good. I know from experience in the computer world that not all ATI video cards are good, not all Nvidia chipsets are good, heck a lot of Intel stuff is downright shoddy! MAybe there should be a sticky for which 1394 chipsets are golden and which are pos?!

[DrXparaMental]

yeah MOTU explicitly states that we should use Agere/Lucent or TI chips for firewire. They haven't updated that info in years though, so who knows which brabds are currently the best. Mys stuff is working great on my old Gigabyte K8ns Ultra 939 Nforce3/Opteron 165 based DAW. It has a TI firewire chip like most Gigabyte boards. But in my research I noticed on the TI website that they make DOZENS of firewire chips. I find it hard to swallow that ALL of their firewire chips are equally as good. I know from experience in the computer world that not all ATI video cards are good, not all Nvidia chipsets are good, heck a lot of Intel stuff is downright shoddy! MAybe there should be a sticky for which 1394 chipsets are golden and which are pos?!

This is my 2 cents worth on the whole nine. First of all I appreciate you bringing up the TI chipset express card adapter. That was a logical next step for me that I will now side step for the time being. It's tough to feel secure about a piece of equipment that costs 900.00, that purports instability in the face of QUALITY host commonalities. The whole MAC thing is...well, I ain't going THERE. The Dell Computer company is not going to place a substandard chipset in their computers any more so than they would use other inferior components. It's not their style and it's certainly not what's given them one of the most solid reputations in the computer world today.
The problem here is with either (a) MOTU software compatibility, or (b) hardware inconsistency & degradation, not other specific quality manufacturer's chipsets. I believe your TI chips in the express card adapter you brought up indicates this perfectly. Facing facts, this type of elite and anything but common audio application is a mere grain of sand on the digital beach of life so to speak. There are probably a good deal of other control factors that come into play with respect to the sparsely reported chipset incompatibility issue. Processors/memory/hard drive speed/software/blah blah blah.
The real issue is the fact that these companies like MOTU & E-MU (the latter I would have went with in a heart beat had the 1616m been express card ready. duh!) are PAINFULLY behind with respect to industry standard soft & hardware development. Whether it's Vista compatible drivers or diverse chipset friendly MOTU drivers, the purchased "grains of sand" just don't add up to the fiscal research funds needed for these companies to "keep up".
For now, I'll go with the MOTU Traveler. It SEEMS to be the best choice. Although I will say that MOTU's lack of CURRENT online written technical support and a solid "step up to the plate" style of addressing these issues, does leave me a bit insecure.
It may help to ease some future specialty products "grains of sand" researchers to know that the sales team at Sweetwater has sold hundreds of these units to people with MANY various different types of commercial grade, high quality laptops. There have been practically NO real compatibility problems provided the laptops themselves are of a somewhat high standard. I would imagine that there is a great deal of work going on behind closed doors these days with respect to Express Card technology. If these various high quality elite specialist manufactures had the X card trick down, it would make life MUCH easier and annihilate Firewire with respect to connection speed and non interrupted data transfer. Good luck to us all for the time being.

[RRabbi]

I have tried two different Firewire ExpressCards with my Dell Inspiron 9400. Both the Belkin Firewire 400 and 800 cards (TI chipset), and both lock up my computer as soon as I turn on the 828 MkII.

I plan on calling Motu today, to see if they are aware of any issues...

That said, the only issue that i've noticed with my Ricoh firewire chipset in my Dell, is that I can only get down to 5.8 ms latency (256 buffer) without hearing those high pitched squeals and audio stoppage from the Motu...

I used to be able to get 2.9 ms latency with my Toshiba laptop that had a TI chipset on board.

As far as tech support for the issue, both Belkin and Dell were useless... Last hope is to contact MOTU.

Dave

[DrXparaMental]

I have tried two different Firewire ExpressCards with my Dell Inspiron 9400. Both the Belkin Firewire 400 and 800 cards (TI chipset), and both lock up my computer as soon as I turn on the 828 MkII.

I plan on calling Motu today, to see if they are aware of any issues...

That said, the only issue that i've noticed with my Ricoh firewire chipset in my Dell, is that I can only get down to 5.8 ms latency (256 buffer) without hearing those high pitched squeals and audio stoppage from the Motu...

I used to be able to get 2.9 ms latency with my Toshiba laptop that had a TI chipset on board.

As far as tech support for the issue, both Belkin and Dell were useless... Last hope is to contact MOTU.

Dave

Please let us know the results of your queries Dave.

Thanks!
Jeff

[calaveras]

My Lenovo laptop has a Ricoh firewire chip also. I had to use a 3rd party system profiler, then look up the vendor and device id online to confirm that. I notice that it is using the default MS 1394 driver. I have to wonder out loud if it is possible to get better perfromance with an OEM driver?
Well I am supposed to be testing my new laptop with my 828 today, what am I doing online!

[Guitarmuzic]

Keep us posted if you find out any way to use a different driver for the Ricoh chipset firewire onboard. I'd also like to hear if MOTU has a response to the expresscard lockup issues. As of now I can only use the Ricoh onboard firewire with my Dell Inspiron because the Expresscard locks up the computer as soon as I connect the ultralite.

[RRabbi]

Keep us posted if you find out any way to use a different driver for the Ricoh chipset firewire onboard. I'd also like to hear if MOTU has a response to the expresscard lockup issues. As of now I can only use the Ricoh onboard firewire with my Dell Inspiron because the Expresscard locks up the computer as soon as I connect the ultralite.

MOTU said that they haven't heard of any issues with computers locking up when MOTU firewire products are hooked up to ExpressCards and powered on. What we did kindof figure out tho, is that the issue is not software, driver, or OS related. We think. Because, when I plug in the MOTU to the ExpressCard, and try to boot up the laptop with the MOTU powered on, it will not boot.

Next thing I might try is disabling certain hardware features on the BIOS (WLAN, USB, Bluetooth, etc...) to see if that fixes the problem. Thing is, I'd hate to have to edit BIOS settings each and every time I want to boot up to my XP installation tweaked for recording (dual boot).. I especially hope that the issue isn't the USB bus causing a conflict, and that i'd have to disable THAT in order for the ExpressCard to work with MOTU... Kinda need a mouse... Unless I get a bluetooth mouse (assuming bluetooth doesn't cause the conflict)

Dave

[calaveras]

hmmmm. Again I wonder if this might not be related to certain devices doing double duty to function for multiple ports. EG; same chip running the firewire and the express card.
What is lame is that most lapotop makers websites dont give much detail on the chips which they use for their ports.
As opposed to motherboard makers which often do.

[Guitarmuzic]

When I boot up or shut down my Dell Inspiron E1505 with the SIIG firewire expresscard in the slot, it locks things up.. won't power down, won't boot up. I have used the firewire expresscard with two other firewire interfaces without any problems though, I just plug in the card after I boot up and unplug it before I power down. However, with the MOTU ultralite, the computer locks up each time I plug the ultralite into the expresscard. It has to be something with the MOTU becuase the expresscard worked fine with an Alesis Multimix firewire mixer and also an M-audio Firewire 410.

[calaveras]

yeeeah, strange thing, not exactly related, but in the realm of.
When I had a MOTU MIDI express parallel (I think thats the name, the one with 4x6 MIDI and smpte stuff) along with my MOTU 828MKII, about every 3rd time I powered up my system, it would post and get to a desktop, but if I clicked on anything it would BSOD. Sold that sucker on Ebay, kept the 828MKII. But yeah, MOTU swore up and down it wasnt them or their drivers.

[DrXparaMental]

yeeeah, strange thing, not exactly related, but in the realm of.
When I had a MOTU MIDI express parallel (I think thats the name, the one with 4x6 MIDI and smpte stuff) along with my MOTU 828MKII, about every 3rd time I powered up my system, it would post and get to a desktop, but if I clicked on anything it would BSOD. Sold that sucker on Ebay, kept the 828MKII. But yeah, MOTU swore up and down it wasnt them or their drivers.

MOTU seem to have a habit of denying the obvious. They make a very expensive high end unit that will work to their professed specs on about 10% of the commercially available high quality laptops. I took mine back. I specifically wanted an efficient & FRIENDLY high quality outboard sound card that was geared to live performance. Plain and simple, a practical audio interface device and not a software jigsaw puzzle. Hopefully in another 5 years or so they will be caught up with where the PC industry is currently. I will state though, that it's very unfair to claim that MOTU is the only audio interface manufacturing company guilty of ongoing substandard software research & development. The truth is, MOST of the high quality interface manufactures currently are and I personally find this VERY FRUSTRATING. If this were not the case, all these so called "PC COMPATIBLE" audio devices would currently be express card ready. I can empathize with the current situation to a certain degree. Not being a commodity based technology has it's all too real limitations without someone "inside" whose pockets resemble the Grand Canyon. Yet who among us can honestly deny these specialty companies basic consumer responsibilities?

Peace/Out,
Jeff

[calaveras]

ok interim report
my Lenovo will play back as many channels as I like thru the Ricoh firewire chip to teh 828MKII, even at 24/96.
Now playback while record is a different story entierly. Not even possible with 2 channels in and 2 channels playing at 44.1/24. But to be fair I only have 512mb of ram. I also am using a 5400rpm external drive which of course will soon be upgraded! I might end up getting one of those external ide-usb boxes. I have a whole shoebox full of old drives ranging from 4gb-120gb.