attn: MOTU users on Windows! please share your experiences

[Jerrick]

I have the mk3 ultralite and an 8pre. The first ultralite I got ended up being a display model and wasnt working well, so I took it back and Guitarcenter just gave me a new one.

The new one I got has worked ever since then and it does get used quite a bit, and for most recording projects its getting carried along with me to record in other locations.

The one annoyance I had was getting the ultralite and 8pre to play nice together. But after trying out a few different drivers and getting the master-slave stuff figured out, all I have to do is just turn them on, they detect each other and just work. On their own they always worked fine.

They sound pretty decent, nothing special, but not bad. They are good enough where I cant blame them if I cant get a good mix or recorded tone.

Im still on winXP, SP3, and the ultralite is just the firewire one, the hybrid usb wasnt out yet.

[theblue1]

MOTU 828mkII on an XP PC.

You don't say the context, so I hope it's not a bummer when I say that I wouldn't buy MOTU again. That's mostly because the 2 onboard mic pres were simply awful, dull and veiled (and I'm no preamp snob, these are not something you'd record a living room jam with) and then a year or so down the road developed an intermittent but frequent 'ticking' sound that made them completely unusable.


But, obviously, that's a hardware issue.

On the software/Win front, I found that the WDM-KS (kernel streaming) drivers worked best for me on my rig (using Sonar) but that you have to do a ping-loopback test and enter whatever uncompensated misalignment exists in where overdubs are placed on the timeline. (For instance, I have to offset tracks ~365 samples [I forget exactly].) When I tried the AISO drivers, I got that misalignment closer but still not on the money -- and they were glitchy at 128 sample buffer setting, which the WDM-KS can do easy. So. There's that.


And that brings me to the latest driver update -- I can't guarantee this, but it appears to have 'broken' my previously working MIDI system. I'd start playing and about 8 minutes later the MIDI would disappear in the DAW, but not on the MIDI input light on the MOTU box.

I was able to uninstall the new drivers and reinstall the old -- but not directly, which didn't work for reasons not apparent then or now. It got complicated.

By the time I got things working properly again with an earlier version of the MOTU drivers, it was impossible to say where the original 'fault' really lay -- but my sense is that the probability is about 90% that it was the latest driver update at fault. The first time with new drivers with MIDI the problem appears -- could be coincidence but I don't think so. Anyhow, I guarantee you I won't try updating drivers to the latest again -- driver lockdown.

[TheSoundMaster]

I used an 896HD on Windows for a number of years before switching to Mac. I found the drivers to be a bit spotty, although it wasn't a show stopper. Randomly every half an hour or so I'd get a bunch of pops and clicks. All the output meters would go crazy and then it would be fine for a while. It was tolerable for use at home, but I wouldn't have kept it around if I was using it for paid gigs.

The pres are just so so. Not the worst but definitely lack power. The conversion is fine enough for patching in some outboard while mixing but it's not quite up to what you'd want to use for your monitoring d/a.

Sent from my PC36100 using Gearslutz App

[jetam]

I have 24 i/o with PCI 424 card.
I've gotta say that it has an extremely low latency.
On Windows XP64 it is well under 900 microseconds and I can record all 24 tracks at that latency without any problem and I don't have the latest computer.
On the other hand, I had some stability problems, but since I've installed the last version of drivers it works OK.

[CassidyGT]

Check my sig. That's my experience. Ymmv.

[subconscious nz]

Check my sig. That's my experience. Ymmv.

You have a sig??


I use a Motu 828mk3 and Win 7.

Experience has been mostly good, there are no major gripes between my interface and operating system. For some reason, the interface needs to be turned on before the PC in my case, otherwise it doesn't always register.
That could be because I'm using an unregistered version of windows (not cracked, just unregistered). ASIO drivers work fine for me.

I can't really comment on the pre's because they sound OK to me, and I haven't had much chance to A/B good microphones against them (though this is unrelated to your question).

[Tatsu]

I have been using MOTU 828mk3 since I was using Windows XP 32bit and Vista 64bit, and now Windows 7 64bit. My overall impression is positive. Some passed versions of the driver didn't work very well, but at the most time it has been stable. That said, I have to restart MOTU in some cases to recover sound when I use WMP. With Presonus Studio One, I constantly use it at 128 samples per buffer, and have no problem. Some months ago, I had a problem with it and S1, but the Presonus tech-support immediately fixed it. With Cubase 6, it works lesser effectively than with S1, but it is still stable.

Last year, I had experienced occasional disconnection between my PC and MOTU, and after I replaced the firewire cable, the problem disappeared. With both of S1 and Cubase when I changes the sample per buffer while in use, the screen display always crrupts, though the change itself succeeds.

[XodiaK]

thanks to everyone for the responses thus far. keep 'em coming. searching through some other posts and forums, my general assumption seems to be that the PCI card-connected units have better stability than the FW/USB. However, whats strange to me is that when I look at photos of the 424 pci card, it appears to look like a FW port/cable is what is used for these. Am I missing something here?

fwiw, Ive had a Profire 2626 and PT M-Powered 8 since they were released (2008?), and found the workflow quite cumbersome with the restricted I/O count. Hence the HD24XR in my sig. So 4 years later, just trying to get a feeling for other solutions for a decent/good substitute for a 24-trk reel-to-reel in the this day and age. I like mixing OTB, but also like the editing capabilities ITB.

[TimOBrienFlorida]

Ran my 828mkII on a Gateway XP laptop with built-in TI firewire chips for 5 years with ZERO problems. (used a usb2 drive for samples and a Glyph fw400 drive for projects daisy-chained to the 828mkII) I could get it down into single digit latency numbers but generally ran it at 15ms.

[Dramey]

Had one of the first Ultralites. I will never buy another MOTU product. Their PC drivers suck. They have no official support forums, and the unofficial forums are pretty PC hostile.

Every time I used the Ultralite I would have reboot the machine 3 or 4 times to get it to work. Even then it would occasionally bug out and scream digital noise until you could cut it off.

I messed with it for years before I gave up. I tried everything to make it happy including a handful of FireWire cards.

[UltimateOutsider]

I've had a firewire-only Ultralite-mk3 for 2 1/2 years. It works great. 12.95ms input latency at 512 samples buffer size. It has always worked, no problems with the drivers.

My only complaint is it takes like 12 seconds to boot up, and I don't like having to hold the volume button in 3 seconds to turn it off.