Usine, Windows 7, Macbook pro... and Motu Ultralite

[daviche]

Hi everybody,
I recently changed my computer, I have now a MacBook Pro, with Windows 7 (bootcamp of course) , and I have some problems :
some patches hardly load, I have frequent internal errors, some strange noises, and a few times, the input level of my soundcard brutally changed ( + 20 db : you can imagine the result).
I talked about that with a friend of mine, a sound engineer who uses also Usine, and he told me that I had some problems with his new Mac and his Motu 828 Mk2.
So, I suppose my problems come from the association between my Motu Ultralite and my MacBook Pro, and I'd like to know if someone else have the same troubles. I am planning to buy a new soundcard, wich should be the new Ultralite MK3 Hybrid or a RME Fireface UC.

Any advices ?

Thanks.

DC

[nay-seven]

hello,
I think the first thing you can do is to test with an other card
to be sure the problem is really there before buying a new one..?

RME is of course a good choice , but don't have any advice on his association with macbook pro

[Ken29]

Hi,

I've recently changed my Laptop.

Before under windows XP and my Motu 828 MKII I had no trouble and I used 192 samples buffer.

Now, with my new laptop and Win 7, I have many drop out. The Motu's drivers a really known for being crappy and buggy. I've asked some more information to the motu's technical support and I'm waiting for its answer.

I tried Asio4all, it seems to work but I don't know how reliable is this driver. Usine is the only soft I have problem with, Reaper and Max works without drop out.

RME is certainly better than Motu but it is twice the price.

Kenan

[Thomas Helzle]

One thing that helped me with my Presonus Firebox was installing the legacy Firewire driver instead of the new one that win 7 uses by default. Before I had dropouts and was loosing the driver completely every now and then, now it is perfectly stable for a long time.
I found a lot of "optimize your machine for audio" pages from different vendors and they all go through certain stuff that seems to be basically the same for most devices, so a google search may help.
I run the Firebox with a 2008 MacPro (Win 7 Pro 64) and a 2007 MacBookPro (Vista Pro 64) and both run pretty smooth after I followed some of those advices.

The funny thing is, that officially, Firewire isn't supported by Apple under Bootcamp...
(That was the very helpful answer I got from Presonus at least...)

Well, it works just fine now for me, but my Macs are much older, not sure if my solution will work for you...

I hope you can figure it out!

Cheers,

Thomas

[woodslanding]

I had to disable my Nvidia display driver to get any clean audio at all out of my new computer. Check out DCP latency checker, and Latency Monitor.... they will help track this stuff down. I got DCP latency down from 1300 microsecs to 49 by giving up on my video driver and going with a generic windows driverb. No AERO, but whatever.... it's worth it for a 2000% drop in latency!

I also have to go in and turn off my smartcard driver. So far it's looking like I have to do it every time I start the computer[!?]

If ASIO4all works for you, use it! My zoom recorder works well as an interface under ASIO4all, but is basically non-functional using its own drivers.

-e

[oli_lab]

disabling the internal sound card is a good thing too

[daviche]

Thank you everybody.
I decided to order a Fireface UC, wich has been very much recommanded to me.
I'll tell you if my problems have been solved.

DC

[ringmodulator]

hi everybody,
i'm a new user of usine and i'm going to buy a laptop+audio card, and after some reseaches, i still need some advices , so let's go for the explanations :
i used to be a big user of pc until that day, but i think i could now switch on mac. my goal is to have the better configuration for doing a live work, not production that i can still do on my pc tower station on nuendo.
i've choose for the moment a motu 4 pre hybrid card ( fw and usb 2, 4 mics in to record and treat one pair for the treatment of a piano, and one pair for some other acoustic instruments like percussions.. ),
i've seen on reconditionned apple product what seems to be a good affair : a MacBook Pro Intel i7 bicœur à 2,8 GHz , with fw800, usb 2 and thunderbolt, which seems to be a good thing maybe for the future, the cache memory is 3 Mo l3, 4Go ram (can upgrade to 8 ), hd of 750 serial ata 5400/rpm, screen of 13.3'... and mac OS X
so my questions are :(for some of yours who are using mac/bootcamp,) :
are usine/ windows 7 or XP / bootcamp working well, together ? with mac OS X ?
is 3 MO cache memory enough,? is it upgradable ?
is 5400/rpm enough ? ( maybe an externe hd in fw or usb2 or even thunderbolt is better, for the os or the audio files ?)
does windows XP or 7 manage more than 2 Go ram on bootcamp ?
is ( i know, it's relative, but ..) 13.3' enough confortable to work on usine ( i mean in a live situation, before to get a remote control later ) ?
do you think a reconditionned stuff by apple is trustfull ?
any other informations i missed ?
a lot of questions because i got some years of delay in informatic matter, and i'm going to kill my wallet with that stuff, so if anydody can help me with his own experience, i would be be very grateful, and ,in anyway, good hollidays ( of patching, of course ) to all of you.