Supacon
Wow... I just bought a used MOTU Ultralite on E-Bay for what I thought was a pretty good deal. After getting sound out of the thing which took a little messing around under Vista, I am AMAZED!
This thing sounds sweet... I can actually run all the settings cranked up in Virtual DJ with the lowest latency, and it sounds perfect! I still haven't tried it on my rig at the club, but on my box at home, it's perfect.
The only thing that wasn't perfect was that when I had the scratch sound using the Enhanced Algorhythm, it causes some little skips in the sound when doing heavy scratching. After I set that to Simple Mode, I haven't heard a glitch since... I'm using 64 sample latency! I'm so thrilled. I had my doubts that this would help, but I must say that I don't think I'm going back to my M-Audio crap, clicking and popping all the time, dropping the sound four times a night :P (The conectiv specifically, but the Audiophile Firewire didn't sound very good, and the input was right fuxored on it, it just sounded like complete garbage, totally unlistenable, and it didn't work with timecode at all.
So... if anyone is looking for a soundcard and can spend some money on one, the MOTU ultralite gets my recommendations. I'll post an update after I DJ a night at the Club with the thing... hopefully it behaves just as good as it does here at home. (I have a Quad Core Q6600 at home, so hopefully it's not simply on account of the extra cores that things are so smooth).
This thing sounds sweet... I can actually run all the settings cranked up in Virtual DJ with the lowest latency, and it sounds perfect! I still haven't tried it on my rig at the club, but on my box at home, it's perfect.
The only thing that wasn't perfect was that when I had the scratch sound using the Enhanced Algorhythm, it causes some little skips in the sound when doing heavy scratching. After I set that to Simple Mode, I haven't heard a glitch since... I'm using 64 sample latency! I'm so thrilled. I had my doubts that this would help, but I must say that I don't think I'm going back to my M-Audio crap, clicking and popping all the time, dropping the sound four times a night :P (The conectiv specifically, but the Audiophile Firewire didn't sound very good, and the input was right fuxored on it, it just sounded like complete garbage, totally unlistenable, and it didn't work with timecode at all.
So... if anyone is looking for a soundcard and can spend some money on one, the MOTU ultralite gets my recommendations. I'll post an update after I DJ a night at the Club with the thing... hopefully it behaves just as good as it does here at home. (I have a Quad Core Q6600 at home, so hopefully it's not simply on account of the extra cores that things are so smooth).
Mensajes Thu 25 Oct 07 @ 3:39 am
asymptote
Will be interesting to hear how it sounds when you play out!
Mensajes Thu 25 Oct 07 @ 10:53 am
Supacon
I just updated the firmware from 1.00 to 1.1.5. I've heard a lot of bad things about upgrading the firmware on these, but it more or less worked fine for me... the only problem I now have is that when I use the highest quality sound settings, having the advanced scratching sound makes all the audio completely distorted. It might just require a higher latency or something... but considering how little I scratch, I can live with using the regular algorithm, which sounds fine. I'm using a 128 sample buffer now, works fine. If I used 64, and tried to open another audio application, things would get pretty clicky and stuff...
Mensajes Thu 25 Oct 07 @ 10:10 pm
rockinrossco
well remember that your home setup and your gig rig at the club will have differant settings as these are differant computers. so just cause it sounds good at home may not sound good at work. so i would suggest go in a few hours earily and work it out but now the setting that do work so if you dont get it perfect before the start of the shift you have something to go with, then make it absolutly perfect.
Mensajes Fri 26 Oct 07 @ 2:30 am
Supacon
Unfortunately, the conclusion is that it didn't help the cracking problems I was having. I got things working okay, but it doesn't ultimately improve my crackling, pops and clicks beyond what I had with the other sound cards. I can use higher quality settings, and lower latency, but I still get cracking when playing videos and doing manipulations and stuff. Actually, I get cracking most of the time when just playing audio...
It's subtle enough that you couldn't hear it on the dance floor, mostly, but listening in my reference earphones, you can hear a lot of little noises and clicks and distortions that aren't supposed to be there. Very frustrating indeed.
I'm really not sure what to try at this point. I suspect that it could be a central hardware component, like something to do with the motherboard chipset, or the RAID controller (just an Intel ICH8R). Maybe a driver/chipset update would help? I dunno... all I do know is that this is mega frustrating.
It's subtle enough that you couldn't hear it on the dance floor, mostly, but listening in my reference earphones, you can hear a lot of little noises and clicks and distortions that aren't supposed to be there. Very frustrating indeed.
I'm really not sure what to try at this point. I suspect that it could be a central hardware component, like something to do with the motherboard chipset, or the RAID controller (just an Intel ICH8R). Maybe a driver/chipset update would help? I dunno... all I do know is that this is mega frustrating.
Mensajes Sat 27 Oct 07 @ 11:45 am
GaryBr
Hi Supacon,
Have you tried running on a LOW power setting? I found HI POWER and HI PERFORMANCE settings caused all sorts of nasty little sounds.
Gary
Have you tried running on a LOW power setting? I found HI POWER and HI PERFORMANCE settings caused all sorts of nasty little sounds.
Gary
Mensajes Sat 27 Oct 07 @ 5:55 pm