I want to get lower latency, but when I reduce my buffer size to about 128, I get crackling and audio glitching. I have to convert my midi tracks into audio to avoid CPU spike. I’d like to optimize my latency in other ways as well.
You re giving zero detail about what system and software you re working on so don t expect much detailed advice. Best thing you can probably do is a web search for latency, buffers, audio stutters/glitches and their possible causes to better understand the matter. These issues don t have a magic fix button.
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A bit of a random question: Do you guys turn off your audio interfaces when not using them or do you leave them on? Since the UltraLite has a screen I suppose it might degrade and go blank over time so maybe it’s a bad idea to leave it on?
I don’t have a UltraLite but I do have a UAD Apollo 8, and that device gets quite hot, so I turn it off every time I’m done using it.
Same goes for my interface in my mobile setup (iConnectivity Audio 4+).
My old 828mk2 has a markedly faded display compared to my newer UL mk3.
Electronics wear out. If not needed i d keep them off.
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I’ve not got the ultralite, but the 828es. It has a front panel power switch so I figured they intend for you to power on\off reasonably often.
I keep my UL MK4 on as I use it daily.
Turn it off if I know I won’t be in the studio for a couple days or longer.
It doesn’t get hot even though it is running full 18 in / 20 out, as it has both ADAT ports and both SPDIF ports occupied and active.
My 15 year old Traveler MK1 gets the same uptime as well, without issue.
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I have the iConnectivity Audio 4+ as well. it gets crazy hot, even when off (soft off only) I hate that I have to unplug it whenever I am between uses.
I have a MOTU 624, and it takes a super long time to boot up. Are all the MOTU AVB devices like that?
I have problems with the USB3 connectivity on Windows 7/10, and sometimes I get this weird thing where if I start playing audio (via ASIO or just WDM via normal windows sound sources) it’ll take about 15-20 seconds before it starts making any sound, but after that, I can go back to the start of whatever I was playing and it’ll be fine until I next pause/stop the audio.
From a stand alone point of view though, it’s pretty great. I very much enjoy having what is essentially a digital patch bay inside it, especially since I picked up an Arturia Audiofuse 8Pre to use via ADAT. Pretty low/stable latency.
I am tempted to get either a thunderbolt card (which seem expensive/hard to aquire at the moment?) or see if I can work out what USB3 chipsets work best with MOTU devices.
I’ve used an iPad at a couple of gigs where I did the wanky walk around and adjust the eq from various points during the night, though I wish I was able to view a spectrograph while adjusting eq, like I can on some other similar interfaces (QSC touchmix, and I’ve fiddled with similar behringer product). Have wanted to make a wireless hardwire OSC interface using a raspberry pi.
Sorry for the long reply.
Have you tried a USB 2.0 cable and port? I’ve read elsewhere that there were some issues with USB3.0 specifically.
There has been some movement on using hardware controllers to control the cuemix mixer in the Motu.
There is this library which can be thrown on a raspberry pi or the like.
I have not tried this yet, But here he is using a bcf2000
I’m 96.734% iOS. There’s very little hardware I use in my live setups.
What I can say is, the AVB is the way to go and it’s amazing. I was gonna get the 828es for the 2nd adat port, but got a ultralite AVB to test with 1st.
I do all of this standalone:
I run 1 iPad into the USB port. The master iPad. I have a 2nd iPad connected to the adat port mostly used as an effects unit to take the load off the main iPad. The 2nd iPad is connected with one of these:
https://www.minidsp.com/products/usb-audio-interface/usbstreamer-box
This gives me 8 usb class compliant channels at 48khz of adat input and output
All of this is still standalone. I’m ordering my lp32 next week to expand iPads and adat. I have an akai s6000 as my sample workhorse that will be connected via adat as well.
Demo of the usbstreamer:
To anyone considering a motu for iPad standalone use, the AVB is the way to go. Yes the mk4 worked, but expandability and network audio to the computer for mixdown in logic really clinches it. All for just 150$ more than a mk4. Super easy to spread the CPU load around between the iPads. Need more CPU? Add a 300$ mini 5.
I can’t find the link now, but don’t consider an 828x. From what I recall. You cannot control cuemix in USB class compliant mode standalone. If I find this link, I’ll post it here.
AVB+minidsp streamer = I don’t even miss a headphone jack on the iPad anymore.
(Still can’t live without the home button in a live setting tho…but there’s a 20$ solution for that too if anyone is interested…)
P.s. I haven’t really needed to mess with cuemix much, and I just do all the mixing in AUM with midi controllers.
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How is your experience with T2 Macs and the Ultralite AVB?
I have a MBP 13 2018 i7 and a Motu M4. I would like more inputs. and possibly expand them via adat in the future.
The line inputs on the M4 are too quiet, compared to the line inputs of my old Traveler MK1, which is now in a studio elsewhere. I had some issues with my M4 though (glitching after 20 minutes), particularly using OBS, but I am not sure if this depends on the M4 or on the Mac.
So I am a bit skeptical of getting anything new for my Mac as it is definitely the less stable Mac I had in 20 years.
Any advice? Thanks
Yeah, I had to use USB 2.0 there for a while. I upgraded from windows 7 to windows 10 on my music PC, finally, and USB 3.0 works much better now, and the latency is generally much better/more solid. The upgrade process was surprisingly painless for my fragile audio pc ecosystem, only a few drivers I had to hack or get workarounds on. I recommend it for anyone like me who held out for ages because of all of their music gear.
It’s still dropping out from time to time, sometimes fixable by disconnecting and reconnecting the cable, or motu restart, but sometimes needs a full pc restart to get working, annoyingly. I have ordered a dedicated USB 3 card with hopefully a more reliable chipset than the one on my mobo, which admittedly was made in the early days of usb 3, so it’s probably a bit rubbish. It also has a thunderbolt 3 data port which I though I’d give a go, if I can find a usb c to mini dp connector (weirdly hard to find, does no one use thunderbolt 3 to connect to thunderbolt 1 and 2 devices?)
Apologies for the late reply. Life has been a thing lately.
Nice, I was thinking I wanted to create a hardware control surface using an raspberry pi, though i don’t have any MCU controllers I will definitely try this out first.
I’ve also had some good experience using the ADAT in and out on my MOTU. I bought an 8 channel ADAT preamp, mostly just to get some extra channels in, a bit cheaper than buying a second AVB device (which as far as I can tell, would have the added cost of needing a AVB router if I want to continue using my MOTU on my network). Though I occasionally get all of the inputs stuck ‘high’. Not sure if it’s the ADAT preamp or the MOTU. It’ll happen even when the ADAT is unpowered, which is weird, but it’s got a soft power button, so I guess ‘unpowered’ in this instances doesn’t mean there is no power coming through.
Interesting in anyone’s experiences adding additional AVB devices, and what the performance is like on a standard ethernet network. (Ie, at what point do you need to have it in a dedicated AVB network before performance degrades)