[QLab] Motu not communicating with mac mini.

[Dylan Carrow]

Ok so I am having some very interesting problems with Qlab 1 and a Motu mk3. There are a verity of issues I am dealing with. this problem started with the audio not reaching the motu. its as if the motu and mac are no longer connected. so I restart the mac, motu and all software. everything seems fine but all of a sudden I get a 10k screech over all of my channels, I mute the board and restart everything.

In my console log files on the mac mini, its telling me that the devise overloaded. I swapped out the fire wire cable for a higher quality one. the motu is running off external power. the drivers have all been updated and there are no other shows on the mac mini. The strange thing is, is that I come in turn on my system and do a  complete speaker check and everything seems to be working fine. when I come back a half hour later to start the show the sounds no longer work. the log files say the system has overloaded. even though i didnt touch the system. 

I am now re installing mac osx, motu software, and qlab1. The only thing that changed is the sample rate of my session. at the end of the show last night I realized that the motu was set to 48khz and all of the sound files were set to 44.1khz. to me this should fix the problem except I have been told that qlab will play the files any way.

if anyone has any ideas for me to try i would be greatly appreciative.

[*]

Things that work when you turn them on & then don't work after a while are
many times thermal related (it warms up & then a component in the device
goes out of tolerance).

Also, in my experience with MOTU, they will accidentally break things via
updated drivers, then not admit there is an issue. When I've had these
issues, I've gone back to a previously known to work driver & then my MOTU
worked fine again. I doubt this is your problem since it works in the
beginning but beware that the newest driver isn't what your shooting for.
It's the most stable one. Don't fix it if it ain't broke.

Maybe something is going to sleep...

If you're firewire connection is dropping, that would explain part of this.

If this happens next time, here are a few things to try,

restart Qlab but DONT reboot. Does your MOTU show up in your audio
hardware options? If so, does it work when you select it?

I'd also configure the mac to use the MOTU for normal sounds (Itunes) &
build a playlist & let it run for a few hours.

Until you know whether the issue you're having is a qlab, firewire, OS,
MOTU driver problem, it will be hard to figure it out.

Let us know what you find out.

*

On Thu, October 1, 2009 9:36 am, Dylan Carrow wrote:
> motu is running off external power. the drivers have all been updated and
> there are no other shows on the mac mini. The strange thing is, is that I
> come in turn on my system and do a complete speaker check and everything
> seems to be working fine. when I come back a half hour later to start the
> show the sounds no longer work. the log files say the system has
> overloaded.
> even though i didnt touch the system.

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[*]

[Jeremy Lee]

What processor/ Ram/ OS/ MOTU unit & driver, etc are you using? All
energy savers turned off/ HDs always spun up? Anything sharing the FW
bus? Etc. etc. etc...

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--
Jeremy Lee
Sound Designer, NYC - USA 829
http://www.jjlee.com

[Dylan Carrow]

Jeremy,

I am using a 2.0 Ghz Intel core 2 duo with 2gb of ram. mac OSX 10.5 with a motu ultra light mk3. all energy savers are off. nothing else is on the FW bus. the computer is set to never put the HD to sleep when in active. is this what you mean about the HD being always spun up? 

the motu drivers are 1.4.23

Thanks for your input!

Dylan

[Brian Conner]

Had (have) the same deal - works then stops audio output. Cue look like they go, but progress bars don't progress.

I also saw Audio device did overload in the console, but I've been told that may not be the problem. I am working with MOTU Travelers which are known to be sensitive to hotplugging firewire. Possibly Ultra lites are as well? Be sure to power up in the sequence Mac first, then once fully booted power on MOTU.

 

I have yet to resolve the problem. MOTU drivers are the bane of my existence right now.

[mick ritchie]

I guess youve looked at the activity monitor to see if anything untoward is happenning on the mac

- spotlight databasing caused me a weekend of grief before a show - if the HD is spinning it must be doing something

mick

[Jeremy Lee]

Are you using 10.5.0?  Leopard didn't really get stable until 10.5.4.

I've been having my own problems with MOTU gear (828 mk3) lately, but it mostly has to do with the MIDI driver.  It sounds like there may be a problem with the UltraLite.

QLab will play back the 44.1 files at 48k, but has to resample everything in order to do it.  That means the CPU is working pretty hard, and your audio is not getting the best treatment.

We just had a different problem with a G5 iMac and a 1st generation 828 running v1.35 on 10.4.8 the other day.  It kept glitching (console said the MOTU overloaded) when paying a 8-9 track sound cue where all but one track was exactly the same length.  The remaining track would glitch.  I "fixed" it by shaving a few samples off of each of the other files, and it worked fine.  No idea why tracks ending would overload the 828, but there you have it.

Does the 10k tone happen with some sort of interaction, or just randomly?  Also, make sure that you have checked the little "keep core audio awake" box.  When I didn't do that with the 828, every time I would play a cue, the ADAT port would "wake up" and cause a big pop.

Beyond that, you might just have a bad unit.  Is it all a clean install?  No other stuff mucking around in the computer?

Best,

Jeremy

[Jeremy Lee]

Nah- you *want* the drive spinning all the time.  Otherwise, you can have the 1st bit of audio cached in RAM, and when QLab asks for the next bit, the computer says "Oh really, I guess I better spin up the drive so I can read it" And then you get a dropout...