Firewire Problems w/ MOTU 828MK2 - Please help!

Recording Techniques, People Skills, Gear, Recording Spaces, Computers, and DIY

Moderators: drumsound, tomb

Post Reply
tret-lo
gettin' sounds
Posts: 101
Joined: Mon Aug 11, 2003 11:33 am
Location: Cambridge, MA

Firewire Problems w/ MOTU 828MK2 - Please help!

Post by tret-lo » Fri Apr 27, 2007 2:44 pm

Hi People,

I'm having a really frustrating problem and I hope someone can give me some advice. My setup is a crappy old G4 (766 MHz or something / 512 Mb RAM) with a MOTU 828MK2. I do all of my recording onto various external firewire drives. All of a sudden, I can't read from an external drive and playback on the MOTU at the same time. If I try, I get this really weird, extremely high-pitch noise. This is independent of the software being used for playback (happens in Ableton, iTunes, Quicktime, etc.) and also independent of the drive. (I've tried two different models.) However, if I play audio from the internal (non-firewire) drive, it works fine.

What is most frustrating is that I didn't change anything when this problem started. I was in the middle of a project, and one day I booted up the computer and it didn't work any more. It sucks.

I've tried various permutations of the firewire chain (running the MOTU FW through the hard drive, vice versa, and both devices straight to the motherbord firewire ports.)

Has anyone ever experienced anything like this? If so, how did you fix it?

Thanks!
-Ryan

User avatar
apropos of nothing
dead but not forgotten
Posts: 2193
Joined: Tue May 13, 2003 6:29 am
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Contact:

Post by apropos of nothing » Tue May 01, 2007 8:51 pm

Have you installed any new software on it recently? I don't know too much about Macs, but I know that virus-scanners, firewalls and other memory-resident programs can sometimes cause that type of behavior in Windowsworld.

It could also be a hardware problem, which sounds a little more likely to me.

Can you be any more specific about a weird, extremely high-pitched noise? Does the computer freeze up at all? Does the software still think its playing (ie meters bouncing and like that)? Is it choppy, continuous?

User avatar
Jeff White
ghost haunting audio students
Posts: 3263
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 6:15 pm
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Post by Jeff White » Wed May 02, 2007 6:13 am

Try resetting your 828mk2. Instructions are at MOTU's website. Also, check for the latest drivers and repair disk permissions.

Jeff

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 42 guests