"MOTU Has Been Disconnected or Turned Off"??

[sjoens]

Periodically I get this warning during a session with a MOTU UltraLite mk3.  Never got it before a week ago.  Funny thing is the interface still works after I click OK.

However, when the warning is being generated behind the scenes it locks the whole system, freezing the mouse, and the lighted keyboard goes dark, until the warning appears.

Once it does I click OK and everything is back to normal.  Almost seems like a virus.

 

All thru the process the audio  continues uninterrupted.  Correction: Audio stops until this window appears, then sometimes it starts up again on it's own and sometimes I have to click OK,

Edited Sunday at 01:03 AM by sjoens

[Bass Guitar]

I had to put my Motu M4 off to the side as starting about a month ago it was bonking out all the time. Random stuff like distorted audio. 
 

I wonder if a W11 update is to blame? 
 

I have 2 other interfaces but I prefer the monitor set of the M4. Im using the SSL2 right now and it sucks with the headphone level. I have to max it out. And same with the Main output. It also creates 4 versions of itself in all my audio apps. Not impressed with it at all. 

[sjoens]

I've been hit with a lot of Win10 updates as it comes to it's end about the time this started happening, so I too wonder.

Or maybe it's a bad cable. 🤔  But that wouldn't affect the entire system . . . would it?!

[Bass Guitar]

All I can say is that computer systems suck. There are days when I get tempted to dust of my 8 track! 

[Amberwolf]

8 hours ago, sjoens said:

  But that wouldn't affect the entire system . . . would it?!

Things that delay some systemwide process or something that's in a high priority or realtime process could cause an apparent temporary system freeze or pause, until the process finishes or releases.   

 

I had this with one of the external video "displaylink" boxes for a while, regardless of which driver was used...but the same drivers on a different displaylink box worked fine.  It would be a randomly timed thing, and it would usually just hang for a second or two, just long enough to be nearly sure that the system had frozen, then it would come back.   Really annoying. 

 

I forget which diagnostic I used, probably ProcMon, to eventually find the culprit, and that's when I tried a different DL box i already had, and fixed the issue.    Same cables, so it was something in the box (but could have been a connector).  

 

On my present laptop i had something that would pause like this, and sometimes actually BSOD, but nothing ever told me exactly what it was; the crash dumps (when they happened at all) were incomplete.   My only clue was that almost everytime there was an audio buffer repeat d-d-d-d-d- you know the sound, immediately before the pause or crash.   Eventually I fixed it by uninstalling and cleaning out all traces of the realtek audio drivers for the built in hardware.  Something is probably just wrong with that hardware somewhere, as it didn't matter what version of driver was used for it.   

[Amberwolf]

14 minutes ago, Bass Guitar said:

All I can say is that computer systems suck.

Yes, and even worse are people with computers that have problems (usually caused by them), when you're the tech that has to fix them.   That's why I went to work at a pet supplies store after CompUSA went out of business a couple decades ago instead of running a techshop somewhere else. 

Pets and people with pets are MUCH MUCH nicer, even when there are problems, than computers and people with computers (even when there aren't any problems). 

 

[sjoens]

1 hour ago, Amberwolf said:

Pets and people with pets are MUCH MUCH nicer

Until they aren't and bite you or chase you down the street trying. 

[Amberwolf]

Pshaw....bites are nothing compared to the way people with computer problems treat the tech trying to help them.

 

 

[sjoens]

Sorry to hear that.  I never heard or seen it happen in the school district where I worked for years.  Staff really counted on them and treated them pretty good AFAICT.  Of course . . . they mostly use macs.  But even the local repair shops were pretty low-key, tho covid pretty much killed them all off.

[Bass Guitar]

Kinda of obvious but you did disable USB power saving mode? 
That would explain why the Motu would shut down. 

[sjoens]

Most definitely,  Nothing is allowed to be turned off in Control Panel.

[sjoens]

The system can run for several hours before the warning is thrown.  I uninstalled everything MOTU and reinstalled the drivers, so time will tell.

[kitekrazy1]

Maybe the board is going bad or a heat issue

[sjoens]

Hope not.    Changed cable.  Changed USB port.  No fix.  Removed latest drivers and installed an older one.  Time will tell.

[Michael Fogarty]

I get something similar periodically, expecially if I use another program like Sound Forge/Samplitude/Vegas and it has to share. The sound still works but I can't access the DSP. You can see the mixer but no movement in the meters. I have to then shut everything down, start the MOTU again, and then boot the computer. This whole system of having a USB port local host seems to me a bit of a problem. Never happens with my RME. It's especially terrible if I have a client and they want some compression or reverb on their playback and the mixer is "DUH".

[sjoens]

I think USB is the worst venue for audio production but it's the one-size-fits-all for everything PC.  A dedicated audio port system would be the best but not likely to ever be a thing in this world, let alone affordable.

[sjoens]

Today SONAR X3 threw this warning including a single Asian style character instead of "MOTU".  Not sure what to make of that.  In spite the warning, audio played on uninterrupted.

The warning in the OP was thrown by Windows.  Sometimes I get one or the other or both.

Edited Friday at 10:31 AM by sjoens

[msmcleod]

@sjoens - you may need to disable USB sleep in the Windows Device Manager.

I tend to check in two places:
   - The Windows Power Plan
   - The Device Manager for that particular device.

Also, some motherboards allow you to disable it in the BIOS, which can save you having to change it elsewhere.

[sjoens]

As mentioned, Windows power plan is set to never sleep as is all entries in Device Manager.

OTOH, I can't see Sleep affecting a device or driver that's currently in use.

BIOS doesn't seem to have that option on this unit.

Of note is the fact that MOTU is the only device affected by this scenario, so I'm starting to suspect MOTU drivers, which haven't been updated in years, or for Windows 10 or 11.  Seems a device that's still being produced and sold as new would have updated drivers.

Edited Saturday at 06:18 AM by sjoens

[Bass Guitar]

10 hours ago, sjoens said:

.  Seems a device that's still being produced and sold as new would have updated drivers

My problem started when I first bought the M4 possibly 5 or 6 years ago. I always avoided buss power but the M4 had exactly the right features so I let that one go. But right away it was acting up and I contacted Motu. They said I needed to use a USB 3 port with a C connection.

This is is when you learn that the product was designed for a Mac and not a PC 

So I installed a PCi card with that and all seemed fine. This was my old W10 PC. 
 

Time for a new PC and at first I installed W10. I made sure it had the proper USB C ports. 
 

But that’s when I started finding that newly recorded audio was distorted. I have to completely restart the computer to fix it. 
 

It seems like if the computer had been turned on for a few hours this will happen. 
Playback was fine. 

In the meantime I bought the SSL2 which never has this issue but compared to the Motu I don’t really like it much. I also use a Zoom L8. Never any problems with both of those. So so it’s not a computer issue. 

Last March I had all those issues with Sonar and decided that I would wipe the computer clean and start over with W11.  
 

Now the issue has become worse and even playback gets garbled. 

It’s only happening after the computer has ran for a few hours. But it’s annoying so I just put it on the shelf for now and hopefully they will update the drivers some day. I tried to sell it but got no response here locally. Same problem with the SSL-2.. You can’t even give stuff away around here. Thank goodness for the Zoom.