I have a motif xs6,I use it with my cubase connected via USB and everything works fine. now I want to move on the next stage. bought mLan16e2 but it
turned out that my leptop does not have a fire wire…
I consulted with the computer specialists in the PC shop and was sugested to buy a PCMCI with firewire connection.

will it work?

it should logically but I need an advise…

thank you in advance ...

A purpose built PCMCIA card slot to firewire should provide you with an adequate solution for your laptop. If its what your computer specialist chums suggest then its probably OK. You need to check that it will deliver the speed of a standard firewire slot - if not, this could compromise Mlan’s ability to deliver multiple simultaneous audio. You shoudl be able to get this from the specs on the box before you buy it.

Which computer do you have?

Cheers

I have an Acer aspire 5710… I already bought a creative firewire express card - http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SY-EXPC34-2F1U&cat=CCD .

But I have a big problem, and that is a kind of dropout every 15-20 seconds during playback anything in the leptop.

I use FW driver. even if I don’t run cubase at all and playback an ordinary mp3 file in win. media player (any mp3 by any artist) it does the same. I tried everything: disabled wireless connection, graphic accelerator, system sounds. have set FW driver as the main in and out in audio devices… proccesor does not use more then 15-25% and RAM is using only 25-40 percent of its resorces.

what is really interesting, if running cubase with only one midi track I get the sdropouts, and if I run the project with 8 audio and 8 midi tracks really PACKED with midi events, I get the same amount of dropouts and it does not get actually worse.

do you think it can be the express card problem?

I think it is ... 

An ExpressCard is usually just a USB2.0 device.  SOME are made to PCI-Express specifications, but at $24.00 I doubt yours is.

That whole device will be limitted to a MAXIMUM combined throughput of 480Mbps, and since it’s sharing that with one USB2.0 and two 1394 ports, it’s about 3:1 over-taxed if all three ports are going full-out.

I’ve never had any kind of luck with those kind of CardBus/ExpressCard things for any serious work.

All the spec’s I’m reading suggest the 5710 DOES have its own Firewire Port.  Why not use it?

As Tony suggests, if it does have a built-in Firewire port, by all means try using that. But if it doesn’t, you may want to check out the IEEE1394 Compatibility list at this link:

http://www.01xray.com/hardware/1394cardlist.html

I do not see the Creative Card on the list of “tested” cards. Then again, I don’t see it on the non-compatible list either.

Hope this was of some help.

Guys I managed to solve the problem. thanks God, I’m so happy… but it took me of nealry 2 months investigating on various forums including motifator.com of course.

the final symptom I discoverd (that I spoke about in my last posts) was that even not running cubase at all and just playing an mp3 file from win media player (monitoring music via Mlan and not in leptop monitors) caused the same problem - a dropout every 20-25 seconds… I concluded that the problem was not associated with the cubase settings and niether with the processor speed or lack of RAM as I had disablad everything that could take most of the resources of my Aser aspire leptop.

So I had two options: either the problem was caused by the incompetible firewire express card or there was something else wrong with my leptop. So yesterday evening I gave a last try… I disabled a screen saver… nothing… the problem was there again. then I disabled “Microsoft ACPI Compliant control Method Battery” from device manager and ran the win madia player with one of the Lenny kravitzs songs.and to my astonisdhment there were no dropouts at all. Then I ran a cubase AI… and played back one of my single midi track projects… no dropouts… then I ran 15 midi track project with no dropouts… then I recorded 4 vocal tracks for testing,… no dropouts… and I said Oh my God, its working....:)))

So, then I enabled everything exept “microsoft ACPI compliant control Method Battery” and it started dropouts again. disabled screen saver and the dropouts were gone… Thus, now if I want do get rid of dropouts I disable “microsoft ACPI compliant control Method Battery” and screen saver and it works…

I don’t really know what these to things have to do with each other but I have the fact that on my leptop I have flowless audio (at list up to 4 tracks, and thats quite fine as i usually use audio for recording vocals only) without this two things enabled together…

Of course I still agree with Bad Mister that the better(and usually more expencive) Leptop you have the less problem you get...but I still think that nevertheless my leptop is somewere $400-500 in my country, its configuration is quite good for running 3-4 tracks of audio without any problems…

I want to thank everybody in discussing the case…
see you in other posts…

charli