All NI products work improperly on USB3

Kontrol X1, Maschine, Audio 8, Audio 10 at least...
I recently bought a new gig/production laptop which has 2 USB2 ports and 2 USB3 ports.
Everything works beautifully on the USB2 ports and I can hotswap to my heart's desire. Plugging anything into the USB3 ports mucks everything up. Audio X cards don't work at all, and eventually Maschine and X1's will freeze. At that point, unplugging them and plugging them back into a USB2 port does nothing to help.
Also, once these problems begin, my laptop will no longer shut down properly. It hangs on the "Shutting Down" screen and I have to force it to shut down.
All these elements together make it pretty much impossible for me to gig with the laptop that I bought for gigging.
Any tips?

 

Since USB3 is SUPPOSED to be backwards compatible, and in my limited experience, it is, I'd say you have a bad computer component.

 

I seem to remember reading somewhere that it was a "known issue" with the Audio X cards. Yes, USB3 is supposed to be backwards compatible, but apparently that's not entirely the case. Anyone else experiencing these issues?

 

Same here on my Dell XPS 15 and Kontrol S4 / TP 2.0.3.
(Almost) everyting works like a charm on USB 2.0 but when I plug the S4 to my USB 3.0 ports: nothing!

Things got even worse after the latest update for the USB 3.0 drivers...

Christian

 

woozle is right, there are a lot of backards compat isses with USB3 i read somewhere that quite a large percentage of usb2 items will not work (yet).

i believe i also read that usb1.1 items wont work at all. ever..with usb3.

from what i understand its not the usb's them selves that are the problem,its the hardware. cant remember exactly what, but im sure it was something to do with the way the hardware sends signals to the usb.

man i wish i could find that site...

 

I did some research and it appears there are sporadic problems.

One problem got solved by pulling the plug out a little.

The USB 2 pins are in the front and the USB 3 pins are in the rear, if there is any mis-alignment that could cause problems.

Please report any solutions you find!

 

I don't see how it could be a mechanical issue. There's no real way for the USB3 buses to interfere with the USB2 buses. The problem I'm having doesn't have anything to do with that since once I start having problems, none of the ports work including the USB2 ports.
I'd like to hear NI's take on this if they're out there.

 

ah, now theres a thing, if you are plugging a usb 3 device into a usb 2 port you can not use a usb 3 cable, so if your cable is a usb 3. it wont work, you have to use a usb2 cable.

this makes me curious though, would this be the same the other way round. in that, plugging a usb2 device into a usb3 port will require a usb3 cable...

 

But you cannot plug a USB3 cable into the Kontrol S4 ...

Christian

 

AT the moment, the vast majority of system with USB 3.0 port are all using the NEC /Renesas USB 3.0 controllers (NEC 720200 F1 chip).

Unfortunately, there are many driver and firmware versions for these controllers, depending on the manufacturer, so results could vary. The most logical thing to do would obviously try to get the latest possible.

You can check the version in the controller utility:

Start Menu\Programs\Renesas Electronics\USB 3.0 Host Controller Driver\USB 3.0 Host Controller Utility

The latest I've found were on this page:

http://www.station-drivers.com/page/nec.htm

Obviously, you can try these, but at your own risk.


Other USB 3.0 controllers exist, (such as Fresco), but I've only seen them on one ASUS laptop (which also had a weird eSATA/USB combo port).

 

That's exactly what I tried with my Renesas USB 3.0 Controller. Afterwards things got even worse!

I've got a eSATA/USB 2.0 combo port on my Dell XPS and that's the only port which works smoothly with T2 / Kontrol S4.

Christian

 

is it not possible to get a usb3 version of the lead your using? (that coud be a stupid question)

 

In the meantime, I bought this:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Belkin+...232&skuId=2389094&st=belkin usb hub&cp=1&lp=7

Cheap, small, AC powered if necessary, though I'm running two X1's and a Maschine off of it with no external power and no problems so far- will let you know if that changes.
I hate to add even more cables to the tangle but it's a fairly cheap solution for now.
---
And yeah, my laptop uses the Renesas controller as well. Here's a link to the driver posted above, only from Intel's site. A quick scan of the page leads me to believe that this is a driver for desktop motherboards.

 

I'm currently experiencing these problems with my Audio 8 plugged into USB3 on my Metabox Clevo P150hm.. not audio at all.. but when i use the USB 2 ports it works fine :\

Ni need to resolve it as i would like to see if there are any performance improvements by using USB 3

 

Why not check the forums or call NI to double check to see if USB3 is compatible first?

 

Yeah, I can confirm that the Audio 8 doesn't work with USB3 ports. I've got to use my ESATA/USB2 port instead.

Anyone using non-NI soundcards in USB3 ports ok?

 

I'm so happy I found this thread, cause I've been having the exact same problem with Maschine on my new Dell XPS 15z. My Saffire 6 USB (USB 1.1) also doesn't function properly. I'm thinking the hub is my only option at this point, cause I also have the combined USB/eSATA port which will work with my hardware.

 

Originally, NEC (now Renesas) made the USB 3 chipset (µPD720200) used by most vendors. More recently, ASMedia made the ASM1054 and ASM1051U chipsets.

It would be interesting to know if the chipset makes a difference.

 

From what I heard, current USB 3.0 chip sets don't support asynchronous audio streaming, so USB 3.0 can probably not be regarded as a proper interface technology for high-performance audio yet.

 

There are beta drivers on the Focusrite web site that support USB 3.0 I have the same interface and the Renesas USB and it works! Wish Native would follow suit and release USB 3.0 drivers so that I could use my KA 6.
http://beta.focusrite.com/