Hardy: HOWTO: MobilePre (or Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile USB) with firmware loader

[paulg]

To use Madfuload in Fiesty/Gutsy, see the old howto here.

***Update***
Upgraded to Intrepid a few days ago and I can confirm it didn't break anything so these instructions are good for 8.04 and 8.10. Pulse Audio is another matter for another thread...
************

First of all, the newer MobilePre's apparently work out of a box in which case you will not need to do anything. I have a MobilePre circa. 2003 which requires the firmware loader to work. If you follow these steps you should be able to replace MobilePre with Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile USB if you have one of the other devices. The older devices require firmware and loader available here:
http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/

This had been working for me for sometime and seemed to be set-off by Dapper (?) to some degree and now definitely would not work with Fiesty/Gutsy without intervention and broke again when upgrading from gutsy to hardy. Below is basically the same information to modify the UDEV loader fix from the Fiesty/Gutsy mod with an additional change to make it compatible with Hardy. Special thanks to HaightsW who posted the fix in the Ozone thread. His post can be seen here. It appears there was an additional change to UDEV where subsystem was 'usb_device' and now should be 'usb'. Full instructions for Hardy and Intrepid below if you need them. Again, see the old howto for Fiesty/Gutsy instructions. I've seen rumblings that they are working on rolling Madfuload (and appropriate fix) into the next release so this may be the last time we need to do this.

1. Install the firware from the link above. Install directions are given on the site and view the README in the tarball for more help on compiling.
2. The installer will create a udev rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/42-madfuload.rules
   You will need to open the file with your favourite editor. I suggest the following command in terminal:
   

   ~$ sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/42-madfuload.rules

3. Basically all of the lines are incorrect so you may as well comment all of them with a '#'. You could delete them but you may want to keep the one for the MobilePre so you can copy the product ID and firmware.
4. Find the entry for MobilePre (or Sonica/Ozone/Transit/Audiophile) create a new line and paste the following
   

   ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", SYSFS{idVendor}=="0763", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2804", RUN+="/usr/local/sbin/madfuload -l -3 -f /usr/local/share/usb/maudio/ma004103.bin -D $env{DEVNAME}"

5. Replace the product ID and the firmware (file name ending with '.bin') in the above line with your device ID. Summary is below but you should be able to verify this in the original udev rule file.
   
   
   • MobilePre
     Product ID == 2804
     firmware == ma004103.bin
     
   • Sonica
     Product ID == 2805
     firmware == ma005101.bin
     
   • Ozone
     Product ID == 2808
     firmware == ma008100.bin
     
   • Transit
     Product ID == 2806
     firmware == ma006100.bin
     
   • Audiophile USB
     Product ID == 2803
     firmware == ma003101.bin
6. Just need to restart the udev listening engine:
   

    $ sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

As before, post successes and problems below. I'll help if I am able.

~pAul.

[isaacj87]

Once again, thanks man!

I remember you helped me with this quite some time ago...Would be interesting to see this in the next release.

[wolpert]

I'm trying to get MobilePre USB working on my 8.04 box. (The one without midi ports) It worked fine on the 7.10 one, but doesn't run with the upgraded Ubuntu.

Basically, followed instructions to no avail. But interesting enough the 'lsusb' gives this: Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0763:200f Midiman
And the details are here:

Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0763:200f Midiman
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 1.10
bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 8
idVendor 0x0763 Midiman
idProduct 0x200f
bcdDevice 1.03
iManufacturer 1 M Audio
iProduct 2 MobilePre
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1

Any ideas? (I installed the "DFU" firmware from the site linked above)

Thanks!

[wolpert]

Okay, so the 200f version is the 'works out of the box' variant. The problem I had was audacity wasn't working with the device. The fix was to rebuild audacity and then it worked fine.

[bbvdd]

Thank you so much!

[kingbuzzo]

I've noticed that sometimes my m-audio transit simply wont give any output.

I'll see that the soundcard is detected by xmms and playing media, but I wont actually hear anything from the line out.

This happened right after I attempted to have foobar2000 (through wine) access the card through OSS. Reinstalling the firmware doesn't seem to work unless I reformat first.

any idea?

[bschultzjames]

I can't even get ubuntu 8.1 to recognize the mobilepre is even connected. I can record with ardour and jack through the built-in soundcard and mic on my laptop, but nothing shows up anywhere when I connect the mobilepre.


I tried a few terminal commands to see the installed firmware and nothing comes up that even looks relevant to audio.


Is there some software control I need to install to use the MobilePre in ardour?

[paulg]

Is it a pulseaudio issue? It's totally borked the audio on my system so I just kill it (system mainly used for recording and some light browsing) and rely on my programs interfacing with ALSA instead.

sudo killall pulseaudio

Then select ALSA as you've described.

If this works then it's a pulseaudio issue. There are many posts about 'fixing' it. Usually by uninstalling or disabling pulseaudio.

[paulg]

bschultzjames, with the MobilePre plugged into a working USB port and the power on, what does the following command return?

lsusb

Edit: by power on, confirm you have power to the unit with either the main LED on or the phantom power LED on when the button is depressed.

[gerlach1025]

This may be the wrong thread to post in but I figured I would try here before starting a new thread, especially since the title did say ozone. I am having trouble getting my m-audio ozone working correctly with ubuntu. If I boot up ubuntu with the ozone turned on, lsusb only shows midiman and the device is not detected by any audio programs. If I then reboot into the windows xp partition the ozone works fine. I reboot back into ubuntu and now lsusb shows the ozone in the list and it is detected and works with all the audio software. Then if I turn off the ozone and turn it back on, or if I shutdown and turn the unit off and back on, I'm back to square one. I've followed the tips in all the various threads but I continue to have this issue. Right now I'm running Intrepid and I installed madfuload using the repos. Does anyone have any ideas on what I'm doing wrong. If I'm lacking details let me know what info I should supply.

Thanks