SCOPE - Your personal highlights 2013

[erminardi]

ehasting, very nice tracks!
they have the elasticity as if they were reversed. I like

[Sounddesigner]

The dNa plugins. Definitely what the platform needed IMO. Definitely fills a voide in my arsenal. I'm also happy to have what I already own wich is XITE-1 still work perfectly after many years, no repairs or new purchase needed. Longevity is a highlight in my book.

[dante]

I think roy thinnes deserves a special mention for his efforts in 2013.

Yes FxKeys is right up there, must check it out in more detail.

[vascomusic]

In summer 2000, our Pentium III was only able to process very few VST's at once, so this was not really an interesting way of making music. However, we knew technology was shifting more and more towards PC, but we still made music the traditional "MIDI-Gear"-way, using Atari ST, a lot of MIDI-gear and PC with Cubase VST3.5.
Then that summer, 'by coincidence' we got a magazine called 'Interface' and on a page we saw a large advertisement with a picture of an impressive full size PC card with Sharc chips attached to it, however we didn't understand what it was, but the text information revealed that it could help your PC processing music stuff.
At that point, we already had decided to sell our Akai S3000XL sampler and buy the newer flagship Akai S6000 sampler. But inexplicable and still curious because of the big advertisement, we called a local distributor of Creamware products. He invited us to come over and he explained the concept of Scope in an one hour live demo of the brand new and just arrived Pulsar II card, the Scope 2.01 OS and all plugins, paid & freely available.
The possibilities of Scope seemed to be endless. We discarded the Akai S6000 plan and bought our first Pulsar II card instead. Two more cards followed after that and everything was great...

...but around 2002 somebody showed us the brand new Cubase SX 1.0, the stock (and 3rd party) plugins and workflow it had to offer and we saw that you could make music faster that 'VST'-way.
In meantime we had a faster PC, and the VST-way indeed was speeding up our productions, because of the quicker workflow. This is hard to admit: then we dropped all Scope Synths, FX's, STS-samplers etc and used 1 Pulsar II card as a soundcard (and Scope only for routings). 1 card was enough for that so we removed the other 2 cards from the PC.
After spending many, many years using VST's, we realised that our mixes still suffered from a kind of lack of sound quality (in our opinion).

In the year 2012 it became clear again, after making a Scope-only-devices track for fun, just to try that old platform again, that Scope does (especially the synths) sound surprisingly so much more real, even after all those years, than 90% of all VST's that we've heard from the very first VST beginning.
Clearly, we didn't realise what kind of music creation weapon we held in our hands in first place back in 2000.
Bottomline: working the VST-way is (to us still) quicker than working the SFP-way, but who cares after you have released your track. What you hear then and what is more important, is the quality of sound !


To make a long story short;

The highlight of 2013 is that we have decided to never touch a VST again, unless there's absolutely no alternative for that specific use..

[dante]

That is a great story !

[hubird]

the synths are gorgeous, that's for sure.

[Marco]

-1995 I bought tripledat isa card
-1999 I bought PulsarII 6dsp
-2001 I sold the tripledat
-2004 I sold the pulsar
-2009 I was shocked for the price of an Xite.....  
-2009 I returned back an bought a 15 dsp board and 5.1  
-2013 I bought 2 more dsp boards  Zarg Bundle, DNA Bundle and placed 3Cardsx15DSP=45DSP in a i4770 Asus board, connected the scope via ADAT to my mature yamaha 02r for ideal routing all signals. Got 3x Behringer ADAT 8000 wandler ) Got touched to scope to real knobs with 2 Midicontrollers, Edward Snowden shows in what a stupid world we live.
-2014 all runs perfect

Hey vascomusic your story is like mine,


what do you plan to use? Xite or 15 dsp board?
I got 3x15 dsps =45. Enough power for all my work, and I do a lot!

[vascomusic]

Hey vascomusic your story is like mine,

what do you plan to use? Xite or 15 dsp board?
I got 3x15 dsps =45. Enough power for all my work, and I do a lot!

Hi, nice to hear that
I still have the three 6-DSP cards and for now it is doable. Because of Zarg synths and also for development interests I think it's wise to buy one or more 14-DSP boards.

As you described, I assume you're mixing your projects on your 02R?
Or do you use it as a recording console?
Just curiosity

For many years we used two 02R's + ADAT Expansion cards + cascade kit in combination with three Pulsar II cards to mix 48 digital tracks on the desk. That was a great combination, however I mix on Scope's STM or Cubase's internal mixer nowadays..

[jhulk]

i still use o2r more for tracking external hardware synths into scope and running emulatorx3 via the emu adat ports

[Marco]

hi i use the 02r only for routing, and as premixer, sometimes it is useful to have knobs and sliders in your hand. Old mature studioequipment reminds me to my young days. No need to change everything every year. A lot people sell there equipment, and years after they cry, because the new thing isnt better. Remember the vst-story above, irs like mine, first say goodbye to creamware, saying hallo to the polyphony vst world, and after years, you return back to sonic core. I had a sequential cicurits 600 and a siel Kiwi and a roland sh 1000 and a korg ms 20 all sold, because i thought the vst could do it better. What an ERROR in my brain! Today I could be rich of golden analog sounds. Same with my guitaramp. I sold a 1969 fender, Marshall 800 because I believed it is easier to record with ni guitarrig. How stupid I was, didnt notice the bad sound, until I tried my last marshall 9000 standing in my basement, the sun was rising!
I learned, never sell your equipment, its better. Ok year after year, it gets a little bit more, but his slows down, because you have to much equipment. When you sell, the money is pissing of to fast.