Shocked me too.Today I had the pleasure? of dropping in on the Steinburg presentation at my local store in Valencia Spain.I asked the rep what he thought about improvements and advantages of
moving from pentium 3 to a pentium 4 system. Regarding speed and size of projects etc.He then goes into a speel about SX works fine on a pentuium 3 Then
he goes what sound card are you using? Pulsar I say. Well thats your problem this sound card works badly with SX I have hundreds of calls from users with problems with that card he then goes into praising heavily Hammerfall which he is using in the demonstration and talks about its superiority and Steinburg distributing Hammerfall Then he tops that by suggesting possibly Steinburg in SX writing some code to impede the maximum compatibility with Pulsar. Even Terratec gets a better rating in his book.His reccomendation is for me to buy a another sound card to work with SX. Of course this all sounds like sales talk to me but it didn´t make my day. Does Hammerfall or for that matter Terratec really work better with SX than Pulsar?
Pulsar not suitable for SX
One thing you have to remember (especially if you surf the Yahoo Groups... but it happens here too!) is that lots of people get the Pulsar without thinking too much about how they want to use it and then bitch bitch bitch when they can't figure something out.
The Pulsar's a fairly demanding card, that needs a dedicated (or at least built around the card) computer. Since most people (for some reason which I can never seem to put my finger on) don't do much research before they drop $1000 and up on their audio equipment, after a bunch of PCI overflows, etc. because they spent mad cash on the card but got some bargain basement high-volume VIA board they get all riled up.
Now to the average sound card user... like a Terratec user for instance, how much time do you spend preparing the machine for the card? None! Why? Cause you don't really need to. It's not a very demanding card, and it doesn't do that much. It just sits in the background and does it's thing and nobody pays much attention to it.
Now because the Terratec card is priced to sell high volume, companies like Steinberg pay attention to the nuances of the card --should they have to-- because there's a good chance that a lot of people out there are going to use the Terratec card cuz it's easy. It's also easy to sit on your couch and eat ice cream as opposed to doing push ups, but there's an undeniably better end result when you do a little leg work. & I'm not talking about hours of research here, just a few phone calls to the companies or reading forums like these.
Now since Creamware is a smaller company than Terratec, Steinberg, and RME, it's reasonable to assume that they're going to be able to address issues, bugs, etc., than the larger companies. Also, since Creamware's marketing team needs to put on another pot of coffee, and because they haven't evangelized their products as much as they should (especially in the US) Joe Blow that shops at Guitar Center has a hard time wrapping their head around what the Pulsar can do and how to get the most out of it.
This is not necessarily Creamware's fault, per se, as this is a common problem with smaller companies, but as a result they've gotten some tough raps alongside their glowing reviews.
But the long and short is, if Steinberg doesn't see as many people out there buying Creamware cards, their less likely to have their techs know how to handle issues with Creamware cards because it's less of a priority to them than the mainstream, sits in the background, high-volume, does-less RME, Terratec, or what-have-you card. Cuz that's the pool of people they'll have to deal with most.
Does that mean that Cubase SX is bound to have tons of problems with the Pulsar cards? Hell no! It just means that it's cheaper for Steinberg to just say Creamware sucks than to train their staff to deal with Creamware cards. Or maybe Creamware hasn't been as forthcoming with cards for Steinberg to play with. I don't know what the level of communication is like between the two. Any Creamware staff care to chime in?
But to illustrate how Cubase SX holds up on a well configured Pulsar machine, I just switched over from Logic (deep breaths... 'ohhhmmmmmm' -I hate those trecherous f*cks) and I found Cubase SX to be flawless.
Sure, some people's config's will give them more trouble than other's but if you got a solid mobo and a healthy bit of RAM the rest is in the OS tweaking (and I've done none of the recommended tweaking incidentally -aside from un-sharing IRQs anyway).
So you have a reference to go by, I'll share with you my computer specs.
AMD Athlon XP2000+
Asus A7N266 (that's the Nforce board... it fricken smokes everything else as far as Pulsar on AMD chips is concerned)
512MB of DDR-RAM
3 HD's (two of which are SCSI)
TekRam Ultra-160 SCSI controller
PulsarII + Luna II
I had my old Asus A7M266 (the older AMD 760 chipset) burn out on me and I switched the NForce board in without doing a reinstall of my OS's and I still have no stability issues. It's not the type of practice that I would recommend to anyone else, but my computer only crashes when my cats are fighting behind my desk and one of them nudges a cable (I have to figure out a way to prevent that, damn bastards!).
Anyway... hope that helped. And I apologize if I was preachin stuff you've already known. I tend to get carried away.
Peas,
Samuel deHuszar Allen
The Pulsar's a fairly demanding card, that needs a dedicated (or at least built around the card) computer. Since most people (for some reason which I can never seem to put my finger on) don't do much research before they drop $1000 and up on their audio equipment, after a bunch of PCI overflows, etc. because they spent mad cash on the card but got some bargain basement high-volume VIA board they get all riled up.
Now to the average sound card user... like a Terratec user for instance, how much time do you spend preparing the machine for the card? None! Why? Cause you don't really need to. It's not a very demanding card, and it doesn't do that much. It just sits in the background and does it's thing and nobody pays much attention to it.
Now because the Terratec card is priced to sell high volume, companies like Steinberg pay attention to the nuances of the card --should they have to-- because there's a good chance that a lot of people out there are going to use the Terratec card cuz it's easy. It's also easy to sit on your couch and eat ice cream as opposed to doing push ups, but there's an undeniably better end result when you do a little leg work. & I'm not talking about hours of research here, just a few phone calls to the companies or reading forums like these.
Now since Creamware is a smaller company than Terratec, Steinberg, and RME, it's reasonable to assume that they're going to be able to address issues, bugs, etc., than the larger companies. Also, since Creamware's marketing team needs to put on another pot of coffee, and because they haven't evangelized their products as much as they should (especially in the US) Joe Blow that shops at Guitar Center has a hard time wrapping their head around what the Pulsar can do and how to get the most out of it.
This is not necessarily Creamware's fault, per se, as this is a common problem with smaller companies, but as a result they've gotten some tough raps alongside their glowing reviews.
But the long and short is, if Steinberg doesn't see as many people out there buying Creamware cards, their less likely to have their techs know how to handle issues with Creamware cards because it's less of a priority to them than the mainstream, sits in the background, high-volume, does-less RME, Terratec, or what-have-you card. Cuz that's the pool of people they'll have to deal with most.
Does that mean that Cubase SX is bound to have tons of problems with the Pulsar cards? Hell no! It just means that it's cheaper for Steinberg to just say Creamware sucks than to train their staff to deal with Creamware cards. Or maybe Creamware hasn't been as forthcoming with cards for Steinberg to play with. I don't know what the level of communication is like between the two. Any Creamware staff care to chime in?
But to illustrate how Cubase SX holds up on a well configured Pulsar machine, I just switched over from Logic (deep breaths... 'ohhhmmmmmm' -I hate those trecherous f*cks) and I found Cubase SX to be flawless.
Sure, some people's config's will give them more trouble than other's but if you got a solid mobo and a healthy bit of RAM the rest is in the OS tweaking (and I've done none of the recommended tweaking incidentally -aside from un-sharing IRQs anyway).
So you have a reference to go by, I'll share with you my computer specs.
AMD Athlon XP2000+
Asus A7N266 (that's the Nforce board... it fricken smokes everything else as far as Pulsar on AMD chips is concerned)
512MB of DDR-RAM
3 HD's (two of which are SCSI)
TekRam Ultra-160 SCSI controller
PulsarII + Luna II
I had my old Asus A7M266 (the older AMD 760 chipset) burn out on me and I switched the NForce board in without doing a reinstall of my OS's and I still have no stability issues. It's not the type of practice that I would recommend to anyone else, but my computer only crashes when my cats are fighting behind my desk and one of them nudges a cable (I have to figure out a way to prevent that, damn bastards!).
Anyway... hope that helped. And I apologize if I was preachin stuff you've already known. I tend to get carried away.
Peas,
Samuel deHuszar Allen
See it his way : he believes in the allmighty CPU and the Hammerfall is indeed a fast IO board.
But he's most certainly not aware of sound quality, which IS superior on Pulsar.
Had a talk with a sales rep myself today, but in the hifi store. Their top end setup included a dsp based audio processor. You may guess what did the work inside : Sharks
And the guy praised them more than he had to.
Another experience from the VST instrument side was the demo of the Virsyn package I recently tried out.
I have to admit that it's programmed very smart, it's punchy and nearly alias-free and very resource effective. Definetely one of the top native apps, the first one to stand the no-effects test for me.
But strange: after fiddling for about 2 days with the thing, the sounds became totally boring - all seemed to have the same flavour.
Switched back to Pulsar synths and it was clear at once what makes a full, rich sound
The difference isn't spectacular, but it's what separates a high end from a mediocre device. Just like the good mic pres.
We all know Pulsar is a little more complicated to setup: there's a digital mixer, a bunch of synths and effects, a hd-recording system and a digital patchbay in union.
cheers, Tom
But he's most certainly not aware of sound quality, which IS superior on Pulsar.
Had a talk with a sales rep myself today, but in the hifi store. Their top end setup included a dsp based audio processor. You may guess what did the work inside : Sharks
And the guy praised them more than he had to.
Another experience from the VST instrument side was the demo of the Virsyn package I recently tried out.
I have to admit that it's programmed very smart, it's punchy and nearly alias-free and very resource effective. Definetely one of the top native apps, the first one to stand the no-effects test for me.
But strange: after fiddling for about 2 days with the thing, the sounds became totally boring - all seemed to have the same flavour.
Switched back to Pulsar synths and it was clear at once what makes a full, rich sound
The difference isn't spectacular, but it's what separates a high end from a mediocre device. Just like the good mic pres.
We all know Pulsar is a little more complicated to setup: there's a digital mixer, a bunch of synths and effects, a hd-recording system and a digital patchbay in union.
cheers, Tom
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hawkeyebigsteve
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2002 4:00 pm
thanks for your replies and sharing your knowledge. As I said sales talk.But has their been any comparative testing between these sound cards using SX? What are the differences if any with regard sound quality/compatability?
I have been using pulsar for two years now and personally I have no complaints it´s good I just want to get the best out of my system/set up and improve it where possible
Pentium 111 800mhz
Asus tusl-c mother board
512mb ram
2 HD 20gb for operating system
60gb Quantum fireball for audio
Pulsar 2,SFP, SX,Battery,Absynth....
XP professional
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:47 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:50 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:51 ]</font>
I have been using pulsar for two years now and personally I have no complaints it´s good I just want to get the best out of my system/set up and improve it where possible
Pentium 111 800mhz
Asus tusl-c mother board
512mb ram
2 HD 20gb for operating system
60gb Quantum fireball for audio
Pulsar 2,SFP, SX,Battery,Absynth....
XP professional
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:47 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:50 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 04:51 ]</font>
My sytem works perfectly!
SX, XP, SFP 3.1c....
Even the xtc-mode works great.
I´m shure, they only want to sell something.
There are some people with problems by using SX and hammerfall (an older via chipset problem). Check Steinberg-boards (www.steinberg.net)...
I´m using a p3 800 (ASUS CuSL 2c) too and I have no need for a faster one: 32 Stereo-Tracks Audio @ 44.1 and 32 Bit/True Tape, SX-EFX, Halion and a lot of SFP-Stuff (like Minimax, STM and vinco which I´m really loveing)....
greeetz,
andre
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Andre Dupke on 2002-09-18 08:35 ]</font>
SX, XP, SFP 3.1c....
Even the xtc-mode works great.
I´m shure, they only want to sell something.
There are some people with problems by using SX and hammerfall (an older via chipset problem). Check Steinberg-boards (www.steinberg.net)...
I´m using a p3 800 (ASUS CuSL 2c) too and I have no need for a faster one: 32 Stereo-Tracks Audio @ 44.1 and 32 Bit/True Tape, SX-EFX, Halion and a lot of SFP-Stuff (like Minimax, STM and vinco which I´m really loveing)....
greeetz,
andre
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Andre Dupke on 2002-09-18 08:35 ]</font>
Good points above....
And it´s nice to see that we Creamware users are nowhere near naivity! Yes, a lot has to do whith the way things are distributed, but nonetheless the Hammerfall is really a good "Asio" card, I´m using it myself. But I have never done an asio comparison to my Creamware card which I use more like an stand-alone mixer or summing engine. But of course our Creamware stuff can be just as well be used as an recording card whith its DSP plugs as the last unit in the recording chain. When it comes to latencies the regular Hammerfall performs suberbly whith 3ms whereas the DSP version has a latency of of 6ms. But generally DSP cards do have a little higher latency. And the Terratec has good converters on board. A bit also has to do whith Steinberg´s "native" philosophy. But having "UAD-1" and "Powercore" I´m not sure what that exactly means, also these do really increase latency...
Regards,
Bernhard
And it´s nice to see that we Creamware users are nowhere near naivity! Yes, a lot has to do whith the way things are distributed, but nonetheless the Hammerfall is really a good "Asio" card, I´m using it myself. But I have never done an asio comparison to my Creamware card which I use more like an stand-alone mixer or summing engine. But of course our Creamware stuff can be just as well be used as an recording card whith its DSP plugs as the last unit in the recording chain. When it comes to latencies the regular Hammerfall performs suberbly whith 3ms whereas the DSP version has a latency of of 6ms. But generally DSP cards do have a little higher latency. And the Terratec has good converters on board. A bit also has to do whith Steinberg´s "native" philosophy. But having "UAD-1" and "Powercore" I´m not sure what that exactly means, also these do really increase latency...
Regards,
Bernhard
-
The Z Station
- Posts: 294
- Joined: Mon Apr 15, 2002 4:00 pm
- Location: Seattle, WA
- Contact:
Ditto!
SX runs flawlessly on my CW box (Pulsar II+). At my first install, I was ready to go - haven't gotten any PCI overflows or anything at all. I had some minor challenges with LAP5 but all is well now.
I don't really think that CW DSP cards can be compared with RME or the ilk. There's just no comparison. CW are highly complex than a mere DSP sound card. CWOS (SFP) is, in itself, an entire operating system, not a collection of drivers to run the card like the other pro-audio cards being offered in the market.
If CW will entirely open source their codes to Steinberg or other 3rd parties, they may be able to work very closely with our beloved CW cards, thus, providing us with much more stable, better integrated system with their software or plug-ins.
Like ProTools (Win), there are VERY strict hardware configuration and Windows OS requirements that must be met. You can drop ProTools on any PC with "bargain" components and you'll also end up with headaches and frustrations.
SX runs flawlessly on my CW box (Pulsar II+). At my first install, I was ready to go - haven't gotten any PCI overflows or anything at all. I had some minor challenges with LAP5 but all is well now.
I don't really think that CW DSP cards can be compared with RME or the ilk. There's just no comparison. CW are highly complex than a mere DSP sound card. CWOS (SFP) is, in itself, an entire operating system, not a collection of drivers to run the card like the other pro-audio cards being offered in the market.
If CW will entirely open source their codes to Steinberg or other 3rd parties, they may be able to work very closely with our beloved CW cards, thus, providing us with much more stable, better integrated system with their software or plug-ins.
Like ProTools (Win), there are VERY strict hardware configuration and Windows OS requirements that must be met. You can drop ProTools on any PC with "bargain" components and you'll also end up with headaches and frustrations.
-
hawkeyebigsteve
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2002 4:00 pm
So somebody like me with a small home studio
who is thinking about upgrading to AMD/Pentium 4 which mobo is going to get the
best out of SFP and SX.Processor,Mother board,ventilator,ram etc (hmm maybe I should go to tech talk?)
gracias
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:36 ]</font>
who is thinking about upgrading to AMD/Pentium 4 which mobo is going to get the
best out of SFP and SX.Processor,Mother board,ventilator,ram etc (hmm maybe I should go to tech talk?)
gracias
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:36 ]</font>
strange??
If you go to http://www.Steinberg.net you can see that they take pride in having Hans Zimmer as a cubase user, since he is very successfull. It is a known fact that mr. Zimmer uses cubase together with scope and sfp. Maybe this Steinberg rep. should get his fact straight. pulsar works excellent with sx.
It is very sad when a company puts another one down like this, it surprises me when Steinberg does this, since they always have seemed (to me at least) to be interested in pushing daw thecnology further as well as taking care of business.
thermos
If you go to http://www.Steinberg.net you can see that they take pride in having Hans Zimmer as a cubase user, since he is very successfull. It is a known fact that mr. Zimmer uses cubase together with scope and sfp. Maybe this Steinberg rep. should get his fact straight. pulsar works excellent with sx.
It is very sad when a company puts another one down like this, it surprises me when Steinberg does this, since they always have seemed (to me at least) to be interested in pushing daw thecnology further as well as taking care of business.
thermos
-
hawkeyebigsteve
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Sat Jan 26, 2002 4:00 pm
I agree and I may have been unlucky to meet up with an overzelous rep but as he was presenting to a group of people who or at least some of them may have been thinking of buying a Pulsar I found his remarks particularly disparaging and damaging. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion
but technical data is far more reliable than opinions it would seem he should get his facts straight before spouting off. specially in a position of influence
Yes I went to http://www.Steinberg.net it´s great to receive such prestigous endorsements. But talking about presentation problems the
web link from Steinburg in English to Creamware is in German.
http://www.steinberg.net/en/ps/communit ... t]=1&sid=0
Yes you can change to the English version it´s just a little detail.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:34 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:39 ]</font>
but technical data is far more reliable than opinions it would seem he should get his facts straight before spouting off. specially in a position of influence
Yes I went to http://www.Steinberg.net it´s great to receive such prestigous endorsements. But talking about presentation problems the
web link from Steinburg in English to Creamware is in German.
http://www.steinberg.net/en/ps/communit ... t]=1&sid=0
Yes you can change to the English version it´s just a little detail.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:34 ]</font>
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hawkeyebigsteve on 2002-09-18 17:39 ]</font>
Kim. Ha! All the Hammerfall latency braggarts and it's DSP card only gets 6ms! Ha! Why I've been getting 4ms with no crackles or nothing with my Ethernet card enabled USB devices enabled and a SCSI card using Cubase SX. & I can still open 10 MasterVerbs on 11 DSPs without a PCI overflow error (I just run out of DSP). Ha! Thanks for putting that out in the open there, I feel vilified now. Not that the 2ms difference is really audible, but that's not what this debate has been about!On 2002-09-18 05:51, Sunshine wrote:
...When it comes to latencies the regular Hammerfall performs suberbly whith 3ms whereas the DSP version has a latency of of 6ms...
Regards,
Bernhard
Samuel deHuszar Allen
(the man who -every once & a while- likes to laugh in people's face... but is generally a very nice and level-headed guy)