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I'm going to try the AMD64 before I switch to an all type II configuration. I probably should wait for CW 64 bit drivers which looks like will be a very long wait. I already have plenty of DSP power.

I'm just getting into my creamware card, had it for a while, but been busy with other projects. I'm finding it rewarding to learn with and am getting some awesome sounds together now..

Certainly is powerful, but not over complicated, I'm one happy bunny

Andrew

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll :

In the context of the Internet, a troll is a message that seems to at least one user to be inaccurate, inflammatory or hostile, which by effect or design causes a disruption in discourse. The word is also often used to describe a person posting such messages.

---8<---

It's a very well defined concept at this point, as it was highly popular on UseNet, and the first post in this thread fit the definition perfectly. Anyone who spent more than 5 seconds on this forum *knows* this type of post will cause reaction, and wether the poster was pissed off or not at the time of posting is completely irrelevant as to the troll-ish nature of the post.

Mind you, braincell, I find "Troll" to be a still pretty civilized type of insult. I could be a whole lot more poetic and tell you how much of a complete f*cking r*tarded sh*t-brained clueless drivel-spouting discord-formenting random-trolling mindless constant-code-18 garbage-eating smelly trisomic monkey you are, but I prefer to stay civil, and you've also proven that you can provide reasonable discourse once in a while when you make the effort, so I stick to the tried-and-true "Troll" "insult", which in this case wasn't directed at you by the way.

Obviously, if you keep tauting me randomly like that, I'll just keep on throwing the verbal garbage back in your general direction, hoping for a spectacular collision.

As for my music, it's not for me to judge wether it's original or not, but I can assure you I'll make sure you never get to hear it.

Getting back a bit more on-topic, I've just finished setting up and testing my new AMD64-based setup. I'll post more detailed information and benchmarks in some other thread this weekend probably, but my initial tests show that I can load 12 MasterVerbs in a STM1632 mixer, with 32 ASIO channels going to Samplitude, getting recorded, and getting sent back thru 32 ASIO channels back into that STM1632 mixer with the reverbs, without a single glitch, pop, crackle, slowdown, lag, or whatever. It's absolutely flawless. And that's recording on a SATA drive, which sits on the PCI bus on this motherboard. So if you count properly, that's 32 + 32 ASIO channels + 12 reverb delay lines + 32 channels being recorded, all going thru the same PCI bus (try doing this over FireWire hahaha.) Oh yeah, at the lowest ULLI settings too.

I call that 1) pretty amazing ans 2) pretty incredibly functionnal, and makes me perfectly happy as a musician. I'm sorry not everyone has the same experience and have to deal with constant crashes and multiple hardware changes, but I really don't think the hardware is at fault here, sorry.

On 2005-07-15 11:08, symbiote wrote:
So if you count properly, that's 32 + 32 ASIO channels + 12 reverb delay lines + 32 channels being recorded, all going thru the same PCI bus (try doing this over FireWire hahaha.) Oh yeah, at the lowest ULLI settings too.

I call that 1) pretty amazing ans 2) pretty incredibly functionnal, and makes me perfectly happy as a musician. I'm sorry not everyone has the same experience and have to deal with constant crashes and multiple hardware changes, but I really don't think the hardware is at fault here, sorry.

mirrors my experience. the firewire comment makes me say, "exactly". i'll stick with the cards for the moment....

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: garyb on 2005-07-15 12:18 ]</font>

Well, ok for the 32 asio in and out...

Actually, firewire can do 24 in/out simultaneously in 24/96... at 1ms... no glitch/crackles or pops... (tascam DM24)

Also, if the 12 delays lines has to go over pci bus, that is bad design in my book...
Why oh why does the delay lines has to go to the pci bus? When the ram is onboard? Better yet, onchip? pff...

Oh, and where is all that IO? On the back plate of the pci card? Nah, it's in an external box. Like the A16U. Which is connected with....suspens...firewire!!!

So... Why the dsp chips aren't IN the breakout box? Why the ram isn't there too?

Ok, i have a firewire digital console here, running in 24/96 since the day i had it. 18 channels in/out, 4 midi in/out, with patchbay fonctionnalities, 9 motorized faders, knobs, buttons, etc...It even run without PC if need be. Oh, as a bonus, midi port can send sysex without crashing, while playing. all this for less that scope. Not the same thing, i agree, scope is about DSP devices. Lots of them, some are amazing, really.

So, all i wish for scope in the future, is to get MORE DSP POWER, cuz' this part i can't have else were. I still love my scope cards. But i surely will never buy no more PCI stuff just because it can do more asio channel that i wouldn't need, i couldn't care less.

I want DSP power with lots of real IO like adats, 32 adats would be good.

To integrate with just about anything an still benefit of all the scope technologies, all the research and development put into making awesome devices that are still unrivaled.

Drivers? asio stuff? wav driver that still doesn't work good? any sound blaster has a better wav driver...

If scope was SO good, you wouldn't need more that a stereo pair of asios... the record the master

All could be done inside the DSP box. And firewire would be more that adequate.

All this firewire shit is pointless, the real question is how good the design of it will be. Everything is about design and thinking about fresh idea how to make thing work better that what we have. Notice i said 'better' and not 'like'. People have to go forward, cw too. Innovate, invent, push things further.

That's how you stay alive.

Stop being retrograde!

So, you can actually say that the argument about channels and delays lines didn't convince me AT ALL.

My 0.02€

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2005-07-15 13:28 ]</font>

I personally have never been a big fan of firewire... I've found it's very dependent on the quality/integration of the firewire controller chipset, and it's a total lottery how good a motherboard is in this respect.

I really didn't post this to convince anyone of anything.

I'd much rather have the DACs/ADCs in a separate breakout box myself, as the more components you put in there, the more RF interference you will get. Thanks but no thanks. This would be terrible design in my book =P.

I wouldn't mind having RAM on the boards either, and the current RAM-less design might look as a bad design decision right now, but 6-8 years ago, when RAM was a bit more expensive, it probably made some sense. And I doubt they could make a newer board with RAM that is compatible with the current boards. Review what happened to Commodore with the Amiga for a good example of why it's usually preferable to have compatibility across platforms. With what is currently available in terms of CPU/Mobo, not having RAM on the DSP cards simply isn't an issue.

My point on this subject is, there is still PLENTY of PCI bandwidth available to record 32/64 channels AND have 12 reverb delay lines running, which I personally consider to be a bit of an overkill amount of reverbs for a single project (I generally don't use more than 5 ever.) What this means, in practice, is that whatever I might want to do, I'll have more than enough.

Yeah, the A16U uses Firewire connectors to communicate. Only 16 channels tho. Try it with 96 channels (32+32 ASIO and 32 going to harddrive) + 12 reverb delay lines over a single Firewire link. Tell me if it still works.

I can't imagine how you could want more DSP power. You can chain 3 15 DSP cards for a total of 45 DSPs, roughly 9 GFLOPS. I "only" have 18 and I never max it out.

Wave drivers? They've *always* worked well for me, and I mean always, in every situation. Games, listening to music, movies, DVDs, whatever, I've never had any problems, sorry. The only glitch I've had is playing back stuff from the CD drive, which I almost never do as I have all my stuff ripped to MP3/FLAC + have other CD players around. If this is a problem for you, I've found it possible to add a third-party card (I tried it with a Hoontech DS-XG) and have it coexist peacefully with the Creamware cards.

The current technology, i.e. PCI and RAM-less DSP cards are still perfectly capable of handling just about realistic recording situation you could throw at them, even if the design isn't "perfect." Who cares if it's bad design, if in practice it works perfectly and is completely invisible during use? There's like no space on the current boards to put a worthwhile amount of RAM anyway.

I mean, with RAM + DSP in the same box as the converters and only a single stereo ASIO output, you'd also need a harddrive or two in there. Upgradable CPU and RAM. Do you realize you'd just end up with something pretty identical to what you have right now? Except it'd probably be custom, would be harder to upgrade in the long run, would cost more to develop, produce, debug, ship. How is this better design exactly? It'd cost more and you'd have pretty much the same exact thing as right now. Just build yourself a second computer in a rackmount case and put the cards in them, and you'd pretty much have what you want.

Seriously, just get a Kyma if you want expandable DSP + RAM in a separate box. It's like 4000+ euros for the basic box with like 4 or 6 DSPs tho, don't think a Separate-Box-Thinger made by Creamware with a similar design would be any less expensive.

Bottom line, and reason for my post, my setup is pretty flawless, makes me happy, and lets me do everything I want. Sorry if yours doesn't. Can't say I'm really convinced that any of your suggestions would make it a significant difference as far as making, recording and producing music is concerned, nor a significant difference market-wise.

Bizarrely, USB and PCI gave me the same impression, and, on the contrary, my firewire console work as good on my main PC with a 27$ fw card than on my laptop with not alot of memry and integrated firewire 4pin plug than on
all the pc have had to use it on.

And, do you find it more easy finding a motherboard to run 2-3 scope cards? Really? Look a the problems solving forum

<edits>
oops, posting at the same times

So, your bussing out 16 stereo (or 32 mono) tracks from your sequencer to asio tracks to mix them in sfp? That's it?

Is it useful? I won't argue your way of working, you know why you do this. It doesn't fit mine thought.

That's too prove that both interfaces are needed maybe!? Is it that hard to put the freaking chip in a freaking box so everybody can use it on the hardware of their choice? Would it prevent you from having a PCI card also? I think the cost is about the same, and a good design for the firewire box would greatly benefit the pci card also. I'm thinking RAM here. CW already has the firewire technology and knowledge(a16U) remote interfacing of sfp (Noah and ASB). They CAN do great hardware also (asb, A16U). Why are we debating a choice that is clear for me! They HAVE to get the 2 interfaces out. That's my conclusion, and i'll stick with it unless proven otherwise, which i doubt.

You know that all this, is just blah blah and speculations, to make us scope fans endure the waiting for the next best thing to come, a cw release

On a side note, my setup is also flawless now. scope goes thru adats to my firewire console. Drivers are from the console, and no drivers at all are loaded into scope, not even midi ones. I exclusively use scope as it was hardware, real midi IOs, + adat a gogo

Love it that way. work perfectly. Hey, i'm driving cw synths with an external hardware sequencer! It's even better for my composition workflow than using nuendo and alike.

So, euh...., c ya laterz, going to load synthetic+interpole+flexor with a patch of mine and have fun a bit for now

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: marcuspocus on 2005-07-15 14:45 ]</font>

Some people have just some bad luck with these cards I think. I have type 1 and 2(project) cards in my pc and at a certain stage I also began to clean the contacts. Before that I replaced the cards in every possible pci slot. And at that point when the cleaning didn't help and I was planning to sell these cards I replaced them again (must be the 20th time i guess)and it worked...I don't know why, i didn't change anything! I cannot say what the reason was why it worked.And that's what frustrating me now.Altough I'm happy it works. I have basicly the same setup as garyb who has never got any problems. I wonder if it depends on the cards you are using..However I'm happy I solved these things just by not giving up with the prospect of such a wonderful musical environment insight.

a box MIGHT be better, yes. self contained memory, better efi shielding, all that great stuff, i agree. but then i couldn't afford it.

the pci card has made pro gear available for everyone. some people think it's too expensive, but then, some people don't know. for the moment, i'd like to see cards continue.

i'm still not against a box, especially if it could be integrated.....

So, your bussing out 16 stereo (or 32 mono) tracks from your sequencer to asio tracks to mix them in sfp? That's it?
Is it useful? I won't argue your way of working, you know why you do this. It doesn't fit mine thought.

Eh? No, not even remotely related to my way of working. What I described was purely a PCI-bus-loading test, to see how much stuff I could get going at once. I had 32 tracks of ASIO feeded with the same 2 A16U inputs going to the sequencer thru ASIO2 Dest. The sequencer was recording those 32 tracks (well, 16 stereo) to the SATA harddrive sitting the same PCI bus as the Creamware cards, and fed them back to SFP thru ASIO2 Source. I sent those to a STM1632 mixer, with 12 reverbs loaded as inserts and sent them to some analog dest. It was just some sort of real-situation-stress-test, to have all the PCI-sensitive operations (Card -> Seq, Seq -> Card, and effects-based memory access) running at the same time. I'll post some more ramblings about it in another more pertitnent post in a more pertinent thread in a more pertinent section (but with same amount of sensless ramblings =P) to describe it with pictures and and semi-coherent reasonings as to why I did it.

But yeah, I tend to bounce everything to audio before final mix down, and I mix everything in SFP. I don't really have a "set" or "preferred" way of working, I just whatever I need/want to get the sound I need. With a Virus setting on my desktop now, I really wouldn't even need to bounce anything to audio, but on the other hand I love to mangle and mutilate and time-reverse recordings and mash them up some more, so I'll just do whatever. 'tis what I like about these cards, I can just do whatever. I have Renoise (sorry, coming from tracker background =P) and more conventional sequencers available, and I'm strongly considering getting VDAT. I just adapt and stuff, and I guess it explains why I'm not too hot about the I-want-everything-in-VST crowd.

But hey, I'm 100% in favor of hardware boxes if I get to keep my PCI cards, I'm just worried at the additional costs. And what I mean by this, is (by no means a complete list):

1) The casing isn't free. You have to manufacture it, then put the finished PCB in it, hook up the interfaces, and do some testing. Will cost more than just a PCI card.

2) The casing needs a power supply of some sort. It makes shipping the units pricier than shipping just a PCI card.

3) You need to rewrite/modify the software to make programming thru Firewire/USB possible. I don't know enough about SFP to know how much this would require, but I really doubt it would be cheap, especially if you want it to run on multiple platforms.

4) You'll need additional ICs on the board to handle stuff such as programming the DSPs thru Firewire, interface stuff if you want some sort of preset/project loading without being connected to a computer, etc, all unecessary on a PCI card. While the ICs can be pretty cheap, making them talk to each other nicer and without glitches can be more expensive. This also means major PCB redesign, it'll be bigger and cost more to manufacture.

5) Interface stuff and LCD screen to display preset/program loading. I'm talking crude program loading type of stuff, not full graphical interface thing.

6) Harddrive to keep all the devices and presets/programs close by should you want to use the device by itself.

7) Memory to handle all the custom software, and some basic effects stuff.

Bigger and heavier overall packaging, so higher shipping costs to distributors, shops, vendors, individuals.

9) VST integration. Go ask ex-Waldorf and current Access engineers what they think about this one =P.

10) If you want multiple DACs, add more costs still. Bigger/additional PCB, pretty good isolation and current filtering to prevent all those other gimmicks from adding noise to your signal, etc etc.

By this time, you almost have a full computer going on in there, except it's custom PCBs with custom development and custom software.

The "cheap" way to do this would just be to jam some embedded x86 stuff like AMD Geode or those VIA (*shudder*) thingers, or micro-atx board into the case, but even then it's still PCI Card vs PCI Card + PSU + embedded computer + memory + harddisk + additional testing + porting SFP to Linux to not have to be royalties/license to Microsoft (porting it to Linux would be a pretty good investment tho.) And the hardware isn't the pricy part, it's the paying the salaries to the engineers that will have to sit down and make all this work that's going to kill your profit margin.

Compare this with just swapping the current 60/66MHz DSPs with application-compatible 200MHz. Application-compatible usually entails similar/compatible pin counts and either binary compatibility or just a need to recompile the C code with an updated compiler.

So I'm not sure how you can argue that both will cost the same. They might distribute the overall cost incurred to both systems, in which case they will cost the same, but definitely more comparatively to what you pay now.

And performance-wise, if the Firewire interface is sitting on the PCI bus, it'll be PCI vs PCI + Firewire. Both should be entirely low enough to have it no matter too much, but the PCI card will still have the slight upper hand for the lower cost. If Firewire sits straight in the chipset without going thru the PCI bus, then I'd guess they're going to be similar.

If you want them to be the same price, you'd have to sacrifice ALOT of stuff, to the point of making the Firewire box a simple accelerated-DSP-plugins box similar to the other ones currently on the market. I don't think this is a bad idea, in fact I'd say it's probably preferable (since less expensive) as a start, and maybe work on a full-fledged Firewire solution in the long run. But however they do it, it is always going to be more expensive than a naked PCI card (and BTW, by PCI I just mean card-sitting-on-bus, it can be PCI PCIe PCIx PCId PCIfoo ISA EISA or whatever other bus-type interface around.) It's mostly a matter of "how" much more expensive it'll be, or how much less it'll do. This will impact the cost of the hardware, and probably the cost of plugins.

That's why I said you could just build your own "independant box" with the current PCI cards (and this is something I plan to do, probably to drive Live PA systems.) Find a nice shielded rackmount case that'll do one or two PCI cards. Put some ADAT on both cards, control them with MIDI, put it in your rack with your amps or effects box, and you'll pretty much have what you describe. With a KVM you can have it all on a single screen/keyboard/mouse, or you can get some small 7/9" LCD screen to have it standalone. If you feel courageous you could even cut out a hole in the rackmount case and jam the LCD in there (doable with a 4U rackmount case.) or use it without mouse, keyboard or screen if you just put the correct startup project. This would be fine with say two Pulsar 2 for alot of situations, like Live PA driving, or live gig. Just load all your devices in the startup project, feed them Progam Changes messages to switch presets, hook them up to signal switchers that'll let you cycle thru your different signal chains with a pedal sending CCs.

I can understand how this might seem daunting and/or much too time consuming, but it's definitely possible. Obviously it would be pretty neat (but much pricier still, sorry =P) to have such a product available off the shelf, but I just don't think it's a good idea to consider it right away, as it's definitely an R&D monster. And it's going to be a bigger pain to support for them, as all those additional gimmicks only mean more things that can fail and necessitate more shipping and reparation and stuff.

Anyway, if you are happy with your setup, I'm not sure why you reacted to my post, except for the little Firewire thing. And the other problem with this Firewire thing, is that it's an interface standard/specification that can change in the future just as easily as the PCI standard.

What would make the cards alot more flexible, in my opinion, is multi-client ASIO (or any low latency protocol standard, I wouldn't mind something not designed by Steinberg myself =P) to let people use whatever soundcard they want with Creamware plugins, and some VST-like standard that would make integrating hardware less shitty. Creamware can't really do anything about these, this is an operating system and native audio programs vendors issue.

On 2005-07-15 17:14, garyb wrote:
the pci card has made pro gear available for everyone.

Right on!

......power to the people.....

I could care less what you think so just keep posting and see if I stop. I won't. In fact the more personal attacks you make against me. The more negative feedback I am going to give. Maybe 10 fold.

On 2005-07-15 11:08, symbiote wrote:
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll :

In the context of the Internet, a troll is a message that seems to at least one user to be inaccurate, inflammatory or hostile, which by effect or design causes a disruption in discourse. The word is also often used to describe a person posting such messages.

---8<---

It's a very well defined concept at this point, as it was highly popular on UseNet, and the first post in this thread fit the definition perfectly. Anyone who spent more than 5 seconds on this forum *knows* this type of post will cause reaction, and wether the poster was pissed off or not at the time of posting is completely irrelevant as to the troll-ish nature of the post.

Mind you, braincell, I find "Troll" to be a still pretty civilized type of insult. I could be a whole lot more poetic and tell you how much of a complete f*cking r*tarded sh*t-brained clueless drivel-spouting discord-formenting random-trolling mindless constant-code-18 garbage-eating smelly trisomic monkey you are, but I prefer to stay civil, and you've also proven that you can provide reasonable discourse once in a while when you make the effort, so I stick to the tried-and-true "Troll" "insult", which in this case wasn't directed at you by the way.

Obviously, if you keep tauting me randomly like that, I'll just keep on throwing the verbal garbage back in your general direction, hoping for a spectacular collision.

As for my music, it's not for me to judge wether it's original or not, but I can assure you I'll make sure you never get to hear it.

Getting back a bit more on-topic, I've just finished setting up and testing my new AMD64-based setup. I'll post more detailed information and benchmarks in some other thread this weekend probably, but my initial tests show that I can load 12 MasterVerbs in a STM1632 mixer, with 32 ASIO channels going to Samplitude, getting recorded, and getting sent back thru 32 ASIO channels back into that STM1632 mixer with the reverbs, without a single glitch, pop, crackle, slowdown, lag, or whatever. It's absolutely flawless. And that's recording on a SATA drive, which sits on the PCI bus on this motherboard. So if you count properly, that's 32 + 32 ASIO channels + 12 reverb delay lines + 32 channels being recorded, all going thru the same PCI bus (try doing this over FireWire hahaha.) Oh yeah, at the lowest ULLI settings too.

I call that 1) pretty amazing ans 2) pretty incredibly functionnal, and makes me perfectly happy as a musician. I'm sorry not everyone has the same experience and have to deal with constant crashes and multiple hardware changes, but I really don't think the hardware is at fault here, sorry.

Whew! Hot topic

Is it summer over there or something?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: wayne on 2005-07-19 01:35 ]</font>

Well I just found this discouse when looking for something else.

I must say I also have problems with CW, but they are usually fixed eventually. My latest one (yesterday) was it suddenly not recognising Mixer Pack 1. Despite having used it for years! And not rekeying it with Allkeys.

So I just replace it with a different mixer. Timewasting etc, luckily not in middle of pro job. But big investment in CW means locked in. CW support will sort it out on Monday.

And it does sound great and is fun to use.
So keep on fiddling about it and usually works in the end.
I use lots of the newer VST synths as well, the CW still sound better.

I run a 6-dsp SCOPE card as THE audio interface on a mac g4 in OS 9.2.2 with absolutely no problems whatsoever (except the occassional user error) - almost 2 years now. Rock solid.

no problem at all for me although i use several cards... except when i did mistakes when installing. So for me those cards are very reliable on a clean and well run computer...