PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Stardust, I've read your posts above & all over the rest of the forum in the past 12month+ taliking so negatively about Scope's maintenance & software bundling etc (bla bla bla), but did you even troll through the list of suggestions Casar sent to S|C? I mean they ain't gonna be doing stuff like getting any Native VST to run on your dsps in any hurry. No offence.

Brotha' Man Casar,

I bought into the platform for the same reasons as you, Bowen Synths, and the B2003.

I heard the Logic Hammond emulation and even though it sounded excellent on the demo, my Logic pal A/B'd it on his Genelecs for me, and the DSP emulation was so much more realistic.

I have since purchased everything I liked from Creamware in hardware. and am on the list for Solaris pre paid.

That left me basically w/ a 45 DSP DAW for a giant Modular project w/ custom mixers and FX. I have had nothing but trouble when loading multiple Modular projects, and many of the sounds I like are locked polyphony modules.

But alas, SpaceF has made a new multi-timbral 4 way synth where I can use Flexor III, SpaceF, Wolf, and RD II Modules, and achieve what I wanted in Modular through his design.

I am currently making a 32 MIDI channel recording project using Wolf's 32 channel mixer, w/ various Modular devices instead of using Modular for synths only, and a 32 MIDI channel live project that's an all SpaceF design using the FB5 and MB4 multi BUSS blessing.

I can run an astounding number of Plug's and FX.

Gigastudio 4 will run all of my VSTi's.

My original design plans have changed, but I have adjusted to this new concept and pray that Mehdi's synth is the solution. The most incredible aspect of it, he usually can add little things you ask for as time goes by.
I know of no other platform where you can design your future in such a way.

Thanks to all of the SDK guys as well, making devices based on requests. That is awesome.

MCCY, Shroomz, Sharc, Hifiboom, j9k, megerov,.........................the list is long and distinguished, like my johnson.


This Is The Platform......Period.

Back in '99 I was initially impressed by the synths (what there was) - and I'm NOT a big synth guy.

Most of all I was impressed by the routability, flexibility, and of course the SOUND.

Pulsar I (pre-Scope) was unstable on my system, and I often ran out of DSP's with even smaller mixers and no reverb!

Nowadays it's evolved to 3 Scope cards and WAY more than I need in flexibility and horsepower.

And Scope still sounds awesome!

Greg

stardust wrote:none taken. nor the allegation.

I didn't mean to be seem confrontational Stardust. It's just really sh*t to see so much negativity & whining because I happen to think we're all really lucky with regards to the Scope product & it's ongoing support given all of the circumstances. It's interesting to think of whether certain types of public commenting actually help in general. Still, in retrospect it's not my place to dig people up for expressing their opinions, since we should all be able to do that freely.

Hi,

Well, for me it have been a chaotic relationship!
Back 98, I evaluated the board and was not impressed by the synths (close to the Pro Five), FM7 was announced and there were KORG card close to release. I decided to stay with my DS2416 and SW1000 (I still have them!).
When Korg released its OASYS, there were a promo for a bundle of STS 3000 wityh the card. Ther Korg card was unstable with my DS2416, so I got the creamware bundle.
When they upgraded the STS (more filters, ...and introduced STS4000) the board was too short so I bought a SRB. A big mistake! I had so much troubles that I removed the cards and keep going with my DS2416. this situation perpetuated for 1 and a half year.

Then they announced the "XTC for all" offer. I took a strange decision: I got the offer bundled with an upgrade of my pulsar 1 to a 15 DSP board! Again a bit chaotic but gonzoft saved my days with his tips. Then I discovered John's synth and the race to more DSP, more synths begun!

Now, everything is close to perfect and I would not trade them for others even if these STDM cables are annoying when they get looses!

cheers

Michel

Stardust, I've read your posts above & all over the rest of the forum in the past 12month+ taliking so negatively about Scope's maintenance & software bundling etc (bla bla bla

Shroomz, I suppose you make confusion : sound you talk rather about me !

maybe a good workaround to avoid they think we are all Skyzophrenic consumer is to often choose the former name of CreamWAR when talkin about worst, and singing all together the name of SoNICE Core when makin compliment...

singing...that make me thing that a good harmonizer would be a good addon for the next pluggin pack...

Personally, I think it would be quite unrealistic to expect long term Scope users to have no gripes whatsoever with the platform or the way in which it has been supported or developed over the years. Of course mistakes have been made (this is only natural in business) and at the end of the day Creamware, CW Audio and even now SC can't expect to please everyone with the decisions they make. They can only try their best (which I am sure they are doing as we speak).

Of course this is a public forum and I think the odd idiot who comes on here calling us all 'fanboys' or whatever might actually have a point if it weren't for those of us who choose to have a moan/grumble when we feel hard done by. That said... Continually repeating yourself in this respect, doesn't help anyone (except possibly yourself ). It certainly doesn't help to put the platform in a good light (like it deserves to be) as far as potential new users are concerned. Let's face it, I'm sure most would agree that the Pro's of being a Scope user FAR outweigh the Con's, so why persist with highlighting the con's over and over again ?

Anyways, back to the the topic in question

My first 'Scope' card was the 3 dsp Powersampler. Until then I'd been using a DS2416 and decided to boost the power of my main DAW while setting up a 2nd system to deal with the sampling side of things.

I'd read all the reviews of the CW Pulsar ('The king of soundcards' they all called it) and was very impressed. I have to admit though that the price tag was a little discouraging - especially when I could buy the Powersampler with ADAT expansion, an SW1000XG and PLG-150AN for about the same price. For those who don't remember, the Powersampler initially came with an STS-3000, a basic mixer and 2 or 3 effects. It was a very good deal. There wasn't much in the way of competition on the DAW sampling side of things at the time and the STS was '32-bit'. I stuck with the Yamaha cards in my main DAW for some time and to be honest the 20+ ms latency didn't really bother me. I have to admit though, that I was very impressed with the next to zero latency performance of the Powersampler ASIO. It was just the mixer aspect that kept me loyal to the Yamaha (software mixers at the time were, to put it bluntlly, CRAP ...and they still are IMO ). The Powersampler mixer, although sounding good, was just too basic.

It was only really when CW decided to give 3 dsp card owners the ability to run other Scope plugs that I began to realise what I was missing. The free plugs on offer were excellent. Thanks to Mr Wavelength especially, I now had a Juno and Minimoog running in my DAW. Despite what we may now think of the U-KNOW and Miniscope, they put all VST's to shame back then. Then there was the routing options (WOW!!). In general, it was just the overall quality of the system that got me hooked.

Now, in all honesty, I can't see me switching soundcard ...period. Even when my Scope cards finally die of old age and PCI is a forgotten standard, I'll still replace them (and the PC) 2nd hand if I have to. Possibly this wouldn't be the case had I not got the free SDK - another masterstroke from CW imo - but I did and it is

Long live Scope

I had a SW1000 back in '99 or so, but was having trouble driving it from my sequencer - all the things like mixing and effects were in hardware. OK piano sound though. Then I saw pictures of the Scope platform interface and was intrigued with the flexibility, both in connections and the fact you could use it for instruments or mixing. So I got a (4 DSP) Pulsar 1 in '99 before the P2 came out. And it was great.

And I've been keeping up with the upgrades, so it's currently a 4.5 system - it does fine for smaller amounts of voices on the more power-hungry synths. Every now and then I neglect it for a while and do more software-synth based things (e.g. Korg Legacy Digital), but recently I've put the card and a PIII motherboard in a DVD-player-sized box so I can use it more standalone, and connect to it from my laptop via ADAT and VNC over ethernet for the interface.

However, card upgrades always seemed quite expensive, so I always stayed with the one 4-DSP card. And the software is much more stable these days compared to release 1!

I also have a Novation Remote 25, DSI Evolver, Korg Z1 and Alesis Micron. But I'm really a guitar player :-)