PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

LunaMan wrote: Fri Sep 08, 2023 5:16 pm Sharc DSP is EOL for DAW workstations. M1 took care of that.

If true, I wonder why analog devices https://www.analog.com/en/index.html isn´t bankrupt already.



Bud

DAW applications are just a tiny fraction of their portfolio.
They earn a lot with guitar pedals, car audio, let alone TigerSharcs for medical, military or cellphone processing.
And of course sophisticated industrial solutions...

astroman wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 5:41 am DAW applications are just a tiny fraction of their portfolio.
They earn a lot with guitar pedals, car audio, let alone TigerSharcs for medical, military or cellphone processing.
And of course sophisticated industrial solutions...

Yeah,- my post was meant ironically,- almost.
I don´t see SCOPE as a typical DAW application in the sense of Logic, Cubendo, Studio One etc., etc.,- especially ´cause former Creamware and S|C hardware aren´t mainly typical audio interfaces/soundcards and M1, M2 and upcoming M3 are Apple products exclusively.



Bud

“Synthesizers are dead since the M1 Mac”
“Effects units are dead since the M1 Mac”
“Mixers are dead since the M1 Mac”
….

Bud Weiser wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 12:37 pm Yeah,- my post was meant ironically,- almost.

as I suspected, but anyway...

The M Macs (and mobile devices) are nice machines, energy efficient and great audio performance.
Their sound processing is strangely „over-precise“, maybe technically close to perfect, but not pleasing to the ear if it’s the origin of every source in a mix.
It just doesn‘t sound right...

valis wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 7:13 pm “Synthesizers are dead since the M1 Mac”
“Effects units are dead since the M1 Mac”
“Mixers are dead since the M1 Mac”
….

M1 Mac is dead since M2 Mac and the latter will be dead when M3 comes Q4 this year.
As always when it comes to Mac.

And, IIRC,- S|C "Joana" and it´s software shall be Mac compatible when released, no ?



Bud

astroman wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 12:12 am

Bud Weiser wrote: Sat Sep 09, 2023 12:37 pm Yeah,- my post was meant ironically,- almost.

as I suspected, but anyway...

The M Macs (and mobile devices) ... sound processing is strangely „over-precise“, maybe technically close to perfect, but not pleasing to the ear if it’s the origin of every source in a mix.
It just doesn‘t sound right...

Well, a friend (label owner) I´m working for came over w/ his new M2 Macbook Pro and we checked out the NI Komplete 14 upgrade.
It´s a powerful machine and it sounded surprisingly good just only from it´s built-in speaker system while we were sitting in the yard tinkering w/ NI devices.
But the investment ...
Over 3K EUR for a laptop w/ just only ONE M.2 (1TB) of storage,- and no way to upgrade the drive later.

The upgrade from M1 to M2 seems to be not the biggest step up for audio.
The M3 upgrade is promised to be the way better upgrade from M1.

We´ll see ...



Bud

Hi Bud!
Dante Virtual Soundcard has a minimum latency of 4ms "for the network" PLUS whatever you set for Dante ASIO driver itself (can be as low as 32 samples) PLUS whatever you set for a buffer in-between Dante ASIO and the network (could be as little as 1ms).
i have my netork at 4ms, asio at 128 and inbetween buffer at 3ms.. it ends up being 7ms one way. could set lower perhaps but it's ok.
if you wanna really low latency Dante (ns range for the network) - gotta have a dedicated hardware card for it.

Lunaman: intel i9 13900 is faster than both M1 or M2 whatever, and i still use sh4rc scope and sh4rc uad with it because it's the software that matters, the algos, the sound or the workflow you get.
could i do without it? of course! there are native plugins even bundled to DAWs which more or less cut it.
and even so without an M1 ;P
now fast forward to current trends M1 is sooo slow for Ai - put an Nvidia card to an intel pc and enjoy tenfold speed increase ;p
the only thing M1 brought besides complete sofware backwards incompatibility (again!..) is previously unseen battery life for given performance - that concerns laptops, mostly. for desktop you can go faster with Intel and still use your old programs

I want to go back to Logic Pro 4.7 on my ancient PC when I first met Scope. I was so much more productive because it was evolving so fast and had so much fun.

Now I have more apps on my phone than time to explore, and there’s so many options it feels like doing email.

pranza wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:02 am Hi Bud!
Dante Virtual Soundcard has a minimum latency of 4ms "for the network" PLUS whatever you set for Dante ASIO driver itself (can be as low as 32 samples) PLUS whatever you set for a buffer in-between Dante ASIO and the network (could be as little as 1ms).
i have my netork at 4ms, asio at 128 and inbetween buffer at 3ms.. it ends up being 7ms one way. could set lower perhaps but it's ok.
if you wanna really low latency Dante (ns range for the network) - gotta have a dedicated hardware card for it.

Lunaman: intel i9 13900 is faster than both M1 or M2 whatever, and i still use sh4rc scope and sh4rc uad with it because it's the software that matters, the algos, the sound or the workflow you get.
could i do without it? of course! there are native plugins even bundled to DAWs which more or less cut it.
and even so without an M1 ;P
now fast forward to current trends M1 is sooo slow for Ai - put an Nvidia card to an intel pc and enjoy tenfold speed increase ;p
the only thing M1 brought besides complete sofware backwards incompatibility (again!..) is previously unseen battery life for given performance - that concerns laptops, mostly. for desktop you can go faster with Intel and still use your old programs

Thx for the info on Dante Virtual Soundcard !

The Intel i9 13900 KF is a monster, but also wants alot of energy (125 - 253 watts).
The other you mentioned above wants up to 219 watts.

The Apple M processors for Macbook Pro are VERY energy efficient and keep very cool for what they do.



Bud

i got the E version which is spec'ed lower than the base 13900 yet it also kicks up above 200W for short loads... but the 'base' power is 65W and overall it goes cooler than i7 4790 i previously had (maybe i'll put that mobo with 4PCI and that processor here for sale - it's really fine)

the thing about 13900E is that it supports "intel time coordinated computing" which is an approach to realtime-guaranteed execution but the software must be written specifically for that... so perhaps that choice was in vain unless i write some ASIO driver myself and a Scope driver with functioning XTC without blue screens hehe.

Apple M is cool and has much better integrated video than intel's but i doubt they'll ever write a Scope driver for it ;o

i'm playing a lot with Scope's blue screens lately, making notes of causes, even attached a debugger but without a help of some S|C 'insider' i don't think this is going anywhere. sometimes i can get it to work fine until next reboot - still can't get what decides whether it will be a lucky or unlucky boot though. the portal often opens just after uninstalling some updates and toggling system protection features on-off.. so i have two updates which i roll back and forth to be able to get into that. thought it was something with windows PatchGuard https://github.com/Mattiwatti/EfiGuard which evolved but it seems that not really. it's something else and it's really annoying because it CAN work. maybe it's some RAM allocation which sometimes happens above some address and doesn't work (as xtc comes from x32 times). maybe some registry tweaks could be made for scope .sys files, i don't know... yet the people who wrote all that should definitely know where to look...

pranza wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:41 am i got the E version which is spec'ed lower than the base 13900 yet it also kicks up above 200W for short loads... but the 'base' power is 65W and overall it goes cooler than i7 4790 i previously had (maybe i'll put that mobo with 4PCI and that processor here for sale - it's really fine)

My main DAW is still i74790K,- never had a heat problem.
Which board is it you´re talking about ?
Do the PCI slots deliver 5 Volts ?

pranza wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:41 am Apple M is cool and has much better integrated video than intel's but i doubt they'll ever write a Scope driver for it ;o

Not SCOPE/XITE.
S|C Joana was announced to support Windows, Linux and MacOS machines.
At least, that´s the target,- and I guess, the softwar4 will be the "new XTC".
If it will be realized and when being available is unknown.

pranza wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 11:41 am i'm playing a lot with Scope's blue screens lately,

Are you talkin´ ´bout SCOPE 7 (32 or 64Bit) ???

When SCOPE v7 was released, S|C clearly stated XTC isn´t included, doesn´t work and will be released as a separate application in future.
I don´t understand why users pick always on XTC,- it´s gone.
You can use w/ Scope v5.1,- but v5.1 drivers aren´t for Win10 and 11.



Bud

pranza wrote: Sun Sep 10, 2023 2:02 am Lunaman: intel i9 13900 is faster than both M1 or M2 whatever, and i still use sh4rc scope and sh4rc uad with it because it's the software that matters, the algos, the sound or the workflow you get.
could i do without it? of course! there are native plugins even bundled to DAWs which more or less cut it.
and even so without an M1

I use sh4rc scope and sh4rc uad also but on the Mac side of course I can only use sh4rc uad. Also I cant use sh4rc uad PCI octo on a Mac Studio easily, but I find I don't need it anymore. Many of the once uad sh4rc only plugins now run natively on the M1 so thats what I see as a benefit arising from Apple Silicon - the load balancing capability in Luna is superb. Of course the existing sh4rc based hardware is great but I just dont see any new R&D for any new sh4rc outboard daw music related stuff.

Bud> the board i'm talking about is Fujitsu D3236-S, PCI 3.5V and 5V compatible.

yes i'm still on scope 5.1 because as you mentioned xtc apparently doesn't work on later version - and without it or vdat there is hardly any use except for standalone 'external' synth/fx box kind of thing which on the other end is tied to.. a pci and a desktop computer . i'd rather have it in xtc and no asio and no wdm - basically as an uad or powercore... as it's inside of a computer anyway - why not inside of a DAW? Scope's phase alignment between mixder channels is random and i learned it decades ago the hard way - you load it up and it sounds different than the time you saved it! DAW takes care of channel alignment and there XTC-wrapped scope things behave consistently.

scope's legacy is not the i/o - you can get similar i/o [except for alesis adat/sync integration which again is messed up in v7] from any company in any attachment format – usb or pci(e) and what not - but you cannot get scope plugins any other way but with scope cards!
cutting vst support out of a rich ecosystem instead of making it available to vst hosts which nowadays is the dominant way of using audio modules in DAWs is the most stupid thing that one could come up with.
or perhaps not - UAD made this "luna" thingie - a proprietary "daw" that runs on macs only and some of their plugins are available only for that - and people and swearing - not because Luna is bad, but because they want it their way as usual - a VST module to be used in a DAW of choice. SFP is Luna of the Scope. would UAD ever dare cutting vst out of their ecosystem and leaving it to proprietary software? that's what S|C did with v7.

scope 5.1 drivers work on win 10/11 yet with the old and even new problems that they had.

joana sounds interesting but it's basically whatever one can dream of and yet nothing actual. if they can't make it on existing hardware how they are going to port it to the new one without getting into even more trouble? wasn't it that with Xite they messed syncplate thing and it's not solved yet? it worked fine on the PCI. how are they going to realize plugin migration to joana? scope plugins are always tied to a board.

as they're manufacturing PCI boards as S|C now again it would also make sense to write software for them, not for some hypothetical new boards that will be obsolete by the time they are released anyway.
just continuing scope legacy and ensuring backwards compatibility - that would make sense. the heyday of was in the nineties / 00s, most of the value coms from the the stuff that has already been made, the only thing is to make it accessible on today's machines.
and they kinda started doing it, but veered of. what was the case? too low sales for v 5.1 and xite?

pranza wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:07 am ... Scope's phase alignment between mixder channels is random and i learned it decades ago the hard way - you load it up and it sounds different than the time you saved it! DAW takes care of channel alignment and there XTC-wrapped scope things behave consistently.

Never noticed that... :o

... how are they going to realize plugin migration to joana? scope plugins are always tied to a board.

Most plugins use that kind of protection, but it‘s not necessary at all. ;)

astroman > viewtopic.php?p=348075&hilit=mixer+phase#p348075

Scope's phase alignment between mixer channels is random and i learned it decades ago the hard way - you load it up and it sounds different than the time you saved it! DAW takes care of channel alignment and there XTC-wrapped scope things behave consistently.

This is only true for PCI cards, because there isn't the option to assign devices to specific DSPs, while on the Xite-1 you can save the DSP assignments with the project and also on the Xite there is much power to fit one mixer on the same DSP.

I have mixed several songs with the STM on the PCI cards back in the 2000, the phase alignment was not bad at all, but for the best result, all the final mix session must be done in one go.


XTC mode is not much different than routing a Minimax into ASIO, enable live monitoring on your DAW track, then route the track out to ASIO again. The same applies for the effects.

pranza wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:07 am Bud> the board i'm talking about is Fujitsu D3236-S, PCI 3.5V and 5V compatible.

Thx, I´ll investigate ...

pranza wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:07 am joana sounds interesting but it's basically whatever one can dream of and yet nothing actual. if they can't make it on existing hardware how they are going to port it to the new one without getting into even more trouble?

When "Joana" was announced, they said it is expected to be ready in 1 year.
So I guess it might appear @NAMM or Musikmesse.
AFAIK, It´s not for SCOPE,- so I dunno what to port over.
I can imagine, the new ASIO driver will be for both,- SCOPE 8 and Joana (and it´s upcoming related software).
But it´s all speculation for the time being.

pranza wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 10:07 am wasn't it that with Xite they messed syncplate thing and it's not solved yet? it worked fine on the PCI. how are they going to realize plugin migration to joana? scope plugins are always tied to a board.

Joana will be a hardware device working different than SCOPE PCI cards or XITE.
I dunno what that means for the upcoming software,- but I guess and hope SCOPE/XITE and Joana will exist side-by-side in harmony still.

XITE and SCOPEv7.0:
BNC wordclock works for some users and doesn´t for other users,- possibly system dependent.
MOST users don´t need that at all and there´s the option using a different sync source,- p.ex. AES !
My masterclock outputs AES, so for me, that´s the alternative until BNC will be fixed.

All your other lines sound too negative to me.
Be happy you´re able to use discontinued SCOPE PCI cards and ancient SCOPE devices from Creamware times officially on relatively modern machines and Windows XP up to Win10.
Sonic Core is one of these rare hard- and software companies offering such support,- possibly the one and only.
And don´t forget it´s a very small company.

For me, SCOPE is a great soundsource, FX device and very flexible router and I never used XTC.
VST plugins are comfortable but not the holy grail for me and my life is relatively independend from computers and smartphone.
The latter I don´t use at all up to now and I don´t miss much.
OTOH, computers are great helpers when they run the tools I want or need.
In this repect "to each his own" rules.



Bud

djmicron wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 2:33 pm I have mixed several songs with the STM on the PCI cards back in the 2000, the phase alignment was not bad at all, but for the best result, all the final mix session must be done in one go.

You´re welcome !
Wasn´t that the rule in the big commercial studios of the 70s and 80s anyway, when there was no or almost no total recall available and minimum two 24-track 2" reel-to-reel ran in sync to a Zeta3 or whatelse synchronizer?
They had to be fast before the tapes were worn out.
I remember engineers mixing 2 songs a day and when someone needed several days for mixing a song it was crap always because of his deaf ears and/or lack of knowledge and routine.

With more and more digital technology in progress,- which truly offered and offers big advantages,- discipline decreased.
The people became lazy and got used to "post editing/production" and recording hundreds of snippets and takes for later "comping".
Singers fail,- don´t mind,- there´s Melodyne.
And what comes out is very often something you can do w/ 8 tracks and a bit of outboard gear in less than 1 day.
That´s the truth.
Listen to all that s##t in the web,- it´s insane !



Bud

pranza wrote: Fri Sep 15, 2023 1:19 pm astroman > viewtopic.php?p=348075&hilit=mixer+phase#p348075

Thanks for the link.
Bottomline seems to be it only strikes if you have the same source on parallel paths AND you modify the project in a way that triggers DSP rearrangement.
I‘m using Dynamic Mixer(s) only and have that „DSP checkbox“ set, never use parallel compression or eq, rarely stack Scope synths, almost never creating presets. Stems are finally mixed in SAW Studio, usually with Valhallla reverbs.
Looks like I‘m pretty immune to the effect, but indeed I once noticed a shift on a null test. Now I know the reason