PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Does it matter what kind of computer you have when you want more polyfony? I'm asking this because i have only 15 voices of my sts-5000 sampler with no synths and some effects on a pulsar 2. ( Or is it time for a scope? )

Hi,
I don't know the real answer.
I have lots of dsps, but if I put 64 on the live-bar's polyphony for an STS5000, it uses more dsp up that if I use two STS2000p's at 32 voices each. Either way, filling up the samplers with samples doesn't seem to change my dsp usage.
The "Forward" part of the STS5000 manual mentions that the time-stretching, formant correction, and other functions of the STS5000 use up some of your cpu's resources, and affect the voice count. If you use those functions.
I see that you can change the polyphony fields on each program line of the sampler, and on the live bar. I suppose the live bar's is the total polyphony you can get at any one time.
I'm finding that my equipment is really a lot more than I need. One Pulsar, some samples and a sequencing/audio recording program can do just about everything.

Hi Cream,

A computer's processing power shouldn't matter much. The main CPU eater is SFP's GUI, which can cause annoying spikes in CPU usage - that's the main reason why many of us run SFP in Low Priority mode. Maybe if you applied that tweak, try running SFP back in Normal Priority mode.

These cards have been around for about 8 years, running great on for example 440BX P2 and 815 P3 machines. Graphics were much slower though.

Another backdraft of a slower machine is often the PCI bus, which will cause higher latencies and less reverbs etc. This may also be noticeable with samplers, altho some reverbs use up to 200 channels, PCI consumption comparable to 200 poly sampler. So if you can load a couple of 2-3 reverbs, your PCI bus should be strong enough for decent sample polyphony.
Monitor your CPU load from task manager, as Pete explained some effects in the STS5000 use CPU. Also async DSP usage is CPU related, but I don't know how precisely..

at0m.

With my 7-dsp-system I can load up to 40-48 voices in my STS-4000 WITHOUT effects. Depends on how fat are your sample programs.
I think, a 15-dsp-Scope is not necessary only to increase the polyphony of STS. The pci-bus is the bottleneck, not the number of dsps.
Let's wait on pci-express ...

Thomas

thanx for your replies..