PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

ive had this pulsar II for about 3 days and im ready to throw it out of the window

all i want to do is control my outboard synths via midi in cubase and record the results back into cubase as audio

i also wouldnt mind using the vsti`s that came with the card but i find that if your running the scope platform you cant use these. on the other hand if i use it in xtc mode i cant here any sound.

im really pulling my hair out here

is there anyway of doing the above, perhapes someone could give me guidance with a picture of the routing

without being able to do the above i feel i have made a mistake paying a stupid amount of money upgrading my audiophile?

rant over.................and breath........

cool forum btw

(In Michael Winner voice:) Calm down dear, it's only a soundcard...

First off you're not going to 'get' SCOPE in just three days. There are plenty of example projects here to give you some idea. Believe me once you've cracked it in your mind you won't be regretting it.

Stick to SCOPE mode first (why not download SCOPE 4 while you're at it?). Also check for the classic 'Play in Background' function on Cubase (dunno where it is in your version, sorry) and make sure it's switch on otherwise every time you go to SCOPE everything will come to a grinding halt.

Initially there's no real reason to record the SCOPE synths, why not use them 'live' (ie. via MIDI) through a SCOPE mixer back into Cubase, although once you're addicted to the sound you may wish to bounce so you can free up some DSP for more SCOPE synths.

Mr A

PS. Are you in London?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Mr Arkadin on 2004-09-26 12:11 ]</font>

It's not what you want to hear, but read the manual.

Creamware is steep learning curve. It's not just a soudcard that works out of the box.

It requires a huge amount of work on your part to understand the routing concepts.

How long did it take for you to learn how to use your sequencer?

3 days is just the beginning. You may be right that you have spent too much money on a card that is way more versstile than you need.

Still, it's inputs to outputs, just like in the real world.

I think there are some "basic" projects somewhere on the site here.

http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... forum=14&1

Maybe this will give you a starting point?

R

beat me to it!

hee

Worry not young Jedi. The pitfalls are many but the rewards are legion! Or maybe it's the other around. Just make sure you keep that lightsaber handy, and don't forget to change the battery once in a while, nothing worse than facing a Sith Lord with a dead saber (of course, they never show that in the movies!@#)

So basically, the MIDI part is what I showed in my other post. The Audio part will look something like this:



About the most basic setup you can get. The Scope Analog Source and Dest are the audio inputs of the card (yours will probably be PulsarII or whatnot,) and they're in the Hardware IO section. The ASIO2 devices (for some reason, the ASIO1 devices aren't stable) are the audio streams to and from the sequencer (or whatever software is using the ASIO drivers.) These devices are in the Software IO section. You can use 16bit ones if you want, I've just used the 24bit ones for this example.

This setup will take audio from the analog input, and send it to your sequencer, where you can record it (that's the top part.) The other connection will take audio from your sequencer and send it to the analog output, so that you can hear what's going on.

To get more channels in and out of your sequencer, you can double-click either ASIO2 devices and a little window will show up that will let you adjust the number of ins and outs. Now you can take all those outputs and shove them in a mixer and go straight to heaven! Or anything else you might want/imagine. Multiple ASIO inputs will let you record a bunch of tracks at the same time in the sequencer (not a necessity, but always fun.)

You can also use the Wave Source and Wave Dest drivers (standard WDM drivers) to record stuff in SoundForge/Cooledit/Audacity/etc.

As for XTC, it's a bit tricky to use, but do-able. First of all, you need to tick the Enable XTC Mode in the Settings window of SFP. Then you need to close SFP, and then (yes, that's alot of "then"s ^_^) open the sequencer. If you don't hear any sound, try changing which output your track uses in the sequencer (I can explain this for Logic, no idea how Cubase works.)

About the plugins, the XTC plugins are the same ones that are available in the SFP environement. In fact, more are available in SFP as not all plugins are XTC-compatible, most of the free plugins aren't, and you're definitely going to want to use some of them Using both native and DSP plugin is quite possible, tho, so it's mostly a matter of how you prefer to work.

That's it for first lesson! So yeah, the manual might be a good start to learn more about the intricacies of the routing stuff, but it's more than 110% worth your while. You'll never look back! Especially not after lesson two: 360 Perceptual Field and Mixdown Using the Force!

That all i want to do ... is probably the most common phrase I hear as a tech supporter, and nprime's sentence ... but read the manual... probaly hits the nail's head

Not a problem at all - and as a Mac user I can confirm it's even considered a question of honour to NOT read a manual...
But it makes things more complicated, really.

Took me 2 years to notice that polyphonic modules of the Modular synth have a different color than the mono ones - or I even asked someone to send me the VDAT manual, which is a regular part of the SFP doc

In fact there's a learning curve, but it's steepness may vary - for someone who knows how a hardware studio operates it's pretty easy to grasp (as far as routing is concerned).
Otherwise it's a little more effort, but that's not related to the software itself, instead it's about the items the software deals with.
Scope models a pixie studio inside the PC box

So your experience is a pretty regular one. The efforts mentioned (and the methods above) are really worth it.
You'll soon grow into this (don't restrict yourself on 'all I wanna do') and discover what the various parts of the system can do for your purpose - there's a lot to come, and it's good stuff

cheers, Tom

thanks for the speedy replies guys

yeah, i suppose its the first place to look but you chaps must know what its like getting a new toy, you want to get it out and push all the buttons thinking you know how to work it

"all i want to do" was just meant as a starting block so i could do the bassics. i know its an amazing pci, with some knowledge of course.

ive installed scope 4 so im bang up to date, its ironic that you have to be a computer programmer to be a musician these days!

thanx symbiote your a star

It certainly feels very strange for a musician (like me) to have to get his head round PCI, latency, driver, IRQ, blah blah blah !

But in a sense, all this stuff is just a new instrument. Think of someone like Bach working out the logorithms of pitch (please correct if wrong !)

or, well, me learning how to co-ordinate my mouth and my fingers to play the french horn ...

Real instruments take a long long time to master, and these days a DAW is just a crazily complex, evolving instrument ...

Of course I fully fully understand your desire to get it out of the box and start playing, but thinking of it as an instrument rather than a tool for instruments might make patience a little easier.

Anyway good luck with it all,

Will.

On 2004-09-27 07:51, mr swim wrote:

It certainly feels very strange for a musician (like me) to have to get his head round PCI, latency, driver, IRQ, blah blah blah ! ...

it also feels strange for a technically well educated person...

it's an outdated design of OS/hardware cooperation, which probably even it's own makers would have thrown right into the trash bin... if they hadn't discovered the magic of limitless opportunities to update this and fix that and release a new model later to be replaced by... ad infinitum

there's a post in the problems forum about the non-saving of screen positions on a dual head card - on a Mac that worked with even 4 screens automatically, 15 years ago.

you can install an IDE/ATA interface card in outdated Macs that have only an SCSI interface by just plugging the board in.
It really confused me as there was no driver at all to be installed - guess what ? the card just fakes a SCSI device for the OS and uses the driver already present.

this may read boring and of few relevance to current problems, but shows that there ARE ways to write hardware and interface specs that don't annoy the customer during installation of the product.

That things run faster today isn't due to improved design concepts - it's the reduced size and higher density of circuit elements that allow higher clock rates and data throughput

sorry for the ot, Tom