how many DSP for modular IV ?

[quantic]

Hello everybody !
I am very interested by the modular IV plugin, but is it possible to run these plug with a simple 3 DSP card from creamware ? Or it needs of more dsp to work comfortably ?
Thanks you a lot

[Mr Arkadin]

Well I think the answer to your questions is: it depends. If you make simple patches it will be fine - but for those big patches that XITE4Live does you have no hope. Personally I would get the biggest card you can afford, some of those patches are monster.

[quantic]

thanks for your answer !
So, the scope cards (home, project, pro...) which are actually for sale on sonic core's page, are always the same old sharc DSP from old creamware cards like XTC, Luna and others ?
Or a new DSP more powerful is used now with these sonic core's cards ?

[Mr Arkadin]

The cards are the old chips, only XITE-1 has the newer DSP. You can find some good deals on second-hand cards though, often with lots of bundled extras. Try and get a Pro (14 DSP) card - but make sure your PC is big enough, it's a full-size PCI card.

[astroman]

all PCI cards have the same 'old' DSPs 21065, the XITE has 6 of those (for compatibility/control etc) and 10 of the latest 213xxx chips.
The latter are clocked 5 times higher and can perform twice the data on certain instructions, which gives them 10 times the power under optimistic conditions. 6-8 times would be a realistic assumption imho.
Overall the XITE has the best price performance relation - you really wouldn't deny to have that at hand...

Nevertheless, if budget is tight an old card is still a reasonable choice.
The cards come with a high quality software bundle, specifically the Ambience and Plate Reverbs which can compete with the best native stuff easily.
I just made some rough tests with native programming's recent darling Aether 1.5. With 4 times oversampling a single instance of that VST hogged up a whooping 40% of my CoreDuo 2.4.
While Aether had some really interesting tweakability (in that context it outperforms the Scope reverbs), the definition of sound was NOT AT ALL ahead of the Scope plugins.
I couldn't make up my mind if it would even be capable of replacing them in typical bread-and-butter situations.
Given the raving reviews on Aether, SonicCore throws in an extra 250 bucks value into the package, so to say...

But... no chance to run that stuff on a 3 DSP card. It was already tight without those new reverbs (which are basically Warp's P100 and A100 plugins distributed by Sonic Timeworks).
There are several options, though...
You might buy a 3 DSP card from SonicCore's shop with Scope 5 and Mod IV and then add a 4, 6 or 15 DSP card without software from eBay or any other 2nd hand source. Those cards are dead cheap currently.
Mr. A is perfectly right that you'd want as much DSP juice as you can afford with Scope synths - they really sound that good

cheers, Tom

[quantic]

Thanks, so i have two solutions : get a XITE (with modular & flexor it's more than 3200 euros...gasp), or waiting for the next card generation from sonicCore with more powerful dsp...

[astroman]

nahhh, that's bare nonsense - why would you want yourself cutoff from the sweet stuff just because you can't afford the very best solution in the first place.
You could as well start with a 6 DSP board for less than $500 with a reasonable software package.
Just write what you'd like to do and what you can spend and we'll find a solution to make you happy. Seriously

cheers, Tom

ps: it's really unlikely there will be cards with new chips, for good reasons.
the current 'slot' called PCIe is just a serial plug - nothing but that.
You really CAN move the stuff from the noisy PC environment and it helps indeed.
While a Scope card has a reasonably well signal to noise ratio, it cannot excel in that domain.
My audibly 'best' Scope output ever was a 3 DSP card mounted on an extender 90 degree tilted away from the motherboard. The same card in the 'standard' slot construction is at least 3dB more noisy.

[Mr Arkadin]

I can't afford an XITE but I am completely happy with my 14+6 DSP system. I originally had the 6 and 3 DSP cards but I only have two PCI slots, so I went with the max I could afford at the time (which cost much more than it would now). Look out for at least a 6 DSP card and that'll be 9 DSPs total: plenty to get you going.

[quantic]

better way is to imagine a "XITE lite" with less DSP for a better price

[Mr Arkadin]

Well it's your choice: wait for a product that may never happen (XITE Lite) or expand upon what you already have and get on with your life.

[astroman]

better way is to imagine a "XITE lite" with less DSP for a better price

you may want to consider the fact that the price of a Scope system is mostly determined by software and developement.
The choice of hardware (how much) is influenced by what's required to make reasonable use of the system and on the other hand of the production costs.
As people don't seem to realize that fact, suppliers choose their own specific way to handle marketing demands - in other words: arithmetic doesn't apply.
A UAD quad card has less than half the DSP resources of an XITE, lacks preamps, DI and digital IO (worth at least 600 Euro), has only a very limited set of plugins included, lacks Scope's routing and realtime functionality and yet is > 50% of the price of an XITE.
In that context the XITE is a really good offer.
There's no need to adjust it and this stuff was never intended for mass market - it's a professional studio tool, not some wannabe 'producer-hero'

cheers, Tom

[quantic]

this stuff was never intended for mass market - it's a professional studio tool, not some wannabe 'producer-hero'

But the professionals who would have financial means maybe prefer to invest in protools or/and hardware for mastering or making sounds ?
It's a pity, I really think that SonicCore makes a mistake about buyers target

[astroman]

to be honest, I don't think so...
your point isn't entirely new either - and it's pointless, as experience tells.
I didn't mention that Aether VST unintentionally. It's getting raving reviews.
Those Scope reverbs I compared above ARE even 'better' imho, and they have existed for at least 4 years.
Obviously fairly unnoticed, and still kind of as they are labeled 'stock' now... so what can that be anyway ?

People who USE THEIR EARS know better, and they regard the value as what it is.
By definition this can NEVER apply to a broad public, which is bla bla bla in the first place and stealing cra**ed VST stuff in the second.

One cannot build a solid business on such a foundation - it simply doesn't make sense.
If you don't recognize the value in Scope: fine - be happy in the VST domain.
Otherwise just pay for it - the price is absolutely reasonable.
And it's not tied to an update leash à la ProTools, where one is bound to pay in regular intervals just to be able to use his system because the (OS or hardware) environment changed...

There are countless (well, almost...) people here who never regretted their investment in the Scope platform.
One can start fairly small and grow conveniently without loosing the original investment.
Even if people consider it old stuff, a few 21065Ls still outperforms 98% of the VST scene hands down. Sonically.
That reverb I mentioned for comparison eats up a full 2.4 Gig CPU (in practical setups it would...) and still doesn't get more clearity into it's reverb tail than those 'lame' chips.
Sonic Core wouldn't sell any more devices justz because of price drops.
The 'non-war*z' status still applies and THAT'S what keeps people away after all. No more - no less

cheers, Tom

[quantic]

Ok, but Scope isn't totally unknow for me : i used by the past an old scope XTC, a few years ago. And i found the virtual instruments (poison, bluesynth, inferno, lightwave...) very bad and thin, and the effects also (except distortion and flanger, honestly...). Not at the level of some vst products like Waves or arturia for exemple.
I recognize that i don't use minimax, pro-one or others "big" plugs a little more developped than the others.

But with my old pulsar XTC, nothing dazzled me anymore, and i switch off these card for only using vst tools...
Another fact : I use actually 3 uad-1 with my pc, and most of the plugs smashes all i've heard from creamware, specially in mastering or compression.

Except !
except the modular... Which has no equal, nowhere

So the XITE price would be justified if his plugs package was of better quality.
The device is certainly worth the announced price, but the means to exploit it, the given software tools are clearly insufficient at the level quality.

In my case, for a single use of modular and a XITE rack, it's too much money, so much buy one real modular synth...

[Mr Arkadin]

And i found the virtual instruments (poison, bluesynth, inferno, lightwave...) very bad and thin, and the effects also (except distortion and flanger, honestly...). Not at the level of some vst products like Waves or arturia for exemple.
I recognize that i don't use minimax, pro-one or others "big" plugs a little more developped than the others.

But with my old pulsar XTC, nothing dazzled me anymore, and i switch off these card for only using vst tools...
Another fact : I use actually 3 uad-1 with my pc, and most of the plugs smashes all i've heard from creamware, specially in mastering or compression.

Well you're not comparing like for like. Compare Minimax to Arturia's effort - sorry but Arturia's stuff is lifeless and bad, even before comparing to Scope. Plus you haven't tried the latest version of Scope, maybe you'd be surprised. Also the synths in Scope are made from the same building blocks as the Modular, so it's odd you don't like the Scope sound, yet like Modular.

To be honest it sounds like something like Reaktor might be better for your set-up as you don't use Scope, leaving you free to use native and UAD.

[maky325]

While Aether had some really interesting tweakability (in that context it outperforms the Scope reverbs), the definition of sound was NOT AT ALL ahead of the Scope plugins.

I completely agree on this one. Aether seems to have a lot of controls and it is great for some tasks. But more controls does not mean better sound instantly. I did extensive testing and in my opinion aether can not produce spatial effects like Warp reverbs. Not even close. ER pattern is completely different sounding. Modulation also. In the end for my music i like Warp reverbs more. That does not mean Aether is bad of course. To me it lack in producing dense and realistic space. I am sure a lot of people will argue on this one but i just have different rules on how emulation of acoustic space should sound an Aether seems to be out of this. In my honest opinion Aether is masking lack of real spatial information with really nice and clean tails. But ER is too much artificial to my ear. Again i am sure some people will like this character but not me

[dawman]

Exactly what I hear too.
Hey its tails that the Virtual Orchestral Composers are always lamenting over because it makes their fake instruments seem as if they are in a Giant Hall, which of course makes the virtual stuff sound better I suppose.
I think it adds mud, especially with the guys that use " Chains " of effects, or different verbs on every channel.
Warps verb attempts to get that sound that seems to wrap around the source material, as opposed to just extending its duration. It doesn't sound as lush as a PCM70 but it has all of the editable parameters of the PCM90/91 and the sound is about 80% there.
But truthfully, I only notice this because I am a verb freak raised in the 200 year old Sewers of St.Louis, and bought expensive Lexicon effects as a teenager once I learned to earn.
I always wondered why DAS, SpaceF and Celmo made such great multitap delays and verbs. Then I read about the Sewers underneath Paris............You know they were smoking weed and strumming guitars down there as kids...

[quantic]

There is also an important element to appreciate : a big part of the soft proposed with the XITE, when they are not to sell, date around ten years. An eternity in the world of home-studio/music software !
Their appearance is poor, not ergonomic and their performances are exceeded for some years including by the native plugs or by the other DSP cards tools. Try to compare an UAD compressor with a sonic core compressor : no doubt, really.

I persist in saying that the XITE is too expensive with regard to the given plugs tools. If the bundle included effects or mastering plugs a little more recent and functional, I would maybe have made an effort.

But 3000 euros, a power of enormous calculation to apply soft ten-year-old, it's a bad joke.

It's only a pity that sonic core did not conceive a module specially dedicated to the modular soft, for a lesser price, I think that it would interest a lot of people.

[wayne]

There is also an important element to appreciate : a big part of the soft proposed with the XITE, when they are not to sell, date around ten years. An eternity in the world of home-studio/music software !

All the SC comps in my setup date to late April last year, if that's important. They are not the original stock fx.

[Sounddesigner]

@ quantic - Your opinion would be more valid if you actually had used any of the many good synths included with XITE-1 (minimax,vectron, b2003 organ, Profit 5) wich are not 10 years old, but even if they where it does'nt matter if they where designed properly to began with. There is hardware synths that are 20 years old but sound great. Old synths sounding horrible is generally a Native problem partially due to lack of processing power long ago.

There are many Effects aswell for the scope platform that are high quality, some included with XITE-1 some from third party such as Adern, celmo, wolf, brainworx, SPL, etc wich i'm sure you never tried but have passed judgement since they don't have the marketing hype, hollywood actors advertising, and fancy gui's like uad, powercore, etc.

Those of us who bought xite-1 had the money for uad, powercore, etc but some of us simply where not interested for those platforms, they can't do even half of what XITE-1 can. But the many strenghths of XITE-1 you seem to overlook and it's probably useless to try and explain the differences to you. I'll just say for XITE-1's price it is a huge bargain, the best on the market imo, and Sonic Core appears to be having no problems selling them.


You seem to be better served with uad or duende wich are platforms that are solely effects processors since that's your main obsession. For some of us great sound begans at the original source wich is great instruments. Great instruments are worth far more then effects imo. Instruments are SCOPE's specialty but SCOPE is strong on all fronts and far more complete then other dsp platforms, wich are generally one trick ponies. in terms of offerings they don't compare. Instead of assuming there are no good effects for SCOPE and that all effects and all instruments are 10 years old and that everything sounds bad why don't you do the right thing and buy a used scope pci card and thoroughly demo what's here (both old and new creations, both stock and third-party)? If you don't like what you here then resell the card. That would be the best way to have a very good opinion, but like said already maybe scope is not for you. There is a new uad-2 Quad for $1500 that includes only bad sounding stock plugins, and many old plugins in its bigger bundles, you may wanna check it out.



EDITED