PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

A XITE-1(D) competitor?

http://www.uaudio.com/apollo

not all the same possibilites, but a great idea nonetheless.... but seriously, if you want UA gear, i would rather buy a real hardware UA mic pre and a REAL 1167 etc instead.. - but the fact that you can use it as a soundcard, mic pre and UAD processor (for mixing as well) is great! Yep i think Xite got some competition... you cant really beat the UA brand, sadly - and i owned a UAD2 duo card in the past - the plugins are truly great!

Pretty awesome to have those UAD plugins available for recording and as a console(I own a UAD1 Card). But we've been doing that for years with the Creamware now S|C products. I am actually happy to see DSP technology flourish once again, competition usually breeds innovation in an effort to stay ahead of the pack. The UAD name will help it stay in peoples minds, but it still only does half of what our platform accomplishes on the same dsp tech, this may be fine with most native plugin users, but we have the entire studio in one.

I think this year should be an all out effort on our part and Sonic Core to kick this platform into high gear and expose to the industry the real power and potential that SCOPE wields behind its unseemly simple interface(Xite). I for one will be presenting a series of hopefully indepth videos showing its prowess albiet on the pci cards(and that shows the value and robustness of the technology itself).

Once Open Scope hits the stage running it will begin to show its true colors.

Not specifically Apollo related, but take a closer look at this picture of the UAD 2 card.
UA also uses the SHARC 21369 DSP's, but has their own plugin format.
I wonder, aside from marketing strategies, if porting some 3rd party UAD plugins like MXR, Ampex, Lexicon, Manley, Neve, Roland, SSL, Studer to the SCOPE Plugin format is technically feasible.
Porting may be the wrong approach...maybe re-developing is needed, heavily depending on Scope's SDK.
(Of course, the SCOPE and UA operating systems reside between the hardware and the plugins)

Hopefully S|C informs these 3rd party plugin vendors about the opportunities of Open SCOPE (API).
Marketing is expensive, and we know S|C at the moment is a small company with a small budget.
The established brands probably have more marketing/promotional resources and budgets and this could help to put SCOPE on the map (if they are willing ).

vascomusic wrote: Hopefully S|C informs these 3rd party plugin vendors about the opportunities of Open SCOPE (API).
Marketing is expensive, and we know S|C at the moment is a small company with a small budget.
The established brands probably have more marketing/promotional resources and budgets and this could help to put SCOPE on the map (if they are willing ).

They may also have an exclusive agreement with UAD to ensure that they wont jump ship.

vascomusic wrote: I wonder, aside from marketing strategies, if porting some 3rd party UAD plugins like MXR, Ampex, Lexicon, Manley, Neve, Roland, SSL, Studer to the SCOPE Plugin format is technically feasible.
Porting may be the wrong approach...maybe re-developing is needed, heavily depending on Scope's SDK

All those 3rd party plugins you mentioned are coded by UA - Lexicon, MXR, Neve etc. haven't been involved directly in the coding at all, so the code base belongs entirely to UA.

It would be more or less impossible to recreate the plugins in Scope SDK because of the limit amount of DSP modules and functions. Open Scope does make it way more manageable (also since UA is using Juce), but we have to remember that UA have infact coded all those plugins themselves except the new Brainworx plugins.

Scope Synths and UAD Effects would be an awesome combination.....
Imagine being able to use Modular with the stereo insert and dragging in one of their reverbs or dynamics effects.
Their Moog needs a few years of " refinement " and by the time it gets there, it won't matter anymore, as synths like Solaris, and Virus, and certain Analogs will cover everything in realtime.
THis is why SCs Modular especially with CV Audiorate modulation is a one of a kind light years ahead.'
I'd still like to see you ( Martin ) sit down with someone at SC, figure out how to use the RAM and design us a true 1:1 hardware emulation.
The UA 224 sounds great but again, these reverbs do not envelope the audio source any better than a VST FX. They provide these lush great Grand Canyon tails, they don't wrap around the sound like a qulaity verb would.
I sure hope they work something out with you, afterall you did Give the best verb we are using.
That gesture alone merits some form of appreciation, or secret for devlopment, I donnu, the science is way past my peanut sized brain. I just know that no VST of DSP verb can wrap around the audio, this is why I can't stop using the ancient PCM70.

Cheers.....

They've also jumped into using the Thunderbolt interface.

Glad to see someone in the industry finally jump into Thunderbolt.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/01/a ... more-22373


Greg

But this Apollo thang is just a Satellite with I/O tacked on and Thunderbolt instead of USB (which is just fixing a mistake) and a boost in pricetag to match isnt it ?

I suppose the real game lifter here is that it runs on a PC as well as Mac, while the satellite was Mac only.

It makes it easier to compare UAD2/4 and SCOPE XITE-1 now. Thunderbolt = PCIe, so all the rest is up for jabs.

Yep, doesnt look like much plugs included beyond a small mixer, limiter, leveler and one Pultec EQ. You're probably up for double the price to beef it up with a decent set of mix/master tools.

dante wrote:But this Apollo thang is just a Satellite with I/O tacked on and Thunderbolt instead of USB (which is just fixing a mistake) and a boost in pricetag to match isnt it ?

I suppose the real game lifter here is that it runs on a PC as well as Mac, while the satellite was Mac only.

No.

* It's now possible to use the plugins realtime on Apollo
* There's a external mixer engine (mixer application)

Those two was advantages for the Scope environment compared to other solution. Scope still got the routing (and therefor flexibility) and synths.

..but less analog i/o. Its sorta like an XITE/A16 combo. But yeah, routing, synths, bigger mixers and plug prices r still a Scope++

For the money you're paying more for the converters and interfaces than you are for any included plugins.

Anyways, I'll be checking it out tomorrow when I get to NAMM.

Greg

Yes at least, UAD understood the point to integrate IO with DSP.

The Appollo Quad could be Compared to an Xite-1D because it has similar DSP power onboard (perhaps a little more due to frequency difference). More analog I/O less global IO amount especially if you have an A16 Ultra on top of the Xite-1.

Warp69 wrote:

dante wrote:But this Apollo thang is just a Satellite with I/O tacked on and Thunderbolt instead of USB (which is just fixing a mistake) and a boost in pricetag to match isnt it ?

I suppose the real game lifter here is that it runs on a PC as well as Mac, while the satellite was Mac only.

No.

* It's now possible to use the plugins realtime on Apollo
* There's a external mixer engine (mixer application)

Those two was advantages for the Scope environment compared to other solution. Scope still got the routing (and therefor flexibility) and synths.

SCOPE has ALOT more then just synths and routing as a advantage and is still light-years ahead. E.G. Sidechaining, SDK for users, Modular 4 (around 1000 modules), chainer plugin, variety of Mixers, custome built Mixers and plugins, physical modeled instruments, Samplers, Drumsynths, abiiity of plugins to span multiple dsp's (needed for synths), more of a work-enviroment (Project-window, routing-window, Live-bar, metering, control-room, etc), and i'm sure more if i think about it.

UAD does have a live-mode within the DAW, but i'm sure their users now realize live-mode was sort of gimmicky since it eats up so much cpu and your still in the Native enviroment subject to Asio i/o latency from enviroment and its plugins. Appollo has more Mic Pre's but less i/o's overall then XITE-1. The price of the uad quad that's non-interface is $1500 and the interface version is $2400, this makes me wonder if they used quality mic pre's and converters since the interface is relatively extremely cheap. 4 mic pre's is alot to be giving. Uad has the advantage of more big name effects developers on board (sonnox, brainworx, etc) and UAD has labeling rights wich has been HUGE for them (Neve, Manely, etc).

This new interface is a HUGE step forward for UA since they now have zero-latency dsp processing and a Mixer. But this HUGE step forward only shows how far ahead SCOPE really was (and still is when you look at my above list). I do know UA has hinted at a Moog Modular synth for their platform so it will continue to grow more like SCOPE. But right now the Apallo is more competitive to RME, Metric Hallo, etc when looking at intrinsic-value, it's feature set is more similar to them and not SCOPE (SCOPE is far more Advanced and complete). As far as Market-value goes Apollo is by far superior to SCOPE. Since UA is so well loved they never have to offer all the features and functionality of SCOPE to have their platform seen as better in the markets eyes, they just need to slowly copy SCOPE's paradigm and grow more complete. They made a SDK for third-party commercial developers (Like SCOPE), they now have a interface like SCOPE, soon they'll have synths like SCOPE and i'm sure they'll get even more of SCOPE's features as time passes and when they do the market will see it as better when UA does it than SCOPE wich has always done these things. Every little and big feature uad platform has added such as SDK, Mixer and zero-latency processing is seen as extremely huge/revolutionary to the market and tho SCOPE has always done this stuff it was seen as nothing special (at least they pretended this).

Apollo is catching up to the old SCOPE paradigm but Open-SCOPE will push SCOPE so far ahead that it will take many many years for even the VERY fast developing uad platform to catch up. Far as intrinsic-value there is no competition SCOPE is light-years ahead and Open-SCOPE brings our platform into the DAW arena, more custome built enviroments, and beyond. Far as what the market wants wich is market-value Apollo is light-years ahead of SCOPE. Apollo is a threat to SCOPE but probably a greater threat to RME, Metric Halo, etc. And both Apollo and SCOPE are a threat to PTHD-HDX due to it's insane price. jmho.

EDITED

I don't think there are any Midi i/o's either for Apollo. And the Thunderbolt card is sold separately. XITE-1 expresscard is sold separately as well but does not cost that much, i wonder what will be the price for Apollo's Thunderbolt card.


EDITED

well.. they have a mixer



that controls the plugins realtime... so "all" they really had to do was to make a "scope windows" kind of thing with patch cables, and it would be the same as scope, just with UAD plugins. That is a SERIOUS competitor to XITE!!

They're spending a lot of money promoting this thing.

I'll be investigating it more when I get there in a few hours, but from what I can tell they laid down a quad card, added some A/D I/O (and thunderbolt driver and I/O), and that's it.

I think their price-point covers the cost of Thunderbolt and A/D, but otherwise compared to what we get with Xite, it's overpriced.

Greg

Overpriced or not, people will be buying a UAD product over SC - the UAD plugins are very great in my opinion, and they have a brand that EVERYONE knows, you cant beat that combo. (just stating it, i like soniccore!!)
-They have below 2ms latency, mic pres, ins/outs, thunderbolt, the ability to use the unit as a mix processor realtime (with a mixer) and the ability to use it as normal plugins - i think they have a winner.. i dont think it would take alot to throw in the patch cables, asio driver etc. it looks like its basically the same thing.

I really like soniccore and my cards though! UAD doenst have any synths or realtime routing (yet )