PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

I have never been able to get my Xite past about 25% DSP load... I have had it for about two years and have been frustrated with it for a very long time. I am running a STM 4896, 2 control rooms, 24 channels of ASIO in, 24 channels of ASIO out, one RMX-160, one MasterVerb Pro, one SC-Plate and one Stereo Delay, and I cannot add a MINIMAX even at such a low DSP load.

Can anyone shed some light on how to fix this? I am really thinking about abandoning the Xite seeing I don't use the synths much and want to give a fair attempt at resolving this first.

Tim

Are you using any of the effects as inserts?

G

Did you assign the asio2 to dsp 2 ?

What sample rate are you running at ?

My experience is that running 3 reverbs will cause problems. Try to only use 1 at a time and you'll be able to run synths and make more "use" of the raw DSP power.

I am running at 44.1kHz with an Apogee AD-16X as the master clock connected via ADAT and BNC for wordclock. Both cables are 3' long. The XLR outs go to my monitors. I don't have anything else hooked to it, the AES is unused and the line and mic ins are all unused.

I have 24 channels of ASIO I/O setup and I use it with Cubase 6.5. All of my software is legal and up to date, the computer never goes online and I just did a fresh install of Windows 7 not too long ago.

Assign ASIO to DSP 2? I can try that and report back. I searched the web for the DSP assignment suggestions I have seen probably a year ago and could not find them. They were not in any documentation I have from Sonic Core. I have actually read ALL the documentation that I am aware is available for Scope, even the documentation for all of the effects and mixers, and I feel I am very familiar with what is going on. Could someone point out where I can find this?

I bought Scope to use the synthesizers, but I found them for the most part not to be to my taste and do all of my synthesis in hardware. I was really disappointed by how dated-sounding the synths are. Sure, the Moog emulation is great.... but I never use Moog sounds. I do not like Modular 4 at all. After buying Scope I bought a large Eurorack system and Scope is nowhere close to what I can do in hardware. I prefer my Juno 106 over the UNKOW even though the Juno is noisier. When I bought Scope, I did not find any demos for the "lesser" synths that were included and wrongly hoped some of them would cover more modern sounds. I think the synths have a good clean sound, but there is no character like you get with a real analog filter. A real Juno 106 you can actually get some grit out of the VCA, the Scope one cannot.

Since I purchased Scope, I have also purchased:
Virus TI2
Alesis Ion
Korg DW-8000
Oberheim Matrix 1000
Eurorack system with 40+ modules
Nord Lead 2X
Nord Lead 2
Juno 106
Akai Z8 sampler (because the Scope sampler doesn't work)
Yamaha FS1R

Most of which I use in nearly every song, where I never use the Scope synths. Each one of these synths brings something unique to the table, where I don't find any real joy in any of the Scope synths. Granted, none of these synths are all that similar to anything in Scope, with the exception of the Juno 106. Maybe my tastes just don't align with that of the developers of Scope, that is OK.

So, in light of my disappointments, I have been trying to use Scope for mixing audio projects which is sort of my last ditch effort before selling it off and replacing it with an RME card and a UAD card. I like the mixer, the compression, SL-9000 channelstrip and the Adern saturation plugin. The SC-Plate is a real gem, and the MasterVerb Pro is growing on me. The RMX-160...yeah I like that too. And I like the limiter. I would really miss these if I leave Scope, but I can't get through a single mix without running out of DSP connections!

In my world, running three reverbs is a minimum for completing a professional mix. A plate, a large hall and small room are typically my mixing setup on Aux 1, Aux 2, and Aux 3 before adding any "specials" needed for the piece. I use the reverbs on the Auxes of the STM4896 (sidebar -- this mixer stinks because I can't send from one Aux return to another!!! So, you can have a delay on one send, and a reverb on the other, but you cannot send the delay to the reverb to place it in the same space... That means I need to use it externally with a normal stereo channel to return I suppose, but I am already pretty tight on channels as it is.)

I'm just bummed because I had pretty high hopes for Scope and it's just been a slow let-down over the last two years. I sold a good chunk of my old studio setup that I was pretty happy with to buy Scope. I have basically bought it all back again and now Scope is nearly useless to me. I really like what Sonic Core is trying to do, but in many ways I feel it is a long way from where it needs to be to justify its cost.

Tim

I found a forum post about the DSP allocation. I tried rearranging everything several ways, and it didn't improve things much. I have the ASIO on DSP 2, the audio I/O on DSP 1, and the STM 4896 on DSP 7. I removed the reverb processors I had in the auxes within the mixer and moved them outside and set the auxes to external. I still had connection errors, and I also got a new error:

Cannot add module SDRAM XiteDelay 8 taps

I tried letting Scope optimize everything, and I tried manually arranging things onto the DSPs and I didn't have much luck. It looks like I am limited to 3 reverb processors.

I will probably be putting my Xite up for sale soon.

Tim

timstoel wrote:I found a forum post about the DSP allocation. I tried rearranging everything several ways, and it didn't improve things much. I have the ASIO on DSP 2, the audio I/O on DSP 1, and the STM 4896 on DSP 7. I removed the reverb processors I had in the auxes within the mixer and moved them outside and set the auxes to external. I still had connection errors, and I also got a new error:

Cannot add module SDRAM XiteDelay 8 taps

I tried letting Scope optimize everything, and I tried manually arranging things onto the DSPs and I didn't have much luck. It looks like I am limited to 3 reverb processors.

I will probably be putting my Xite up for sale soon.

Tim

I must say its 99 % chance its thouse two reverbs using up your RAM.
Use only one reverb.
Bear

timstoel wrote:I have never been able to get my Xite past about 25% DSP load... I have had it for about two years and have been frustrated with it for a very long time. I am running a STM 4896, 2 control rooms, 24 channels of ASIO in, 24 channels of ASIO out, one RMX-160, one MasterVerb Pro, one SC-Plate and one Stereo Delay, and I cannot add a MINIMAX even at such a low DSP load.

I just loaded all those in the order you have written them - when I get to SC-Plate I get the DSP optimisation error - click yes. I then loaded Minimax and it worked fine. Not sure what's up with your system.

Anyway, from the look of your synths and the way you describe your sound it looks like you'll never be happy with Scope, just different tastes I suppose, but I'm surprised you can't find any useable sounds in ModIV. The Eurorack I'm sure is very nice, but with ModIV it costs nothing if you want to add an extra osc or filter and there are modules that have no real hardware equivalent.

To be fair, the U Know 007 was never in the same league of development as Minimax, Profit-5, Prodyssey and proTone, so it doesn't surprise me that the real 106 beats the plug-in. Given the synths you have I would see Scope as a contrast to those synths, rather than trying to have the same sound in Scope too - but that's my personal feeling and obviously is different to yours.

Have you tried demoing COS2/VOID2 or Solaris? Maybe they would be more your style.

After all that, maybe it's best to cut your losses and sell up as your suggest.

Take it your on 64bit? By saying the samplers don't work.

i dont own xite

but my 27 dsp system i never have problems like your having

i know that the 64bit os makes a lot of problems for the scope platform and samplers do work but only 4 note poly

modular is where its at as you can design any thing you want

the unoo7 the reason it does not sound as good as the 106 is the chorus is not added

i did a modular version with 2 bbd mdls so that they could be switched like the 106 is

and it sounds a lot closer

using modular like a modular sampler is great and with the new modules coming be even better

with a 32bit os it works great

and there are many modules that have no hardware equivalent

as i used scope modular with my hard ware modular system

i dont seem to have the problems with what your having

my 2 scope pc's are both p4 with 4gb ram 3.5ghz cpu

xp32

If the story with Xite is similar to PCI when it comes to software, and you depend on 64bit, sell the thing unless you want to wait for an unannounced time. 5.1 doesnt work as advertised (and it never will), and god knows if Scope 6 will get any better treatment.

I am pretty set on selling it but I am going to wait until I see the Sonic Core guys at the NAMM show in a few weeks. If I can get some of my issues resolved I may change my mind.

Tim

timstoel wrote:I have never been able to get my Xite past about 25% DSP load... I have had it for about two years and have been frustrated with it for a very long time. I am running a STM 4896, 2 control rooms, 24 channels of ASIO in, 24 channels of ASIO out, one RMX-160, one MasterVerb Pro, one SC-Plate and one Stereo Delay, and I cannot add a MINIMAX even at such a low DSP load.

Can anyone shed some light on how to fix this? I am really thinking about abandoning the Xite seeing I don't use the synths much and want to give a fair attempt at resolving this first.

Tim

Using Win XP SP3 machine, XITE-1 and SCOPE 5.1 32Bit I can load ~60% DSP always before running out of SAT connections.
Compared to a single Creamware PCI card which allows loads up to 85 - 90%, that appears disappointing,- but also think how many PCI cards you´d need matching the 60% DSP load of the XITE-1.
I have a SCOPE Pro Classic b.t.w. and use it in addition, so there´s the real world comparison.
I downloaded a lot of freeware stuff, own optional synths from S|C and available version of ZARGs for SCOPE 5 and all load.
Not all stuff is really optimized for XITE-1, so there are some DSP hogs, but all-in-all XITE-1 and SCOPE 5.1 works for me.
After some discussion and advice w/from DAWMAN here @PlanetZ as also Gary´s and Dante´s help, I needed less than 2 month to deal w/ workarounds for XITE-1.
There are only very few devices not properly running, at least in 32Bit.
Nonetheless, I´ve found STM24/48X works best and I always start w/ it and then it depends on what to load when, watching the DSP meter.
Watch the numbers and learn interpretation, you´ll clearly see where the load is very high.
Manual DSP assignment of everything was not the best choice at all, but it helped here and there to squeeze some more in when a project had a high load already.
Lots of ASIO connections cost SAT connections, that´s true.
For me, it works using the busses of the mixer to stream audio from mixer to DAW for recording and creating busses in DAW to stream back to mixer,- less ASIO connections.
In addition,- B2003, Minimax, Prodyssey, Profit 5, Vectron, Lightwave, UKnow7, STS-4000,- 4 aux FX (Masterverb/ Chorus/ Delay/ 3rd party Plate Reverb), ASIO-2 float 64 source & destination, ADAT source and destination, analog line I/Os, Mic/DI, WAVE source, Phones connection connected to monitor out,- all in one project.
Except Minimax and Prodyssey, all synths use polyphony w/ at least 6 voices, STS-4000 16 voices.
There´s also one of the free audio splitters in use on 1 AUX send as well as a MIDI merger and the MIDI monitor.

It´s a bit more than 50% DSP load and that project loads always without DSP and voice re-assignments necessary and using 2 sequencer MIDI sources as well as XITE MIDI source.

Now tell me how many PCI cards are required to run such a project together w/ Reaper 4.x or Presonus Studio One Pro v2, Reason 6.x rewired plus a few VSTis on one machine which is a outdated Intel Pentium D 945 dual core / Intel 955X chipset.

Your 25% DSP load scenario, to me, sounds definitely insane.

For me, it definitely helped documenting every step of creating a project and if it failed, starting from the beginning w/ a project containing all the MIDI and adudio I/O devices as well as STM-24/48X,- then trying to load the same devices in different sequential order, watching DSP meter.
Once you´ve found your way and a project works,- save.
Try re-loads several times because SCOPE starts optimizing DSP load and when you are sure the project works it´s ready for permanent usage.
If you randomly play around w/ devices in the project like load, remove, replace and manually assign to DSPs by trial ´n error, you´ll easily run out of SAT connections.

I ran into these finally by trying to add Vocodizer or several VDats to an already heavily loaded project though.

No idea what´s up w/ 64Bit SCOPE 5.1,- my host computer isn´t the ideal toy to go 64Bit anyway and I´m fine w/ 32Bit up today.
That will change this year,- but for this I wait what happens at NAMM and Musikmesse,- we´ll see.

Bud

great post

@Bud
Thanks for your reply. I am mixing in Scope, so I am sending audio down ASIO and using the Scope mixer to mix with. I use MIDI automation in my DAW to control the mixer. I much prefer the insert effects in Scope over the ones in Cubase.

Channels 1-24 on the 4896 are my ADAT and XLR inputs from the outside world, and 25-48 are the outputs from my DAW. I use 6 of those channels as Auxes in my DAW, then those channels are default routed to the corresponding aux, so I have auxes in my DAW labelled "MasterVerb" "RMX-160" and so on. Some mixing also happens out of the box in a summing mixer, so it is a requirement for me to route all of this audio through Scope.

@next to nothing
Agreed. Sonic Core has made large promises and not delivered. Their website targets the product at mix engineers, amongst other groups. I am trying to use the box for mixing and it does not work. A professional mix requires use of more than one or two reverb processors. And, I should not have to go through all this hocus-pocus of DSP assignment to get things to work! This may be an acceptable arrangement for a hobbyist home setup, but in a professional environment where there are paying customers it is inexcusable. I really don't have an interest in troubleshooting around Sonic Core's shoddy product.

I feel that the information I was able to gather when I purchased Xite was inaccurate, ambiguous, and omitted several material facts that should have been made clear to prospective buyers. I do not subscribe to their promises of future development because I am afraid, as in the past, that they will once again go out of business, leaving me with a useless piece of hardware that I spent way too much money on.

Last I checked, 64 bit is a staple of modern computing, and soon Windows 8 will be as well. I don't think that the excuse that Sonic Core is a small company and can't develop things fast enough is a good reason to have things not work. The didn't mention that excuse when I researched the product on their website. I am not beta testing this product. I paid nearly $4000 for it and I expect to get some utility value out of my investment.

Tim

Bud, 60% is about six 15dsp cards...

there are many resources involved in running a plugin, the number of dsps being one of them. ALL resources are limited. PCI cards even though they will go to about 80-90%, also will choke on more than three of the high-end verbs. a computer is a terrible housing for a reverb. thousands and thousands of delay lines use memory, cpu, dsp, and several busses resources(minus dsp for native verb but multiply the cpu cycles by a huge number).

also, the load order makes a difference. if a device, because of space, ends up loaded on dsps on opposite ends of the pcb, the minute timing issues created will make it impossible to run that device. Scope has dynamic loading and the ability to optimize(which means reload the dsps in a different order) the load, which many dsp systems do not. this is infinitely more complex in a dsp farm the size of an XITE, however. PTHD also will often not load anywhere near 100%(much much less than 100% actually). it is a fallacy to think that you should ALWAYS be able to load 100%, or depending on how you use the thing, that you EVER could load 100%. this doesn't mean that the unused dsps are not needed, even in that case. less dsps, would have even more limited resources. the resource at issue here is one that is involving connections between chips. this is why a big reverb should never be in an insert. it will assure that the mixer will become a load that will be spread among several dsps, and because of the nature of a reverb, will eat sat connections like potato chips. i have loaded 90% of an XITEs dsps, but this was not in an actual realworld mix or application. real life tends to be about 60-65%. there is room for further optimization and of course, that's part of what goes into a software rev upgrade. that said, depending on how the thing is used, even a 50% improvement in load efficiency(probably an unrealistic expectation) might not make a bit of difference to some users.

i don't think there's any argument about sound quality. in my mind, people who only care about computers and think that vsts sound as good as hardware or even better and only use mp3s will never see the value of Scope or even see a reason to use it. even just using the plate reverb OR a Minimax, OR a Pro12/Profit OR Solaris OR an optimizer, OR ConvolvEQ OR the stm 2448 OR 8 or the many High-End compressors in Scope sperately with other REAL hardware will find the thing stupidly cheap, while being every bit the quality of the best hardware available(yes, the best hardware is better, hardware always is, but the XITE isn't embarrassed to be in the same world).

all this blah, blah, blah aside, 25% maximum load just sounds wrong, not for any single project, but in general. maybe it's time to start from a blank project. perhaps something has become corrupted in the present one.

@Gary
Thanks for your response. I will try rebuilding my entire Scope project from the ground up. I have in the past used reverbs in the Aux slots, because that makes sense and keeps things organized, and the documentation doesn't say not to, unless I missed that part. I have relocated my reverbs to being external devices outside of the mixer and possibly gained a small boost in available resources. It sounds as though investing in a UAD card for reverb would probably be a good move for me as I really like their Lexicon 224 algorithm anyway.

I agree with you on the sound quality issues, Gary. Scope does an excellent job of signal processing, and I would consider it within 10% of the hardware it would compare to, and that is more than good enough for a DSP platform that offers so much functionality. I would easily consider Scope to be a the same sound quality level as DiGiCo consoles, which I have done a lot of mixing on. That is why I am going through all this troubleshooting.

Tim

thanks, tim. yes, buy a real reverb, too. for the price of a UAD, you could probably get a real Lexicon, maybe not a 224, but for sure a better pcm or a pile of lxp15s, all which use the same algos...

while you were posting, i went on a further rant. i don't want you to think that it's personally aimed at you. more, it's aimed at the web of ideas...

64bit is not fully implimented ANYWHERE in the audio world. most 64bit apps are not 64bit apps. the only advantage to 64bit is extra memory. typical audio apps in general actually perfom worse in 64bit windows than 32bit windows. windows 7 and 8 are also sold as 32bit versions.

that said, Scope WORKS in 64bit windows AND it works in windows8.
the samplers don't work in 64bit, but that's how it is. those samplers were made before XP even existed. if you REALLY need the extra ram, it's for large libraries in a program like Kontact, one of the ONLY audio apps that can actually USE the extra ram. if you have Kontact, a sampler, you should be able to live without STS.

naturally, there'll be an upgrade path from v5-v6, but if, as S|C has consistenty said, v5.1 users can benefit from v6 improvements, i don't see how they were mislead. the reason that v5.1 was necessary, was for use in win7. since the cards that v5.1 would be used with are all obsolete and made by a company that is OUT OF BUSINESS, and because no one has a gun to anyone's head making them upgrade, but if they do upgrade, they can keep using their cards, they WILL continue to work, i call bullshit to mislead customers.

here's my client http://www.williamgoldstein.com/, he's a BIG DEAL in the biz out here in Hollywood. he is using v5.1 in 64bit with a Pulsar1, and he's had no problems. here's another of my personal clients(Tom) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keane_Brothers, who used Scope on the latest Anita Baker album. he has no problems. v5.1 was not a trick. i'm using it on the computer that i typing this on, and i use it in my studio, yes, i'll say it again, i did an album that charted using only Scope. no one was tricked, unless they tricked themselves.

This is the first time I was aware Scope works in Windows 8. That is new information. I don't see any mention of Windows 8 support on the website, and have heard through unofficial channels that Windows 8 is not supported at this time, and there was no mention of anything different on the Sonic Core website. Can I use the "SCOPE Version 5.1.2709 Release" download to successfully run Scope on Windows 8? I don't want to reformat my machine to try this out without knowing if this is how to get it going. I have already purchased a Windows 8 license for my machine in order to get past other limitations I am having due to my version of Windows 7 not utilizing dual processors.

I hope that you can see that the lack of documentation on all this wierdness like the DSP allocation, not using reverbs within mixers, etc is very frustrating to an end user who may not spend a lot of time mingling in the Scope user community. When I made my Xite purchase, the documentation I got with it was very old, much of which was using Scope 4 images.

I must say that I do feel mislead by the fact I can only run a few reverb processors at one time. Your other users may not have experienced problems with what they were trying to do, but everyone's approach to using Scope is very different. I only use it for mixing and routing audio, I rarely, if ever, use any of the synths.

Right now, the Sonic Core website (http://sonic-core.net/joomla.soniccore/ ... 42&lang=us) says:

"Add effects until your fingers hurt:

guitar & bass amps
filters & a filterbank
modulation effects (dealy, chorus, flanger, phase, auto wah, …)
various reverbs
distortion & dynamic processors
vintage & linear phase equalizers
valve simulations
denoiser"

And I am only able to add a few reverbs? My fingers don't hurt yet, and I want more reverb!

Tim