PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Had a friend round the other night messing in my studio. Difficult to explain the concept of scope to the uninitiated, but he was blown away.
The sound quality of the effects and synths had him totally in awe.
He's coming round next week for a play, he's more of a guitarist, so I said we could make some tunes.
I bet he sits there for hours again going through presets on every synth
Still banging quality that impresses anyone that hears it.

Very glad to hear it!

Thanks for sharing, Chilliman!

It’s so true. I’ve been raising a family and away from scope for a few years. I recently reconnected it on a rebuilt system, and once I had everything wrung out...it purrs like such a lion. What a fabulous beast.

Sounds a lot like me (and soon I), glad to see you still around jksuperstar.

The scope platform is real f#cka it breaks the barriers of of all sounds it hypnosis addictive magnetized

Its always been a fabulous sounding platform. I'm suprised that they havent developed and released a six dsp system with the PCIe inerface to take advantage of the explosion of DAW users across the board, maybe such a product would feature a usb and balanced phono outputs or even a HDMI out for home users. I would suspect that the PCI card user base maybe falling away because of the cost of upgrading to an excite system and the problems of finding a mobo with PCI slots.

outsounder wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:04 am Its always been a fabulous sounding platform. I'm suprised that they havent developed and released a six dsp system with the PCIe inerface to take advantage of the explosion of DAW users across the board, maybe such a product would feature a usb and balanced phono outputs or even a HDMI out for home users. I would suspect that the PCI card user base maybe falling away because of the cost of upgrading to an excite system and the problems of finding a mobo with PCI slots.

Well that would have been a PCIe card w/ 6 of the large SHARC DSPs you find in XITE-1D and XITE-1,- no ?
I can imagine development and production costs of such card would be close to XITE-1D which has only 4 of the big SHARCs and 6 of the old ones.
Have a look how expensive 2 and 4 SHARC-DSP UAD products are already.
And It would be a 3rd hardware product S|C had to manage.

So, XITE-1D was already for those not being willing to invest in flagship XITE-1 or not being able to afford one.



Bud

Looks like the XITE-1D is no longer available. Neither are the UAD solo or duo cards. Quad is the lowest now on PCIe cards (6 is lowest in a 1U rack) - and the newer UA desktop interfaces no longer use Sharc at all. Indicates there's now no return on new Sharc R&D in DAW world. The viability window for a Scope PCIe card probably passed a decade ago. The march of the M1's continue....

This is like saying the march of the iPads continues, because it's equally true.

If there's any hardware after Xite, it has to be thunderbolt, to keep the system fast, and external to simply the product line.

dante wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 11:40 am ... the XITE-1D is no longer available. Neither are the UAD solo or duo cards.
... Indicates there's now no return on new Sharc R&D in DAW world.

I guess most is caused by shortage of parts/chips and there is no end in sight.
Companies want the keep their biz alive and move on in directions being still possible.

dante wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 11:40 am The viability window for a Scope PCIe card probably passed a decade ago. The march of the M1's continue....

Simply the prefered styles of music and sonic quality needed for these styles changed a lot already much earlier.
For all the EDM crap you don´t really need something like a studio as also not a lot of hardware gear.
When it exists, it´s more or less idealism or simply showup.

I´ve seen producers sitting on my patio in the sun w/ iPad and iPhone, to me demonstrating download of loops and clips within minutes and arranged good (enough) sounding tracks in a heartbeat by using simple apps,- then transfered over to their home-DAW via "we transfer" to do mixes in Logic later in the evening.
I´m talking about pro record company and publishing owner selling these tracks !
And yes, he´s in his 70s already, owns a lot of outboard hardware and real instruments like Rhodes, Clavinet, Wurlitzer,- owns a Leslie 122 and already sold B3, owns vintage preamps and compressors, Protools TDM, Appogee, Logic, ext. MIDI modules, good nearfield monitors etc., etc.,- and is a real good keyboardplayer too.
But it´s all not urgently needed anymore and he´s about selling more and more gear.
Last week he sold his Fender Rhodes for insane money.
In fact, he rented his studio-rooms to others and put all I mentioned above into the living room in his appartment and runs biz successfully from there.
And he told me from artists mixing w/ cans,- no studio monitors at all,- deliver and their stuff sells by streaming and downloads.

It´s different times and it´s all for the sonic quality the internet needs,- it´s in fact for earbuds.

Just only we idealists don´t want to work like that and possibly dislike these styles of music too,- but that´s just only matter of taste and age.
Successful is what sells,- that´s it !

You know, Adam Szabo https://www.adamszabo.com/ VIPER VSTi (Win only) provides all the EDM sounds you need already,- for EUR 89,- !
And w/ version v1.1.0 now you´re able to import Acess Virus Classic and TI patches.
Not all sound 100% identical or fully work, but most do.

Apple M1 proc speed is fast enough for all this anyway.
But it´s also too expensive when there´s no chance for repairs, user RAM upgrade is no-go and M.2 SSDs are soldered to the mainboard.
Means,- after 3 years and when your expensive extended warrantee expired,- you have to buy all new in case of failure just because the replacement mainboard is almost as expensive as a new machine is.
This is simply what holds me back from buying Apple products since decades.
My Macs are all still PPC and run since the 90s ...



Bud

jksuperstar wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:49 pm If there's any hardware after Xite, it has to be thunderbolt, to keep the system fast, and external to simply the product line.

You don´t have any guarantee true Thunderbolt will exist for long enough.
At least Apple likes to change connectivity often which generates sales of new computers and acessories.

When Thunderbolt merges or already merged w/ USB-C,- it´s not below OS level anymore,- no USB is as I already said above.
When Thunderbolt loses it´s (formerly) individual abilites, it also becomes obsolete for SCOPE/XITE realtime work or already is.
Remember, you cannot use most Windows laptops combined Thunderbolt/USB-C bus for SCOPE/XITE and only new S|C hardware would change that.
But then,- SCOPE will be just only another native software product like all the other´s are.
It´s questionable if we´d need that at all, depending on how much special it will be.



Bud

if "sound Quality" were the point, then this discussion would be moot.

If sound quality were the point, to me its about learning and practicing how to use the diversity of all the tools and skills at ones disposal that go way beyond just the chipsets involved. Although I'm loving Intel and Sharc, and soon M1 just as much hopefully.

garyb wrote: ↑Sun Apr 03, 2022 9:58 am if "sound Quality" were the point, then this discussion would be moot.

... but the topic ...

Bud

Thunderbolt will survive, there is still a need for hardware "tightly "coupled to the CPU for many industries, and PCI is dieing a slow death.

Thunderbolt 4 and usb 4 are PCI tunneling aren't they

I see that a new company is trying to use GPU cards as scope style cards.

Bud Weiser wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 8:38 am

outsounder wrote: ↑Sat Apr 02, 2022 7:04 am Its always been a fabulous sounding platform. I'm suprised that they havent developed and released a six dsp system with the PCIe inerface to take advantage of the explosion of DAW users across the board, maybe such a product would feature a usb and balanced phono outputs or even a HDMI out for home users. I would suspect that the PCI card user base maybe falling away because of the cost of upgrading to an excite system and the problems of finding a mobo with PCI slots.

Well that would have been a PCIe card w/ 6 of the large SHARC DSPs you find in XITE-1D and XITE-1,- no ?
I can imagine development and production costs of such card would be close to XITE-1D which has only 4 of the big SHARCs and 6 of the old ones.
Have a look how expensive 2 and 4 SHARC-DSP UAD products are already.
And It would be a 3rd hardware product S|C had to manage.

So, XITE-1D was already for those not being willing to invest in flagship XITE-1 or not being able to afford one.



Bud

But If the sharc dsp on UAD sounds good, How they were able tô make It Native in all computers on 2023. Maybe scope could become Native also?

But If the sharc dsp on UAD sounds good, How they were able tô make It Native in all computers on 2023. Maybe scope could become Native also?

Back in 2000 Scope was superior for the real time capabilities and for the quality of the plugins.

In 2023 the real time performance remains one of the advantages of Scope and other DSP based cards.

Using native plugins is great, but latency is still a problem when real time is needed and many plugins are loaded.