Scope NSA Offer 2: All Zarg synths (Solaris, Quantum Wave..)

[djmicron]

...
The number of voices depends on what you load on your patch.
The Solaris can load a different number of different oscillators, filters, can load modular patches, so it's not possible to have a certain polyphony with it.

...
So, some time ago I´ve read somewhere about Solaris´ limit is 3 voices on XITE-1.
If that´s true, it would be sad because hardware Solaris runs 10 voices on 6x 333MHz SHARCs which is less than XITE-1 offers.

All I wanted to know is if this is fixed/improved already or not.
It´s also not a dealbreaker for me, just only want to be informed.

I think John collects money,- buys XITE and SDK 6,- than will update his plugins anyway.

Bud

I talked to John very recently about this. The Xite-1 architecture's backwards compatibility with legacy devices is actually the weak link in the design, where the synchronous IO being "bottlenecked", preventing a 'simple' codefix to allow the advanced zarg devices to exploit more dsps. If he decides to update his plugins it might take a lot of work, including coorporation from S|C. If enough people want it perhaps I can get a kickstarter going so we can get serious about this. I'm pretty sure that without some help from the community, or unless Solaris appears on the cover of SoS and sells 10000 units next year nothing will change while we're still "young" unfortunately.
If any developers (I'm aiming to become a SCOPE one myself but only work with MAX/CSound/Pd atm) want the exact gist of the problem, and how it's not really Zarg's fault nor is it easily remediable, pm me and I can forward any info.

I think it's the main scope software to be optimized for the xite and at the same time, something can be enhanced on the solaris circuit to be more lightweight.
The Prodyssey, the Minimax and the Pro5 sounds great and are lightweight at the same time and ok, they are not complex like the solaris, but for sure they are developed with performance in mind.

[dawman]

I think you all should just break down and spend the 200 bucks for everything made by John Bowen and by Soniccore.

Then all of us can share new Modular developments, new presets, sing by the big screenshot of a campfire to avoid global warming, and teach the world to sing in perfect harmony.

I added up what I paid for everything that can be had for 99+99 for the 2 NSA deals, and it came to 1400 USD.
I have never regretted these purchases.

[Bud Weiser]

I talked to John very recently about this. The Xite-1 architecture's backwards compatibility with legacy devices is actually the weak link in the design, where the synchronous IO being "bottlenecked", preventing a 'simple' codefix to allow the advanced zarg devices to exploit more dsps. If he decides to update his plugins it might take a lot of work, including coorporation from S|C. If enough people want it perhaps I can get a kickstarter going so we can get serious about this. I'm pretty sure that without some help from the community, or unless Solaris appears on the cover of SoS and sells 10000 units next year nothing will change while we're still "young" unfortunately.
If any developers (I'm aiming to become a SCOPE one myself but only work with MAX/CSound/Pd atm) want the exact gist of the problem, and how it's not really Zarg's fault nor is it easily remediable, pm me and I can forward any info.

thx,- interesting info !

Bud

[Scotty_123]

Advice needed here. I have a 12 DSP system loaded with the previous NSA deal. It is all second generation Scope. I have another system that is all first generation 23 DSP (older scope).

Does anyone run Bowan's stuff on older first gen hardware? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Does anyone run Bowans stuff a 12 DSP secondary generation system? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Curious Canadian - Scotty

So well this is a surprise... If anyone @ S|C is reading, I would gladly pay x4 if these devices were Xite-1 optimized (ie. can run with more than 2-3 voices).

[Bud Weiser]

i have made some solaris patch with 8 voices polyphony on xite-1.

I agree that on pci boards it is easier to increase polyphony for the solaris.

thank you, important info for me !

Now,- I have 1 PCI card only, 15DSP, but seems to be 2nd gen because it goes down to 4ms (7ms safety) latency ...

I expect I get more out from Solaris on the XITE-1 then.

Solaris seems to be the most DSP hungry of all the ZARG devices,- is that correct ?
For me, it´s all about which devices I want for my card and which ones for XITE-1.
Ambient, Dark Star, and Orion Custom are already on my XITE-1, so I´d want these for SCOPE 5.1 and the PCI card now.

All the others for XITE-1,- if they run well.

Any rooted objections ?

Bud

[yayajohn]

[quote="Scotty_123"]Advice needed here. I have a 12 DSP system loaded with the previous NSA deal. It is all second generation Scope. I have another system that is all first generation 23 DSP (older scope).

Does anyone run Bowan's stuff on older first gen hardware? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Does anyone run Bowans stuff a 12 DSP secondary generation system? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Curious Canadian - Scotty


I have been running Rotor EX and Quantum Wave SE on a 26dsp system for a few years now. I was told that Solaris and QW full are very dsp hungry so I went for QWSE. From my experience the Bowen synths are pretty much what you make of them. You can load very light dsp patches or load them up to the max. I have a couple of Rotor EX patches that max out my 26dsp pci cards. (that's also with some RDII modules loaded) The QWSE is just one out of the four synths of the full QW so this is better if you are dsp limited and I was told you can even recreate the full patches manually if you wanted to load 4 instances - never tried that though. There is also a Solaris light version called Solaris Core. I do not know if John is offering the light versions though so you will have to check.
I am considering buying this offer for both my Xite-1 and my 26dsp pci. The synths are that good IMHO.
Good luck with your decision

Dan

[Shamk]

Any chance to have good demo sounds ?

[jhulk]

i have a 27 dsp system 1 15 dsp 2 6 dsp

and my other is 2 15dsp and 1 6dsp the 5.1 soft is on the both 6 dsp cards and the 15dsp are used as boosters

i get 12 voices on the 27 dsp and 13 on the 36dsp before running out of resources

for the qwave which is not bad as seeing thats in performance mode thats 48 voices

my waldorf wave has the 16 voice cards 8 of the standard and an 8 voice expansion

now if i use it in performance mode using 2 presets i only get 8 voices poly

so the qwave has a higher poly than my actual synth

the solaris depending on what presets 10 to 16 voices

as seeing i only have 10 digits 10 voice poly is all i require and as most old boards only provided 8 note poly

then your good to go with these synths

[Scotty_123]

Thanks for the feedback, very helpful and I will be taking the bait. - Scotty

Advice needed here. I have a 12 DSP system loaded with the previous NSA deal. It is all second generation Scope. I have another system that is all first generation 23 DSP (older scope).

Does anyone run Bowan's stuff on older first gen hardware? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Does anyone run Bowans stuff a 12 DSP secondary generation system? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Curious Canadian - Scotty


I have been running Rotor EX and Quantum Wave SE on a 26dsp system for a few years now. I was told that Solaris and QW full are very dsp hungry so I went for QWSE. From my experience the Bowen synths are pretty much what you make of them. You can load very light dsp patches or load them up to the max. I have a couple of Rotor EX patches that max out my 26dsp pci cards. (that's also with some RDII modules loaded) The QWSE is just one out of the four synths of the full QW so this is better if you are dsp limited and I was told you can even recreate the full patches manually if you wanted to load 4 instances - never tried that though. There is also a Solaris light version called Solaris Core. I do not know if John is offering the light versions though so you will have to check.
I am considering buying this offer for both my Xite-1 and my 26dsp pci. The synths are that good IMHO.
Good luck with your decision

Dan

[dante]

Does anyone run Bowans stuff a 12 DSP secondary generation system? IF so what kind of polyphony would be expected if running Solaris on such a system ?

Yes. I am running on 12DSP PCI ( 3 second gen cards) and on Solaris Core can get from 3 to 7 voices at 48KHz depending on complexity of the preset. Solaris Core can run around 90% of the Solaris v5 presets.

You could get more voices running at 44KHz.

The fact that Zarg synths were written for PCI is the main reason I have reserved the PCI cards for that purpose, although I have XITE-1D as well.

You can do a lot with only 3 note poly ( https://soundcloud.com/hitfoundry/solaris-entropy-2-mp ) - in fact, I'm basing my latest electro composition around a 3 note progression. If you use inversions effectively 3 note poly is actually a very good discipline, so for my compositional purposes obsessing about maximum polyphony can be a misdirection of thought process. Although I can see the need for higher poly in live performance situations.

[jhulk]

you can do poly rhythms with mono lines we used to do it with the mini moog

we would record mono lines to tape from a miked speaker then did the same sequence line starting at a different key on a separate track

then used another track with another mono line at another key we would then play the 3 tracks and bounce down to one track

we would then have chord poly lines on tape

it took more passes but the end result is the same

so if you get 3 note poly you can accomplish the same using your daw

or you can go one step further record a multisample of the patch and make an sf2 or sts format sound and use the bc modular sts module

you can easily get 8 to 10 poly on a 12dsp system with a 32bit os

[yayajohn]

Well i'm inclined to agree with Bud on the poly issue. Of course it depends on your style. 10 fingers does not mean 10 poly is enough. Look at the standard poly on any given hardware keyboard for the past 20yrs. More is better even if you are not using it all the time. I like ambient spacey stuff with long envelopes and jamming my foot on the sustain pedal and it's irritating when I can hear a voice drop out. To some that = mud but eh, to each his own. When you're in the groove or an inspirational moment you don't want anything technical to snap you out of it.
Also I think most of the Zarg synths have unison capability as well. So yeah it would be nice to get these geared to the Xite.

HOWEVER.....

No matter what poly you get on these, I can pretty much guarantee most of you will be a happy camper for this price!

[Eanna]

Indeed. These synths are superb.
Quality comes at a price, and that price in the current offer is solely polyphony.

Me, I don't need big polyphony, so I'm unconditionally happy with these synths. There is so much complexity possible in a single voice, I could never hope to have space in a track for a complex Zarg synth patch requiring anything more than two/three voices. Slim the patch down, and the magic four-voice chordal structures are possible. And for a huge proportion of the patches, four is possible, so long as there isn't too much else loaded in Scope - treating Scope like an external synth, with no mixers, and just Midi In and Audio Out, is a totally appropriate use of the platform, when what you gain is a polyphonic beast of a synth, if that's your willing...

I can see how those on Xite wish that it wasn't throttled due to the constraints of backward compatibility.
I do hope JB and S|C can refactor at least one of these synths to offer better polyphony on Xite.
But for me on my old PCI cards, this stuff is magic.

[yayajohn]

Got the keys. Thanks Gary

[garyb]

[jksuperstar]

I'm completely psyched about the modular version of Pro-Wave. I've been working on adding my Bass signal as an oscillator...with envelope created from the audio stream, peak velocity, and such as PolyMod inputs, and it's great. I'm loving this flexibility. I've got a whole winter ahead of me to master this Bass-as-synth-as-bass thing. Good times.

[siriusbliss]

Got my keys - thanks Gary!

I now have all 8 synths loaded in a project, but haven't cranked up the voice quantities yet.

I AM having problems with the synths not seeing the presets though....
edit > nevermind - it helps to just reload the presets manually

Greg

[yayajohn]

Looks great.

Here's a how to..
http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_10/pro_modu.htm

I believe this is incorrect on the ScopeRise website. It should be the Pro-Wave Modularv1_2.mdl not the .dev
(I loaded the .dev and it didn't show up in modular)

On the download file it is located in the \Scope\App\Application folder and I copied it to one of my modular modules folders.

Dante can you confirm and update that?


Dan

[yayajohn]

Need some clarification:

There are 2 versions of the Orion Custom

Zarg_OrionCustom_sc.zip dated 9/30/09
Zarg_Orion v3_0.dev dated 2/13/12


I have keys for the OrionCustom_sc only. I am not interested in previous versions but it looks like the Orion v3_0 is the most current file?


Dan

[Mr Arkadin]

When you load Orion Custom into Scope and open the GUI it has v3.0 written on it, so the custom-sc file is the one I used and seems to be the latest too. The ftp site could do with a bit of reorganising to make it simpler.