Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

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Nebukadneser
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Location: Bergen, Norway

Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

Post by Nebukadneser »

Hello,

I have a system w/ Luna II, Pulsar II and a Pulsar I. The system is fairly sensitive to DSP overload when I do projects with a lot of connections (ADAT, Z-link, ASIO), or if I increase the polyphony of several synths in a project. I now consider replacing the Pulsar I with a seconhand Pulsar II. Will this increase the bandwidth of the system? I notices that the Pulsar 2 feature 2 STDM connections in stead of the 1 on my P1.

Best, Neb
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t_tangent
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Re: Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

Post by t_tangent »

I can't remember for sure if it will increase the bandwidth, but you should certainly see an improvement by replacing the Pulsar I with another Pulsar II. Also I can't remember if having a Pulsar I as part of the DSP farm means that all cards use the higher latency of the Pulsar I or is it the other way around? Been a while since I had a Pulsar I.

But by replacing with a Pulsar II you should see an improvement all around. I take it the Luna II also has the same minimum latency as the Pulsar II? I never used one of those, but hopefully you should then be able to reduce the latency settings down to about 3ms @ 48kHz, and improve the bandwidth, dependant also on your DAW setup to some extent as well, as some mobos have better PCI bandwidth than others. Not in front of my Scope daw right now so can't recall the exact settings. But I know the minimum latency settings on the Pulsar I are quite a bit higher than on Pulsar II. Sorry I can't help more.
Try doing the Masterverb test on your Scope setup before and after you have replaced the cards and see if that makes any difference. Search the forum for more info on the masterverb test.
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garyb
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Re: Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

Post by garyb »

yes, improved latency and much better handling of PCI resources, maybe 2-3 times better, but only if the Pulsar1 is removed completely.
Nebukadneser
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Re: Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

Post by Nebukadneser »

Great! I came across an offer here at home today. It's a Pulsar II with sync plate. The cost is EUR 200,- / USD 250,- which seems reasonable.

Neb
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t_tangent
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Re: Upgrading PI to PII - increase bandwidth?

Post by t_tangent »

That sounds like a good price. And if that is the word clock sync plate and you don't need it, there are a few people on here who are looking to buy a word clock sync plate, so you could then sell that on here. Sounds like a win win situation :) good luck with that.
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