Plugiator, Scope technology

[tlaskows]

I decided to open her up before I crash for the night. I had a reaaalllly long day. Gotta start sleeping more than 6 hours a night.

Anyways, in box with all accessories and not a scratch on it. I am really really surprised this thing is made of metal! From the pictures, it looked like it was some cheap white plastic. But no, she's heavy and sturdy. Forget stupid Viruses TI Snow or whatever. You can have this for $300 if you're lucky to find one. You get 8 unique synths in one box. Just waiting for my top-of-the-line BCR2000 so I don't need a computer to change the sound. Fits perfectly in the empty space on the side of a Korg M3 88. The BCR will hopefully fit on the other side of the M3. I'm really getting tired of virtual analogs that really do sound 'virtual', i.e. way off. Oh, good. I just noticed the seller included a burned CD with the editor software.





Good night guys,

-Tom

[Sounddesigner]

I don't think many people realized just how good of a value the Plugiator was when it was commercially available. The market did'nt know they were getting some of the best sounding digital synths ever at a VERY low price. Nice to know the build quality of Plugiator is robust from the metal casing. I still may give in and get one at some point.

[tlaskows]

I played with it a bit this morning. Well, the sound is great! Just like good old Scope. I'm really surprised on how good the FM synth sounds. I don't think this one is available for Scope? I think it's only 4 op. I screwed up the VSTi controller software installs so I have to wipe them cause Cakewalk is not finding it. Minimax controller was working fine, so all the rest of them should too. Extremely good box for the money and it will free up some DSP power.

I will update once I get Cakewalk to talk to it again...

I can take it apart (I do this to almost all my gear) and take some naked pictures so we know what's on the inside

-Tom

[tlaskows]

Well,

Cakewalk is stupid. What it did to get all the VSTis installed was uninstall all of them. Restart Cakewalk so it removes them from the list. Shut down Cakewalk. Install all the plugins and run Cakewalk. Now they're all there and work great under Winblows 7 x64! Maybe I should read the manual? I never do...

-Tom

[Sounddesigner]

When you have VST/VSTI problems you can also try going to the 'Plugin Manager' in Sonar then click 'Options' then click 'Reset All' for a clean wipe/new start IIRC.

Sonar can do some weird things at times, hopefully Cakewalk will continue to remove more of the strangeness. But Sonar's latest update 'Jamaica Plain' is VERY impressive. A much more substantative update than usual since they improved the Routing architecture dramatically and Engine with "Patch Points/Universal Routing Technology", AUX Tracks, and more CPU efficiency. Hopefully Cakewalk continue with these type updates cause it's definitely the right path IMV.

The FM synth in Plugiator is not available for SCOPE, that is a newer creation from Frank Hund's new company Indsp IIRC. SCOPE does have Poison, FM4, etc.

[tlaskows]

When you have VST/VSTI problems you can also try going to the 'Plugin Manager' in Sonar then click 'Options' then click 'Reset All' for a clean wipe/new start IIRC.

Sonar can do some weird things at times, hopefully Cakewalk will continue to remove more of the strangeness. But Sonar's latest update 'Jamaica Plan' is VERY impressive. A much more substantative update than usual since they improved the Routing architecture dramatically and Engine with "Patch points/Universal Routing Technology", AUX Tracks, and more CPU efficiency. Hopefully Cakewalk continue with these type updates cause it's definitely the right path IMV.

The FM synth in Plugiator is not available for SCOPE, that is a newer creation from Frank Hund's new company Indsp IIRC. SCOPE does have Poison, FM4, etc.

Oh cool! You're a Sonar user too? Yes, I think I got an email just recently about the Jamaican update. I shall install it. But it works fine now. Never had Sonar eat my CPU, but but, for some reason it runs all the soft synths on one core! I mean, I create 4 Divas 16 poly each and they're all on one core wth? I even enabled the multicore feature in the Diva and it didn't change a thing.

Yes, the Poison is very old, but the FM synth on this box sound better to my old ears. Very cool sounds! Seems pretty easy to edit, since it's only 4 op.

The drum machine is pretty nice sounding too. Nice and tweakable drum sounds, but I will need to use Sonar to sequence it I think Sonar made it easy for sequencing drum patters, but I cannot remember.

-Tom

[tlaskows]

Hey, aren't you the guy that was posting on GearSluts about how good Scope is a while ago? I swear I found your username somewhere on google

-Tom

[Sounddesigner]

Hey, aren't you the guy that was posting on GearSluts about how good Scope is a while ago? I swear I found your username somewhere on google

-Tom

Yea, more than likely it was me. And yes I use Sonar.

[tlaskows]

Yeah, Sonar seems to make the most sense to me... I know some people just hate it, I love it breh.

Okay, took it apart. There's almost nothing inside. 1 DSP chip, ADSP 21363. A 333MHz Sharc in a tiny BGA package! The chip is very small, not like the big ones they use in Xite-1.

Here are hi res photos:

http://www.thomaslaskowski.com/wp-conte ... ator11.jpg
http://www.thomaslaskowski.com/wp-conte ... ator21.jpg
http://www.thomaslaskowski.com/wp-conte ... iator3.jpg

Enjoy!

-Tom

[sunmachine]

Yeah, it would be great to have the FM Synth and the Drum plug-in available for SCOPE, too.
They were made by Assaf from the Adern team as far as I know (that's why the Drum plug-in looks a bit like Adern's KickMe).

[tlaskows]

Yes, the FM synth on this box is neat. It can make quite a bit different sounds than the DX7. I think it uses some odd algorithms according to the pictures I looked at in the controller software. Now, who can program me lately bass for this? Just joking, I'll do it myself

-Tom

[hubird]

nice, much pleasure with it

[tlaskows]

This was the easiest thing to take apart that I've taken apart! When I was a kid, I took stuff apart, but couldn't put it back together or it wouldn't work anymore. My parents were not too impressed

I have a lot of catching up to do. I always wanted a cheap keyboard when I was back in Poland, but we didn't have that kind of money at the time. Those were the times of Communism and food stamps. A lot has changed since then. I should go visit eventually. I've been in this country for too long (23 years?). I am waiting for my Canadian passport in the mail. Planning on driving to Florida with a good friend. I am not sure which car we're gonna take. And only one of us will come back alive because he literally drives all day with no breaks (at least 14 hours a day)

-Tom

[faxinadu]

had it, to be honest it is a strange machine, i didn't connect.

[tlaskows]

I am not sure what you mean. The sound is the same as in Scope... not enough knobs or something?

-Tom

[faxinadu]

just didn't find a real use for it, as i have all the synths in scope and the layout and workflow i find a bit odd for live setups. an asb box i would love to have, but the plugiator seems a bit unsure of itself of what it wants to be.

[tlaskows]

Yeah, I see your point. But I have never played live and probably never will.

I've seen some people play at the local pub and they had a King Korg or something that looked like it maybe once?

I don't know how far I have to go to see people play live. And I ain't talking about Daft Punk that just hits play on their ADAT tape and stand there. Come on! I read somewhere they used like 50 BCR2000 boxes at a show... for what? I don't think they're doing any tweaking. You don't need 1000s of knobs to tweak filter cutoff...

-Tom