SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1?)

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Bud Weiser
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by Bud Weiser »

spacef wrote:
it's an Xite thing (for the moment at least) but it is more likely to happen often with things that require a lot of connections between modules over several dsps, such as the Modular Mixer. ...

... a synthesizer with high polyphony (there are not a lot of connections inside a synth, or at least, the number is not comparable with what's inside a mixer).
John Bowen´s ZARG BIG synth devices,- at least Solaris v5, Rotor EX, Quantum Wave,- show the same issues on XITE-1 since their demand on SAT connections is insanely high caused by the complexity and modularity of modulation busses etc..
But they also don´t behave MUCH better on PCI,- polyphony will be low count always and it always depends on complexity of a given patch.
spacef wrote: It is possibly a limitation by analog devices themselves rather than xite. ...
Can be.
OTOH, I always thought device developers (should) know the limitations of the hardware before starting to create devices being too complex for the machines abilities.
That´s not meant as an offense and please don´t take it personal,- I don´t own and/or run any SpaceF Modular Mixer on my XITE-1, so I dunno how your devices behave on XITE vs PCI.

But according to some (by far not all !) ZARG devices, synth-design kicked over the traces when developing all the features included in a single synth DSP device.
OTOH, we see all those synth components we know from ZARG for SCOPE running well in the Solaris hardware synth, so John´s ideas and realization now work,- but on a different hardware base, even it´s not so much different from SCOPE systems except the host computer domain is eliminated completely.

:)

Bud
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by spacef »

no offence taken, I have LBH VIII and Multisynth in that case. They both required a full scope pci card to run, at a polytphony of.... "1" ......and have an incredible number of stuff inside, connections all over etc.... i mean, even a 64 channel modular mixer is an ant compared to those monsters.... You could not use multisynth with polyphony on all synths, may be 1 or two could bear a poly of 2 or 3 max, with small single oscillators... More than that, could bring a dsp overload..... or a scope crash in the worse case.... I guess people with 3 Scope PCI cards could do much better than what I could personnally get at home on a single card. I mean, those devices were not designed for Pulsar, we knew that .... but there were also a lot of poeple with multiple scope card... setups with 30 or 45 dsp were not that unusual at some point. and in any case, we simply wanted to make those devs, because we wanted to (i speak for myself, but i know most developpers, commercial or freeware, have a true passion for scope). We don't count the hours passed on that bloody screen connecting pads to pads, chasing bugs, and the graphic part is a large part of the work - we know we won't get rich like VSTi developpers, we all have certainly lost time, and may be other opportunities that other people get in life because they actually go out. , but we simply love(d) scope, and want(ed) to push it to its limits. and that's what we did :-) . With Xite, we get to be more rational, but is still an opportunity to learn to do things differently.

And also, it is not sonic core's fault that you have zarg or other people like me who make big stuff . They never asked that lol :-)

Modular Mixer was designed on a scope pci card, but for xite. I didn't have info on how it worked - it wasn't even finished , it was still at the "rumor" stage ( #soon , lol) - i just had a sense of what could be done seeing...the PICTUREs of the dsp architectures and info posted by various poeple (mainly sonic core and Jimmy V). I thought, "hey may be i should try to do something like this or that".... It is not a Jedi thing, more like a bet. I could have been totally wrong and waste all those long weeks of development.

it was a bet. I was lucky, and we are all quite lucky to have that "forward+backward compatibility'. Do microsoft and Apple provided that since 1998 ??? people often forget that. we do have that. not perfect, but it is there. I mean, there are more developpers than we think that still work on a single pulsar card. It is quite extraordinary that their devices can work on all scope hardware..... and that they can run stuff made on a hardware/software that is 10 or 15 years younger...

What if Xite worked without any backward compatibility and all plugs would have to be remade from scratch.... Developpers would need to remake them, re-learn techniques etc... considering the workload, i am certain most of them would have bailed or burned out.... and users would probably need to re-buy everything because of the workload on the developpers who, at some point, need some fuel to survive the long days of developping something (may be in 1000 years it be different, but now it's like we know it is)... not sure it would have been well received by the community when Xite was first released.



Anyway, most of those big devs were made before Xite even existed, and I think it is also the case for most Zarg synth. I beleive Solaris is a completely different story with new modules and techniques especially made for it. I don't think it could be transposed as a scope/xite device, not completely at least. But I am not the one to answer those questions.

I hope it helps :-)
Last edited by spacef on Tue Sep 05, 2017 2:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Bud Weiser
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by Bud Weiser »

spacef wrote: What if Xite worked without any backward compatibility and all plugs would have to be remade from scratch.... Developpers would need to remake them, re-learn techniques etc... and users would need to re-buy everything because of the workload on the developpers... not sure it would have been well received by the community.
That´s not what I wanted to discuss at all.
I´m satisfied w/ XITE-1 because all the S|C stuff works,- stock and optional devices.
That´s what I payed for when I bought XITE-1.

3rd party can be risky,- but most 3rd party devices incl. freeware I own work too, even not every device is optimized for XITE-1.
spacef wrote: Anyway, most of those big devs were made before Xite even existed, and I think it is also the case for most Zarg synth.
That´s true.
But some devices seemed to get updates over time,- some ZARG devices carry the "SC" for "Sonic Core" in their names ,- others don´t. Orion Custom sc, Dark Star sc and Ambient sc do,- and they work flawlessly on XITE-1.
spacef wrote: I beleive Solaris is a completely different story with new modules and techniques especially made for it. I don't think it could be transposed as a scope/xite device, not completely at least. But I am not the one to answer those questions.
No, it cannot be transposed as a SCOPE/XITE device.
The opposite is the case, the Solaris SCOPE device is the forerunner of Solaris hardware synth.
That´s why I mentioned it´s "components" running in Solaris hardware synth on new SHARCs,- and in Solaris hardware synth new SHARCs also manage the communication between chips as well as the I/O system and in opposite to XITE-1 where it´s done by the 6 old 60MHz SHARCs.
I think there´s the bottleneck.

Anyway,-

we´ll se what will come SOON now.

:D

Bud
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dante
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by dante »

Legacy devices spanning DSP will be problematic on XITE and for the user require manual DSP placement or not. Developers wont be able to port their large devices without owning an XITE to work and test on taking into account the phase alignment and SAT issues between DSP farms. Unless the developer knows the sample offset relationships between the DSP/farms and how to compensate, then phase issue is almost guarenteed.

References:
http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_07/xitemast.htm
http://www.hitfoundry.com/issue_22/dsp_mast.htm

NB The pics of tests in the first link above are animated gif so give a few seconds for them to fully load in your browser.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by spacef »

right, but that phase things exists since the early pulsar day though... i really rarely ran into phase issues though, it happened a couple of times . On xite, reloading the project like explained on the previous page often solved the issue for me. I don't know if people are running into it often neither. Do you ?
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by dante »

No because I don't mix on XITE. When I did mix on XITE it was on the XITE-1D that was using the special phase aligned ScopeRise mixer but that only allowed 32 mono channels. I use Native SSL Mixer on which I have mixed up to 80 stereo channels @ 96KHz. The tests only measure where the system issues exist - not how they manifest as user experience.

The XITE-1D has all DSP on same farm, so there is far less inter farm phase issue than the full XITE.

The issues tested are unique to the full XITE - unrelated to PCI Scope or XITE-1D. They relate only to the full XITE DSP farm offsets.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by Bud Weiser »

dante wrote: The XITE-1D has all DSP on same farm, so there is far less inter farm phase issue than the full XITE.
I doubt it has, sorry.
My understanding is, you have 4 DSP slots (you call ´em "farm" ?) in every XITE-1 and XITE-1D, each slot being controlled by a old 60MHz DSP (DSPs #3-#6).
ASIO and I/Os done by DSPs #1 & #2 in every XITE box.

But (!),- the 1st four DSPs across the slots/ "farms" (DSPs #7 -#10) come w/ the best communication power and in XITE-1D you have only THESE while in XITE-1 you have DSPs #11 -#18 in addition which consequently put additional load on DSPs #3-#6 (see above).

So when loading a mixer, let´s say,- on DSP #7 on XITE-1 and the chip is saturated w/ p.ex. 22 channels and you want more, the load might spread across DSPs #7 / #11 and #15 in the same slot/ "farm" where only DSP #7 offers best communication w/ DSP #3,- DSP #11 and #15 not so much.

Cannot happen in XITE-1D where additional load will spread across DSPs #7 / #8 / #9 and #10 always,- and they ALL offer the same communication quality because each of these DSPs is connected to a single 60MHz DSP !!!

:)

Bud
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by dante »

Yep so for SpaceF question I won't experience those issues on XITE-1D same as the XITE-1.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by spacef »

ah...ok....
it's always been long discussions this issue.

Now guys, if you want to discuss this phase/dsp connection thing further, i would really appreciate that you open another subject.

I am not saying the issue is bullcrap, not at all, but since the early days of Pulsar, this issue has too often been used by some to pretend they are superior to others. I could post a picture of something i am working on right now and that is directly linked to what sur-a-l is talking about, but i won't.

As I am sure this discussion will be heated and long, Thanks a lot in advance if you can open a new subject for it. It will make info more easy to find about that issue too, people could post test results etc etc.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by dawman »

Anything new with MB7-ish mixers?
I use only 3 x AUX Channels now.
I'll be trying some new ideas this week once the rigs are set up again.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by spacef »

i began a bigger mb7 (*130%) . exactly the same, 30% bigger. Then may be a version without the filters but with the new channels that i posted on facebook, and trying to keep the crossfaders.
But it is tests, may be it will not be good enough to release.
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by spacef »

another example. 20 channel mixer with Modular Mixer V2 (will be available in 2 packs or more so you don't need to get everything if you don't want to - the pic below is made with modules from Pack 1 only).
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Re: SpaceF Modular Mixer in 2016 (anyone using it with XITE1

Post by David »

Excellent looking mixer package - looking forward to all the new devices
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