Ferrofish news and exhibitions

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Hypersonix
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Hypersonix »

Didn't Gary mention something about a new 6dsp card a while back? Maybe this houses it?
I'm excited to say the least!
Music Manic
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Music Manic »

Monday we'll know!!
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ehasting
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by ehasting »

its monday now... CEST... whats in the secret box??!!!
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vascomusic
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by vascomusic »

ehasting wrote:its monday now... CEST... whats in the secret box??!!!
...well, it's a secret string :lol:
JuergenK
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by JuergenK »

Image

Hello Planetzetters!

thank you very much for your patience, and your nice comments!

Well, our new product is the A32, without "MK-II" and without "ultra"...because we think a second version is never needed for this one ;-)
What I like most on the A32 is the fact, that we put a Sharc DSP inside. We need it for mixing to the headphones (and also will do some more DSP mixing in the future probably), and because the Sharc only needs few cycles for that job, we will add some more stuff, inspired from the Scope Library, so we have a "smart converter".
I think people will love this feature, esp when we have "DSP expansion packages", so you can add the functionality you need. For an example, if you like to use the A32 for cinema speakers, you probably need a delay compensation for the outputs, that would be easy to do for the Sharc.

Good news is, that after long negotiations with our distributor and component/assembly factories we will be able to sell the A32 for a VERY reasonable price, more infos soon!
Please let me know about features, esp. what DSP-expansions you would like to see. We will have the first batch of A32 here in september, so we still have some time to add features.

Thanks for the good wished and your support!
Juergen

P.S.: here are some more specs about the A32: http://www.ferrofish.com
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garyb
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by garyb »

very nice, Juergen!
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Bud Weiser »

JuergenK wrote:Image

Hello Planetzetters!

...

Thanks for the good wished and your support!
Juergen

P.S.: here are some more specs about the A32: http://www.ferrofish.com
Excellent !

There are 2 PSU connectors (12V/3A) on the back ...
Why ?
Are there 2 A16mkII boards inside,- w/ some more circuitry in regards of SHARC in addition ?

How to use 32 channels I/O w/ XITE-1 ?
2 ADAT I/O only w/ XITE-1 unfortunately ...

Bud
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dante
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by dante »

Bud Weiser wrote:There are 2 PSU connectors (12V/3A) on the back ...why ?
Read the specs Bud - quote - "We know you need a reliable system. Thats why we have two power inputs. If one power supply fails, you see a warning on the TFT screens, and you can search for the failure while the A32 still works with the other supply"
JuergenK wrote:Please let me know about features, esp. what DSP-expansions you would like to see. We will have the first batch of A32 here in september, so we still have some time to add features.
Depends - is this a single DSP chip ( eg a bit more powerful than the older gen 21369 ) ? Maybe with an additional I/O port it could be suggested the addition of XTDM encode/decode - but I guess that idea has already been considered and discarded :)
Eanna
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Eanna »

I guess, mixers and encoders/decoders for 5.1 / 7.1, and other surround sound tools.
Upmixing up to 16.2 would be possible?

And Midi control of those Scope devices running on the box nailed down, and the Midi spec published.
Not sure if some digital channel into the box could handle other control transports, like OSC or other higher-resolution data formats?

Not sure if you want to take the product down that road...

Looks lovely btw :-)
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dante
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by dante »

With only one DSP, can't imagine turning it into any sort of multiFX unit.
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Bud Weiser »

dante wrote:Read the specs Bud - quote - "We know you need a reliable system. Thats why we have two power inputs. If one power supply fails, you see a warning on the TFT screens, and you can search for the failure while the A32 still works with the other supply"
Thx, man ! Cool idea !!!

Leaves the question how to benefit from 32 inputs and outputs when XITE-1 user.
I wonder if one of the other new products will be a MADI-interface for XITE XTDM bus now, just because in his 1st post Juergen announced "new products" for Musikmesse.

Bud
Last edited by Bud Weiser on Mon Apr 13, 2015 7:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Eanna
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Eanna »

Well, a single DSP that's more powerful than those in Xite would still run a fair whack of stuff I guess? I dunno..

Like, XITE and XITE-1D have the following DSPs (from http://sonic-core.net/joomla.soniccore/ ... ragment1-5):
Num DSP Chips XITE-1 - 12xSharc (333 MHz), 6xSharc (60 MHz)
Num DSP Chips XITE-1D - 4xSharc (333 MHz), 6xSharc (60 MHz)

The one in this box (21469) is a 450MHz job.. and will have other optimisations... So if Scope devices are built to optimally run on this new chip, then it'll prob run a good few devices?

I dunno tho, I'm no DSP head.
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Sounddesigner
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Sounddesigner »

Eanna, SHARC DSP's take a long long time and many generations to be a huge leap in power. When Sonic Core do decide to upgrades XITE-1's dsp's it may only be a 2X the power leap (little more or less). Sharc power increase is slow unless you choose another family like Tigersharc (if compatible). More power is not the concern with XITE-1, it's the MOST powerfullest interface on the market. It can run plenty of SCOPE devices and most people will have a powerfull computer as well thus have more power than they need. I've had more than enough power for about 6 years now, running at 96khz with my XITE-1 and computer.


EDIT: UA use two different dsp's in their UAD-2 cards and Apollo/Octo-cards. The latter two has the latest dsp's and it's only about a 20% power increase iirc over the previous (they don't harness that extra 20% since they underclocked them for compatibility I believe).

PS. DSP's are like computer Cores/Virtual-cores you get huge power from stacking them cause just like computer cores true-power increase is slow.
Last edited by Sounddesigner on Mon Apr 13, 2015 5:04 am, edited 5 times in total.
Eanna
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Eanna »

Yeah, I kinda got that... the 1999(?) vintage original SHARC chips on my PCI cards are not many orders of magnitude less powerful than those used in XITE... not like in PC-land at least.
Surprisingly, I guess the XITE dates from about 2007? PCI card SHARCs would have been about 8 years old when the XITE was under development... And this box, in 2015, is about 8 years older than Xite. Hard to believe, that...

Just reckon there may be enough juice on the single chip to specialise for particular use cases - surround sound applications, or an extensive Mixer, with some simpler channel strip inserts, few busses, and some processors on the master channel, or as some kind of a Summing Mixer, or as a Multi-effect device (if it has the RAM onboard to service the delay channels...)...

Like I say tho, I'm totally speculating - I don't even have an Xite myself - but some of the more-complex Xite projects I've seen here where DSP Placement has been resolved look ridiculously busy on the DSP side! :o
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Roland Kuit »

Congrats and interesting!
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Bud Weiser »

dante wrote:With only one DSP, can't imagine turning it into any sort of multiFX unit.
I also doubt a multifx unit makes sense in a AD/DA.

But I imagine several simpler things like "phase reverse", limiter, 3-band EQ, HiCut and LowCut/subsonic filter and such, individually assignable to in- and outputs.
I see delay compensation per channel already exists.

As an example,- here´s what RME offers for their "TotalmixFX" and DSP cards:
http://www.rme-audio.de/en/products/hdspe_madi_fx.php#7

Bud
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Eanna
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Eanna »

I wasn't suggesting a MultiFX unit. Rather, something that would do submixes and routing tailored for surround-sound work...

Similar to RME's offering, here's what Motu supply in their 828 / 896 range:
http://www.motu.com/products/motuaudio/ ... ix-fx.html

And TC Electronic's Konnekt 48, which has a few devices from their Powercore range:
http://www.tcelectronic.com/studio-konn ... class-dsp/

I had that TC unit a while back - sold it to buy my Scope cards - worked great, a fine interface! Once you get stability with firewire on Windows that is...
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dante
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by dante »

If we limit the discussion to what's appropriate for AD/DA then really none of the above is applicable and we don't really have a discussion isn't it ?

I would say better to assume Jeugen is ultimately the decider of what's appropriate and he can implement anything that a) he sees a demand for and b) fits on the chip. The scope library is not optimized for that chip so gains limited to clock speed only.

Now I believe that the distributor running the stands (Synthax) also sells RME stuff and NAB is about broadcasting. So thinking about Broadcasting- everything you need apart from AD/DA already exists in the studio. But what about in the field ?

SCENARIO: it's 6PM Sunday night. The boss of your radio station calls you up and says the 8PM show can't go to air due to technical issues. You have to go to Carnegie Hall to capture a live performance of the London Philharmonic version of Holst (very dynamic). You have an A32, a base station transmitter to send signal back to main studio transmitter, a box of 2 dozen SM58's and that's it. Your PC HDD crashed from a virus playing Diablo online last night. No time to travel 35KM to studio to get any other outboard gear.

So how would DSP help in this scenario ? Limiting and mixing could be good for example !

RME are boasting about how thier stuff works in the arctic on icebreaker ships. Any application for A32 DSP in space ? The first converter to be able to mix in zero gravity :lol:
jksuperstar
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by jksuperstar »

The new DSP used here has hardware blocks to support FFT, and I think combining the FFT with the displays might be a real nice, and very unique, feature to have in a interface.

Similarly, phase analysis or other tools (440hz signal generator, etc) could be very useful, especially for something with this many channels of I/O.
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Bud Weiser
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Re: Ferrofish news and exhibitions

Post by Bud Weiser »

dante wrote:If we limit the discussion to what's appropriate for AD/DA then really none of the above is applicable and we don't really have a discussion isn't it ?
But these ("With only one DSP, can't imagine turning it into any sort of multiFX unit.") were your own words above.
I only agreed and in addition I don´t see the necessity to have true multi FX in a AD/DA when the unit is connected to a soundcard/box like PCI card or XITE which already runs multi FX and mixers and such.

What RME delivers w/ their DSP soundcards will never run on a single SHARC,- the RME DSP is realized in a FPGA.
dante wrote: Limiting and mixing could be good for example !
Limiting, yes,- mixing,- maybe ...
How far shall the "mixing" go in a AD/DA unit ?
Do you think of using it standalone, then defining a stereo master out, busses, aux-sends and returns and subgroups or similar ?
I´d call it 32 I/O rackmount 1HU digital line mixer w/ MADI then.
Not bad for those going w/ hardware instruments and FX only,- keeps Computer and XITE @home.

Bud
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