PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

As i had some troubles using the pulsar 2 on 64 bit with asio i was to troubled wiyh using it in a live setting.
I was willing to sell it but got a new idea.
I have the hp elite 800 standing around and tought what if?
If i build a nice wooden case build it with midi controllers and tft in it and use it as standalone Synt sampler/ recorder.

Is the option of using 32 bit scope 5.1 more easy to get it stable?
Is forgetting about asio drivers the ending of getting crackles and bluescreens?

Anyway ill be testing this option for now

I have 3 pci cards = 13dsp system. Then I bought an Xite-1. But I never sell my pci's... I put them in a 2° pc, wired them with Xite via ADAT and use them as aux fx processor...
The oldest pci card must be around 18 years old and works perfectly.

So you agree for dsp real time processing this board aint out of time just make a dedicated systemout of it?

Sure I agree ! That is what I do ! I don't know what kind of thing you're doing with Scope but with 6 dsps, you already can do not bad things such as having some reverb, modular synth, etc... Latency & ULLI is only if you use asio, if you use only I/O, synth or whatever except asio, the latency is undetectable.

On my system, with 13 dsp, I kept my 2 luna I/O on the pci cards for my hardware synth and I can load 3 master verb pro + 2 fantastic SC-plate and keep all the Xite-1 power for anything else... Which mean a lot of things !

I tried to use it with asio for low latency.
Now i use it for the synths and some aux and routing.
And yes its latencyfree like that.

I use my scope DSP cards in an old system wired to my Mac pro via ADAT, AES, Midi etc. The Scope computer is also connected to my big mixer via sends, aux returns, a few input channels, and a mix group or two. Using scope standalone works wonderfully!

I use my scope DSP cards in an old system wired to my Mac pro via ADAT, AES, Midi etc. The Scope computer is also connected to my big mixer via sends, aux returns, a few input channels, and a mix group or two. Using scope standalone works wonderfully!

I tried that yesterday, with scope as master and with scope as slave, all routed with a motu traveller -} scope -} x32 -} rme
Routing worked but got dropouts no crackiling but pop dropout. So i elimintated al unitss 1 by 1 and the scope went up to be the one giving me problems.
I think i tried everything with the master slave settings on al devices. I'm for sure i did with the scope. So adat sync couldnt be the problem.
Now i'm testing with different systems and use latency monitor.
Turns out that 1 system had lagspikes with atapi drivers 2 other are all related on nvdia drivers. I did some tweaking and i could bring the spikes down but not down to 0.2 Ms
The further i investigate the more i think that globalization is taking over the IT market. MS, INTEL and NVIDIA are aiming at consumers and office aplications.
Having updates always on aint a good thing for DAW market and rendering. I didnt had any issues on my atari falcon (sure there where no vst's) ans neither on PC until xp servicepack 1.
Fortunatly i can turn updates off in W10 pro so i will eliminate every driver issue
For sure i sell my Nvidiacards and buy cheap multimonitor AMD's as AMD giving less driver issues.
My only hope is that i can get the pulsar working as it should and it is not after al my efford turning out to be broken.

it's the environment, not the card.

You're probably right Gary.
So first some elimination of things giving me lag spikes.
The RME doesnt suffer from the lag spikes at all, maybe becourse it communicates directly to the cpu.

no, it's because it's not a realtime device.
Scope audio is realtime on the card. the computer is not realtime. if the computyer falls behind the audio stream, then data is missing and you get pops and clicks.

the RME card is a soundcard, not an audio device. it's not designed for realtime operation, so it's less likely to experience dropouts. the RME card is controlled by Windows. the Scope card is not.

garyb wrote:no, it's because it's not a realtime device.
Scope audio is realtime on the card. the computer is not realtime. if the computyer falls behind the audio stream, then data is missing and you get pops and clicks.

the RME card is a soundcard, not an audio device. it's not designed for realtime operation, so it's less likely to experience dropouts. the RME card is controlled by Windows. the Scope card is not.

The RME also got dsp on board i can control it without asio.
Of course the cpu is not realtime, and when lagspikes comes above 2 ms it drops my audio on the pulsar even when i only use adat and no asio.
The RME does not suffer from lagspikes from the videocard.
It has his own IRQ so that could be it
Thats the info i got

the IRQ sharing might make dropouts or it might not.

yes, the RME card has dsp, but it's not the same thing in any way, shape, or form. believe what you want, though.

garyb wrote:
yes, the RME card has dsp, but it's not the same thing in any way, shape, or form. believe what you want, though.

I believe u when u say its not the same thing. My knowledge about DSP aint to write home about. Actualy i regret that course i could compare hardware better if i knew the difference in power of several DSP chips.

the RME's dsp allows for some basic mixing and realtime monitoring, but it's still a windows soundcard that is controlled in the host app. the monitoring is on the back end. Scope's dsp is external hardware as far as the computer is concerned. it does a lot more kinds of things and allows more complicated signal routing. basically, Scope audio is not in the computer. even a 3dsp Luna card does things that the RME cannot even consider, which is in no way a denigration of the RME card, far from it. RME makes first class soundcards and they have good programmers that make extremely stable drivers(i've worked in the RME booth at NAAM, i really like the people and their products, i just like Scope better). the two products are not the same, although both can be used for the same soundcard functions.

I see and i think u right.
Back in the days i only new Sharqs and motorola. Nowadays i dont even know whats in my X32, motu or other hardware. But i guess those chips would't have the same amount of power as an Xite?

no. not close. UAD Apollo does, but it's also something else.

And UAD is a different usage scenario again. For high end 'modelled' plugins in a mixing workflow where latency doesn't matter, UAD works fine. However the key point here is the added latency. While there's some provision for 'monitoring effects' with their interfaces, the vast majority of their plugins are intended to be used in the host DAW and the round-trip latencies add up quite quickly in that workflow.

The power of Scope & Xite is that you get a hardware+computer combo that can offer the latency of any normal piece of hardware, the flexibility of software (through the Scope hardware + software + interface + devices), and it's not a setup that is really comparable to anything else out there.

RME *only* offers effects and mixing that are useful for routing and realtime monitoring. I wouldn't bother with Totalmix for an actual "mixdown" versus my DAW (I have a Multiface II), and the effects you get with Totalmix are intended to be used for tracking on the monitor return that goes to a perfomer's headphones. There's little use in printing with those effects (record the dry uncompressed signal into your DAW and process with 3rd party & host plugins there.)

I dont use the totalmix at all like u say.
I,m ping ponging signals between daws and mixdown is all on my x32. Realtime Comps eq and even some good effects are all in the x32.