What is the most visible common part between ASB box and NOA

Discuss the Creamware Noah

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HUROLURA
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Post by HUROLURA »

Just a question for fun.

Except for the Scope technology which is embedded inside all these devices, the answer is much more hardware-minded:

I just noticed that the knob used on the NOAH (1 black + 4 yellow) are just the same as the one used on the MINIMAX, PRO-12 and PRODYSSEY for editing preset value (bottom rigth knob next to the 3 digit display).
Moreover you can find 6 of them on the B4000 ASB (1 for CHORUS and 5 for PRESETS).
Any NOAH owner ever noticed that ?
AzureFeast
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Post by AzureFeast »

Actually I would say it is more than the SCOPE technology. To developp the Noah Creamware had to port its software to a fully DSP based hardware capable of operating without a PC operating system to host it. The ASB boxes are nothing more... a direct extrapolation of the Noah but sacrifying the multi-timbrality and flexibility for a retro-looking user interface.

Now I know all those knobs are nice... but if only they were motorised faders. :wink:

Marc
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HUROLURA
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Post by HUROLURA »

This topic was just a kind of joke.
More seriously, the other difference is about the number of DSP on board.
From what I know/read somewhere:
- NOAH EX is powered by 10/11 ADI Sharc DSP running at 60 MHz (one of the eleven is dedicated to the mangement of the other just as the PC CPU does with a scope board).
- ASB are powered by a more recent generation of Sharc DSP running at 150 MHz

Making a quick and raw multiplication 10 DSP running at 60 MHz could be considered as one virtual DSP unit running at 600 MHz.
On the same principle 2 DSP running at 150 MHz could be considered as one virtual DSP unit running at 300 MHz.
Being involved in electronic developpement at work I know this raw calculation is false because sharing information between differents DSP units have an impact on performance (you spend DSP time for communication between the different units). On the other hand you could imagine to dedicate each DSP to a voice or a set od voices calculation giving you a parrallel and efficient system with an only botleneck at the voice mixing step (for which you probably dedicate 1 DSP unit on the NOAH).
The results are anyway that you can get almost the same polyphony available for a MINIMAX ASB or for a NOAH EX MINIMAX (the standard NOAH with its 6 DSP system only achieve a 3 voice polyphony MINIMAX).

My conclusion would be that you have a little more DSP power on a NOAH EX rather than what you have on an ASB system explaining that the ASB cannot be multitimbral so far (I think CW would be able to offer ASB as multitimbral system but this would mean a polyphony limitation to less than 12 voices globally or an even better optimization of the algorythm used).
Maybe analog devices also improved the efficiency of the compiler used to generate code the DSP which would allow a rise of performance.

What would be the use of motorized fader (except for getting a more expensive system) on a synthesizer control surface ?
I can understand it on a mixer mode but I do not undertsand exactly what advantage you could from a fader rather than a knob.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: FRA59-HELP on 2006-05-05 15:26 ]</font>
AzureFeast
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Post by AzureFeast »

Yes, I was meaning a "motorized knob" or a solution like Clavia has implemented on the Nord Lead 3. Being able to "see" the settings for a preset when you select it.

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Post by HUROLURA »

The type of thing you can get on Behringer BCR2000 encoder ?
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Post by Shroomz~> »

I dream of something with similar, but improved architecture to the Noah. 10/11 of the new sharcs, an SDK & in a classy chassis with 16 of the best push encoder rotaries around. That would really be killer.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Shroomz on 2006-05-06 07:23 ]</font>
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