Review of X-ite 1? Coming back to Scope?

[doktorfuture]

@ doktorfuture . If you don't live in the countries that VAT applies to it is not charged at checkout. When i order from Sonic Core's website VAT is always deducted and not charged.

Whew. They would be smarter to make that clear on their shop.

[doktorfuture]

OK that makes sense. Finish the 64 bit hard work re-write, then port to OS X.

To reply to doktorfuture...

The e-mail I got from Sonic Core was yesterday!! It said "we have to finish the 64 bit drivers first, then it may take 6 to 12 months for the OS X support" (paraphrase rather than an exact quote). I do agree with you that I think they'd sell more Xite-1's if they did support OS X.

[Marzipan]

Ok, I've found out using VE Pro probably isn't gonna work for me, e-mailed Vienna support and got the following reply:


Unfortunately, what you are trying to achieve is currently not possible with Vienna Ensemble Pro.

The main purpose of the program is in fact to host Virtual Instruments, be it our own or third party AU or VST instruments - you can insert the Vienna Ensemble Pro plugin in your DAW on a master computer, connect to the Vienna Ensemble Pro Server software on (multiple) slave computers, in which you have instantiated your Virtual Instruments, thus enabling you to send MIDI from master to slave and Audio back from slave to master over ethernet.
This way, you can simply spread the workload for processing your Virtual Instruments over several machines in a computer network (hence network mode!)


However I didn't understand the stuff about Bidule/Reaper that XITE-1/4LIVE was talking about?

I think I'm gonna look for a way to expand the I/O on the main system to include more I/Os and ADAT, perhaps another Metric Halo card that's not as expensive as the ULN-8/LIO-8... Will find out if they can either be daisy-chained or whether they will work as aggregate devices in a stable way (gonna post at the Metric Halo forum).

[dawman]

Too about VE Pro.
Guys with MacBooks and fast PC streamers are having a blast with it.
Guys W/ MacPro Duallys' are using it in the same way.

Reaper is a cheap efficient DAW which is stable in case I want to use it live. I have tried Cubase and it has off and on MIDI, this gets worse when there are voltage surges from lighting and hydraulics. Cubase claims a high ppq but Reaper actually has the highest at 960+ppq and that is a fact. It is also unshakable. Hardware is still the safest bet, but for lighting only Reaper has done fine. And as far as Bidule goes. It is a host itself.
But running a dual host in a Scope Project window sucks, so Reaper can be the main host with Bidule as a semi host ( VST ReWire ). I can run Scope back and forth from Reaper and Bidule w/ a slight added latency. Around 6 msec, which is like the time it takes a Ride cymbal to reach your ear at a gig when you are on the same stage.
My Love for the XITE-1 comes from no downtime while loading presets, Massive Modular 16 voice synths, and just as stable as the sunrise.
My XITE-1 w/ 2 x A16 Ultras can run an entire live band. Lights, Monitoring of 6 x sets of IEM's and full FOH capabilities.
I use the FMR RNP8380's as a front I/O for mic's, Bass and Guitar. The XITE-1 MicPre's are equally as good and have Phantom power if needed. My Analog Synths are plugged into the A16U's or the XLR Analog Ins. The Analog Ins are of a rather high qualtiy as there is no difference when using the A16U's.
My needs are different than most folks here, but I can vouge for the XITE-1's extreme power and stability. I have used it for 11 months live w/ zero incidents.
I could never do this with a Mac, or PC. Even a Receptor seems to be subject to surges and shut downs. The XITE-1 is the King of Power and stability. My 2 Cents.
I doubt I will even need to go 64bit. I just don't need the extra RAM for the massive samples. I can easily build a proven stable 1U PC streamer like the one I have now for 775 USD and have 2 x stable proven DAW's. One giant machine is asking for trouble. You will hear success stories from guys using 24GB's of RAM, etc.etc. Ask them to show you a benchmark or screenshot. I doubt they can oblidge. I know one guy who can load 14GB's of RAM using Logic and a MacPro and because it takes hours to load, he leaves it on 24/7 and twice a month shuts it down for upgrades or maintenance. We actually went to hear a band and see a movie and when we returned his engineer told him it was 2 hours and 20 minutes....^%$^%^% Boy I bet that's fun telling a client you need a few hours to re load because your DAW crashed...............No thanks.

Anyways Good Luck with your build. You want a super fast Kontakt streamer let me know.
I spent over a year designing and waiting for parts. That Dog Will Hunt.

[Marvin]

Unfortunately, what you are trying to achieve is currently not possible with Vienna Ensemble Pro.

Such a pity! I'm also looking for the same solution, having Cubase on a Mac Pro and of course the Xite with a PC. Using ADAT lightpipes is not a solution for me as I need those from the Xite for gear, even the ADAT In/Outs on my A-16, which is connected via Z-Link.

Any other ideas for streaming 24 or 48 audio channels from PC to Mac without to much latency? Technically this should be possible.

I've found a prog called wormhole2, it's open source know. Does somebody know it? Don't know so far, if this could be a solution, have to check it.

Cheers,
Alex

PS: Yes, Scope for Mac would rise the income, so please hurry up SC!

[Marzipan]

Yeah, I'm wondering if this has not been done because it's not technically possible, or just the software doesn't exist yet... It seems the VE Pro "nearly" does this, but obviously the main intention is for streaming the VI's, so I guess they've got no interest in implementing it...

Just having a look at Wormhole 2, seems interesting, but doesn't seem to get many updates. It DOES seem to have all the features we are looking for on paper... However I just had a quick browse through the forums on their website, and it doesn't look promising at all. There just seem to be loads of bugs and people having problems, I very much doubt it would work in practice. I also looked at FX Teleport, but it seems to be PC only. Then I saw this and initially got very excited:

https://www.audioimpressions.com/produc ... universal/

Before reading that you can only stream audio in one direction! So I guess you could use it for the synths (as long as you're not wanting to route any audio signals in as controllers), but not the effects, so the same situation as VE Pro basically.

I can't seem to find anything else at the moment... Getting increasingly frustrated figuring out if/how this will work. I just think adding enough interfaces/converters to my setup to run the Xite with a reasonable number of I/O's looking too expensive to be workable for me. I hope I can find a way around it, or somebody releases software which will do what Wormhole 2 is meant to do.

Think I might just get my main rig sorted, and then come back to this towards the end of the year, hopefully by which time there will be more options available. I am really missing some of the Scope stuff though, especially the Zarg synths, Flexor, SPL Transient Designer (and a few of the other effects plugins).

Such a pity! I'm also looking for the same solution, having Cubase on a Mac Pro and of course the Xite with a PC. Using ADAT lightpipes is not a solution for me as I need those from the Xite for gear, even the ADAT In/Outs on my A-16, which is connected via Z-Link.

Any other ideas for streaming 24 or 48 audio channels from PC to Mac without to much latency? Technically this should be possible.

I've found a prog called wormhole2, it's open source know. Does somebody know it? Don't know so far, if this could be a solution, have to check it.

Cheers,
Alex

PS: Yes, Scope for Mac would rise the income, so please hurry up SC!

[doktorfuture]

Yeah, I'm wondering if this has not been done because it's not technically possible, or just the software doesn't exist yet... It seems the VE Pro "nearly" does this, but obviously the main intention is for streaming the VI's, so I guess they've got no interest in implementing it...

One of the problems is that Ethernet is a shared access system, and unlike AES/EBU which just carries audio, Ethernet will have background layer-2 spanning-tree discovery packets, ARP, Universal Plug-and-Play discovery packets, possibly Internet traffic, etc... This traffic can mess up real-time audio transmission timing. In Audio, not receiving audio when you expect to due to jitter or packet loss can give you clicks and pops.

An AES/EBU frame is dedicated to moving audio blocks. Unlike Ethernet, AES/EBU isn't a multi-access medium, doesn't have IP packet header overhead or Layer-2 ethernet chatter. additional overhead on an Ethernet network, and even more if you choose to communicate over IP.

Further, remember that the operating systems we use are not 'Real Time' operating systems. There ARE real-time operating systems, which are optimized for real-time tasks like signal processing. Windows and OS X and Linux (without real-time extensions) are not real-time. What these operating systems do is to 'try their best' and keep audio flowing without glitches, but in practice, there is OS induced jitter, ethernet jitter, ethernet switch jitter, etc... If you want to see proof of network jitter, just ping your gateway:

Wizard-99:~ doktorfuture$ ping 192.168.0.1
PING 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.182 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.150 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.166 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=0.158 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=0.159 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=0.161 ms
^C
--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 packets received, 0.0% packet loss

The average jitter here is AT LEAST +/-0.01 ms, or at least +/-10,000 nanoseconds of packet jitter. Neither Ethernet nor your PC was designed for real-time communications! For the most part we just rely on lots of CPU processing power and 'buffers' to make the latency tolerable. In fact, you can't even guarantee the ORDER that packets will be arrive at the receiving end. Ethernet is better for moving large data frames and efficiently using the available bandwidth.

By contrast, an AES/EBU audio signal is a dedicated single access (i.e. one transmitter) encoding and transmission system that sends real-time digital data with embedded clocking. It can easily give you +-20 nanoseconds of jitter (orders of magnitude smaller) since it is 100% dedicated to transmitting audio in REAL-TIME. Further, D/A dual PLL clock recovery circuits can usually get you within +/- 1 ns (or better) when reconstructing the clock signal. Question: What clock does ethernet streamed audio synchronize to? Answer: NOT OBVIOUS AT ALL!

What I'm trying to illustrate is streaming REAL-TIME audio over Ethernet is tough!

BUT, if you drop the 'REAL-TIME' requirement, AND you are using a transmission system with large-enough buffers, you can stream data back and forth between a PC a MAC, and a Linux box reliably, albiet with more latency. If you're using a DAW, things like that VE Pro make sense because the DAW will do latency compensation. Still, these systems aren't perfect (check their forums for lots of people with clicks/pops and drop-out problems). The VE Pro system is, in my opinion, still has the usual problems as it convergest towards REAL TIME use.

Another example of latency in non-real time network audio transmission is when you stream audio from one device to another. In this non-real time case the system which plays the audio has a big buffer that it fills 'as fast as it can'. You see this kind of thing when you play a youtube video, or an mp3. The data comes in all 'lurchy'. Only when there's enough data in the buffer can you safely play without going into a buffer over-run.

So everyone should be clear that 'real time networked audio' is a special case of 'networked audio'.

Luckily we are getting there. You can use JACK http://jackaudio.org/applications to get you started. It's open source software, and doesn't have that 'commercial polish'. But I've gotten it to work whenever I put time into it.

JACK is a cross-platform audio server. That 'wormhole' program that was mentioned uses it I think.

JACK on PC's can be linked to ASIO. (JackRouter)

JACK can be linked to CORE AUDIO. (http://www.jackosx.com/)

JACK can be linked to various Linux sound systems.

JACK applications are starting to appear to let you stream REAL-TIME data over IP networks: http://netjack.sourceforge.net/

There are JACK applications which even let you 'jam' with others over the Internet: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/l ... =Main_Page


I wish there was a general solution to routing real-time audio over Ethernet (or some network) problem. The last serious attempt was Yamaha's MLAN. It was a sort of 'cross-platform' Scope. It looked GREAT but suffered from some implementation and adoption issues.

For now I will continue to run hundreds of feet of physical AES/EBU cables around because I can't afford to MADI.

[Marzipan]

I don't fully understand all of the technical stuff, but get the general idea.

For studio work if there is a solution using Ethernet which adds a bit of latency, but is glitch free and will enable me to route in both directions from the Mac to the standalone PC with Scope/Xite-1 that would be fine for me. Because the latency can be compensated. I know that defeats the object of the ultra low latency of the Scope hardware to some extent, but for studio production rather than live stuff that would suit me fine. I guess I could try JACK, but seems a little fiddly?! Couldn't really invest in an Xite-1 unless I definitely knew it was gonna work either.

Thanks!

JACK is a cross-platform audio server. That 'wormhole' program that was mentioned uses it I think.

JACK on PC's can be linked to ASIO. (JackRouter)

JACK can be linked to CORE AUDIO. (http://www.jackosx.com/)

JACK can be linked to various Linux sound systems.

JACK applications are starting to appear to let you stream REAL-TIME data over IP networks: http://netjack.sourceforge.net/

There are JACK applications which even let you 'jam' with others over the Internet: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/l ... =Main_Page


I wish there was a general solution to routing real-time audio over Ethernet (or some network) problem. The last serious attempt was Yamaha's MLAN. It was a sort of 'cross-platform' Scope. It looked GREAT but suffered from some implementation and adoption issues.

For now I will continue to run hundreds of feet of physical AES/EBU cables around because I can't afford to MADI.

[Marzipan]

In case anybody's still following, I think I've come up with a reasonable solution which is much more economical. It seems that the MOTU Traveller MK3 (firewire) interface should work nicely as an aggregate device with the ULN-8. This will add 16 channels ADAT (or 8 channels S-MUX @ 96 Khz) to my Logic rig, and allow me to stream to/from Logic and Scope/Xite-1. Even better there are 8 channels of analog, which I can hook up to my patchbay, so if I get an A-16 Ultra I can easily have at least 24 channels streaming between Logic and Scope.

I'm a lot happier now, it seems likely this should work and it will save me 1000's compared to the additional LIO-8 and the AES/EBU to ADAT converter (not to mention giving me more channels). I think it's very likely now I will in fact be investing in an Xite-1! (pending tests with the ULN-8/MOTU to check the aggregate device thing works). Woo Hoo! Since I'll have the opportunity to test Jack/Ethernet between the Mac/PC anyway I think I'll try it out, just out of interest to see if it works at all. Although if it seems like a headache I'm unlikely to spend too much time on it...

One last thing, I'm suffering from information overload from looking at too many forums, however did I read somewhere that not all the Zarg Music synths and/or Flexor are not compatible with the Xite-1?? I hope I'm wrong there, because they're the ones I used the most on my old Scope rig, so one of the main reasons I want to come back! If somebody could confirm that would be great, thanks.

[siriusbliss]

...
One last thing, I'm suffering from information overload from looking at too many forums, however did I read somewhere that not all the Zarg Music synths and/or Flexor are not compatible with the Xite-1?? I hope I'm wrong there, because they're the ones I used the most on my old Scope rig, so one of the main reasons I want to come back! If somebody could confirm that would be great, thanks.

The Zargs and Flexor both run on Xite.

Greg

[Marzipan]

Great, thanks!!

[/quote]

The Zargs and Flexor both run on Xite.

Greg[/quote]