Muse Research Team Up with Creamware to Make the Ultimate Sy

powerpulsarian · Post by **powerpulsarian** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 8:11 pm

Has anyone here checked out the Muse Research Receptor (http://www.museresearch.com)?

It is a hardware device that runs VSTs (really, underneath it is a highly optimized and stable computer running a customized linux OS).

If Creamware could work with them to create a version that runs Scope cards (installed inside), we would have the Noah we all dreamed of - that runs all of the Scope devices, can be controlled directly or by an external computer, is ultra stable by using a customized OS, no computer setup headaches, etc.

It's a dream, and I think it's a great idea!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: powerpulsarian on 2004-10-27 21:15 ]</font>

nprime · Post by **nprime** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 8:14 pm

It would be a really smart way for Creamware to go, let's hope this sort of thing is in the works.

It would be awesome!

R

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:17 pm

so why don't you just:

buy a nice 19" box
hire an airbrush artist to make it look good
install the whatever smallest version of your preferred OS flavour (Mac or PC)

I seriously doubt that even Win98 (which is technological crap) will break SFP as long as NOTHING but SFP is installed

the instability originates from a mixture of various applications, frequently from obscure sources, gaming, gimmicks or those admired sequencer monsters. period.

I don't run a sequencer and I cannot remember even one single crash of SFP which could be blamed to the OS.
One doesn't need a hyperthreaded space shuttle to run the GUI of SFP - and a PIII 500 on BX440 goes for no more than 100 bucks on eBay, so what keeps you from going 19" ???

cheers, Tom

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 9:29 pm

Tom I disagree with you on this one. Windoze is a piece of crap. It crashes for all sorts of reasons, like simple memory overruns. Linux doesn't even crash when you have a physical memory or hard drive fault. Which is why I always have a small Linux partition on my Windoze box -- so that if the hard drive craps out, I can recover the most recent data using Linux.

Windoze is inherently an insecure operating system. All the gaming etc you mentioned make it worse. But it is still not up to use in embedded systems.

(Linux is -- barely...)

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Wed Oct 27, 2004 10:04 pm

I fully agree from the technological point of view, Johann.

But if my system runs stable - then others will do even better

I have an MSI 815 based Celeron 1G, CPU 81 Celsius, chassis 40, Seagate 40G Bar7200 and a NEC DVD writer.
SFP 3.1 with 2x Pulsar One
AOL software, internet active with SFP running, Office, some Oracle network stuff and my Prolog developement system.

I'd be the last to support the GatesComp - but to run SFP in a box with a Pentium III even their most humble stuff IS sufficient.

btw. I've core dumped SGI's with 'industrial standard' programs and have seen SUNs literally eating their disks - it's not all as it's written in specs...

cheers, Tom

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 2:34 am

I guess these days people are pretty fault-tolerant -- i.e. software failures in TVs and cars are commonplace and people are tolerant of them -- so maybe Windoze is "good enough". My parents have a stove which they have to reboot occasionally. I'm serious!

But still, I wouldn't spend $1.5K on a dedicated effects unit if I knew it had a Windoze OS to rely on.

I have enough problems to deal with in the outboard gear realm, without having to figure out whether my reverb unit has crashed. I agree that SCOPE is stable -- SFP is itself an operating system -- but when you mix it with VST etc Windoze plugs and programs, running on silly Intel architectures, you're going to run into trouble at some point.

BTW most UN*X OSes were crap, Irix being one of the worst. SunOS / Solaris wasn't bad IMHO, HPUX was very quirky, AIX ditto, etc. I rate Linux higher than those OSes. Hardware for the various systems was muuuuuch more robust though than Intel / IDE / etc crap. But all of those OSs were good at general purpose stuff. Small embedded systems don't need giant OSes to run. You've mentioned QNX in the past -- if I could buy an outboard effects box that supported high quality plugins and ran QNX as its OS -- I wouldn't hesitate!

I'm going to shut up now before people complain about the geeks always hijacking the threads on Planet Z.

Cheers,

Johann

P.S. Prolog?!?!?

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 3:58 am

Prolog ?! yes, the LPA version http://www.lpa.do.uk

Code: Select all

example follows
% This program allows a string to be split at a given word, into left and
% right components, failing if the word is not present in the string. It
% uses the built-in predicates, find/3 and copy/2, together with the unique
% string input and output features of 386-PROLOG, accessed here via the
% ~>/2 and <~/2 predicates. This program uses fixed case searching,
% for example:
%
%     ?- string_split( `the quick brown fox`, `brown`, L, R ).
%     L = `the quick ` ,   R = ` fox`
%
%     ?- string_split( `THE QUICK BROWN FOX`, `brown`, L, R ).     no

string_split( Whole, Word, Left, Right ) :-
   (  find( Word, 2, Find ),
      Find = ``,
      copy( -1, _ ) ~> Right
   ) <~ Whole ~> Left.

the sample above performs an arbitrary substring search on 40k records making up 60MB of text data in some 20 seconds on my humble 1 Gig machine - not bad for a high level language

that was a truely ugly off topic, but since the Receptor is a PCee it makes sense to compare it to similiar gear.
In the context of VSTIs their concept makes a lot of sense indeed (see my statement about sequencers above

), but not as a SFP standalone.

I guess only very few people here have a machine dedicated to nothing but SFP, just with midi and adat IOs... all the others can't really tell due to different pre-conditions.

My opinion isn't restricted to Win98 (that's just the one I can verify) - I assume a G4/400 running OS9 is even more solid from the OS point of view, but CWA isn't exactly Mac specialized

cheers, Tom

blazesboylan · Post by **blazesboylan** » Thu Oct 28, 2004 1:29 pm

On 2004-10-28 04:58, astroman wrote:

the sample above performs an arbitrary substring search on 40k records making up 60MB of text data in some 20 seconds on my humble 1 Gig machine - not bad for a high level language

Nice! It's good to see state machine languages are still alive. The "everything must be object-oriented" crowd hasn't killed off all the brain cells in the universe yet.

Incidentally the Receptor does look like a cool product. I'm impressed that it can theoretically (according to the FAQ) handle other VST plugins than the ones listed at Plugorama, too. For example, AutoTune would be quite useful in a rackmount that allows you multiple channels of use. Britney Spears would be ecstatic!

Anyway it's a great direction for the external effects world to take. Maybe in retrospect Noah was just premature. (Or aimed at the wrong, already overcrowded market -- synthesizers...)

cleanbluesky · Post by **cleanbluesky** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:16 pm

That thing looks great, but software incompatabilty would be a terminal problem. Depending on how much it costs and how much power you can get would make the difference between it being good or bad.

valis · Post by **valis** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 4:38 pm

Build a custom rack enclosure for one of the new small format p4 motherboards and use NLite to build a 400Mb cut down (sp2 slipstreamed) xp install...no problems with memory overflows or extra crap...

Vasfed · Post by **Vasfed** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 3:41 am

There are few linux distribs for musicians, ex. DeMudi, Agnula which include (distributed separately for licensing reasons) support for VST
i'm sure receptor uses same os plus little work to make it look well

Also the development of SFP port for linux is already started and after some time we can gain benefits of linux realtime kernel...

scary808 · Post by **scary808** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:09 pm

Most PCs being used for audio or music production are fast enough that they make this thing obsolete out of the box. Why buy this thing... buy a new computer & a cheap M-Audio I/O if all you want is VSTs.

Receptor is doomed. At least Scope has an edge over VST & other native synths/effects as far as quality goes. With as many punks that download cracks from Kazaa, its surprising to me that CW is still around. So many of these kids are content with free mediocrity rather than spending a little extra cash(or at least some cash) on quality tools. I'm not anti-VST, I use a lot of them regularly, rarley synths though. Sorry for the rant.

I salute all Scope users who took the plunge & spent some money on a quality piece of gear. Keep supporting our 3rd party developers...

cleanbluesky · Post by **cleanbluesky** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 3:16 pm

Cracks are rife, but I am not sure that people just download cracks because they are punks. Whether people can afford and whether people think the price is right for such items play a part. As far as Creamware goes, it is overpriced - it is no longer cutting edge and the software is not current like other manufactures are. Where is GSIF 2? Hyperthreading support? The SHARCS are becoming old technology now. Although, this does give the excuse to charge a lot of money for a board with 12+ big chips on it.
I like Creamware, but price is a kicker.

More on-topic, the product probably will sell a bit now but will never go the distance. T.C. Electronics still sell items that are built on technology from 1997, and they can do this because the software is good and unique. No-one would buy old technology if all it did was host files.

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:03 pm

it doesn't matter at all what people can afford or what they consider a proper price. They may deliberately stay away then - there's no robin hooding around in this context.

I'm absolutely convinced that not even 5% of the (price)complainers are able to adequately calculate the business costs of a company like CWA.
It's not that easy...

Sharcs are backward compatible, but not outdated, in fact that stuff never outdates because the code is loaded on the chip, so a bright idea will immediately find it's place to work.

Some highend audio stuff is spiced by them - a CD player jumps up 1k bucks for a single Sharc...

But why are there no Sharc based systems in the 'regular' plugin market ?
Analog Devices has great tools, even audio libs available for anyone...

Could it be that's a bit too demanding for the average VST-ier - or is it the lack of cash for the tools ?
CWA once HAD to pay for this and I bet the license fee wasn't not too small.

How do you know that TC's code isn't outdated and boring.
TC certainly has a market advantage by re-exploiting existing outboard gear, but that's about it (imho).

cheers, tom

scary808 · Post by **scary808** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 4:04 pm

Est current US
$700 Scope project
$1250 Scope Pro

A steal!!!

Granted I paid more a few years ago but thats Moore's law for you. Sure you can buy an M-audio PCI card for $99. Audio interfaces are like mics... you get what you pay for. ASIO seems to be working fine for me. As for the SHARC, sure it's outdated but many other "new" pieces of gear are using them.

You hit the nail on the head about TC. They haven't changed thier algorithms(afaik) much since way back. But it's fine, it still sounds great. Same with CW. It has great quality & features which are unique.

I do agree CW have been slow with development & compatibility. There in lies the problem with thier emphasis on Windows support. Designing hardware & intensive software to be compatible with hundreds if not thousands of different MOBOs, chipsets, etc. It's impossible. Having worked at a music retailer, my experience is that ALL audio interfaces have compatibilty issues. The best seemed to be MOTU, RME, & (hate to say it)Digidesign.

To summarize: The quality, flexibility, & features are still ubeatable for the price. I plan on buying an Apple soon since use Logic & I want the new features(which are also for the price unbeatable). I don't expect any SCOPE OSX support ever(sorry to be a pessimist). The audio & MIDI drivers in OSX are too tempting to pass up. M$ doesn't need to innovate as much to sell thier product so it will be a while tell they catch up with core audio/MIDI.

I will build one last Win PC to house my SCOPE cards. Then I'll use it as a quasi SCOPE synth/effect rack connected to my Apple computer via another interface(probably RME).

Again sorry for the rant...

cleanbluesky · Post by **cleanbluesky** » Sat Nov 13, 2004 3:59 pm

On 2004-11-09 16:03, astroman wrote:
it doesn't matter at all what people can afford or what they consider a proper price. They may deliberately stay away then - there's no robin hooding around in this context.

I'm absolutely convinced that not even 5% of the (price)complainers are able to adequately calculate the business costs of a company like CWA.
It's not that easy...

Sharcs are backward compatible, but not outdated, in fact that stuff never outdates because the code is loaded on the chip, so a bright idea will immediately find it's place to work.

Some highend audio stuff is spiced by them - a CD player jumps up 1k bucks for a single Sharc...

But why are there no Sharc based systems in the 'regular' plugin market ?
Analog Devices has great tools, even audio libs available for anyone...

Could it be that's a bit too demanding for the average VST-ier - or is it the lack of cash for the tools ?
CWA once HAD to pay for this and I bet the license fee wasn't not too small.

How do you know that TC's code isn't outdated and boring.
TC certainly has a market advantage by re-exploiting existing outboard gear, but that's about it (imho).

cheers, tom