How Long B4 CPU's Catch Up To DSP?

A place to talk about whatever Scope music/gear related stuff you want.

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Counterparts
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Post by Counterparts »

darkrezin wrote:
Yes, I don't know enough about realtime OS's, as I haven't used any. I was speculating that maybe it would be possible to avoid the buffer-based method of native audio processing. But yes, it was pure speculation, I admit.
You'd still need buffering, even with a 'Real Time' OS. An RT OS merely guarantees delivery within a certain timeframe whereas a non-RT OS cannot make such a guarantee. You'd need a purely hardware solution to avoid the need for (software) buffering, and then there'd necessarily be some buffering in the hardware itself anyway. 'tis the nature of the beast!
dawman
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Post by dawman »

Astroman,
Do you think that CW is just holding on to the 200 HMz SHARC's 4 ASB's only.
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astroman
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Post by astroman »

well, I have no idea - I can only reason, and my way of doing that isn't necessarily theirs :wink:

at least I'd also appreciate a re-design of the cards that takes advantage of increased chip performance and (even more important) local Ram.

on the other hand the market is completely spoiled with price wars and CWA won't be able to charge the premium rates of the orginal Pulsar and Scope boards - to be honest I seriously doubt that it's economically possible at all.

don't forget that their important customer segment from professional broadcast will see few, if any reasons at all to change boards.

Performance figures like 200 MHZ versus 60 are of course easy to market, but the real problem is a different one.
You've recently experienced yourself what a universe of sound (and unexploited possibilities) suddenly opened with Modular and Flexor...

well, that's just SFP - it's not even something special on this platform, it's plain, regular stock stuff.
You can build anything in the audio domain from it, in top quality.

But (most?) developers (in general) are pure vanity - they have this god-like-creator image of themselves and as such they don't deal with readymade stuff. Period. It got to be low level for them, from the bottom up.

Red_Muze was the first to realize the true potential that was hidden in the Scope developement system with it's pre fabriced blocks.
He arranged them in individual ways and there was Flexor - the audible proof that any sound was possible with (t)his system - confirmed (immediately after the release) by one of the true masters of synth design, Mr. John Bowen :wink:

At this point in time, 3 years back from today, everyone with (non-deaf) ears should have got the news.
And what was the response ?
laments about new algorithms, new atoms, custom DSP code, etc etc.

Any type of studio gear could already exist on this platform as an emulation, if - yes, if people had trusted their ears.
Any type of new, unusual sounds (innovative?) could already exist - if the same people had trusted in their own abilities instead of constantly looking after 'famous' or 'big' names.

Faster chips are fine, but until now the system probably isn't even exploited to 30% yet, so don't worry... :grin:

cheers, Tom


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2006-06-13 15:49 ]</font>
dawman
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Post by dawman »

Your Views Are Always Re-assuring,
How true about Flexor/ModIII/Solaris. I am playing it safe as to not burn out by over programming and experimenting. But ReD_MuZe told me to experiment with the shapers, and other modules, so I am now becoming a creator instead of emulator. But I needed an Oberheim model 4 I was starting to miss my FAT BASTARDS. ChrisWerner, a friend of ours from Bavaria ( figures )has made an OBX clone that saved me from months of learning, it is truly a FAT BASTARD. I reverse engineered every module he used, and now understand the basics of synthesis again. So now I can move to the future in Modular playground. As my sounds of the past are sounding very fine in Solaris/ModIII/Flexor. I timed it just right 4 I am playing this big house club gig starting in August, and I have all the fat shit I need. This gig will be a great learning experience 4 me.
You are so right about learning what is in front of us. I know that I only have used a small portion of SFP, and I am humbled by it's depth and the people who use it. I listened to Alfonso's CD which was mastered in SFP. It is a true work of art. If you get time check it out, as it is only one example of one guy in this forum. Just think how nice it would be if every one was that deep, and had that kind of time and commitment. If my dance gig goes well, I will have that kind of time, as I will only need to play 1 gig only. The rest of my time goes to SFP and Modular/Flexor/Solaris.


Be Fruitful And Multiply,
Michu
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Post by Michu »

A WinCE driven war head would probably be more frightening than the worst enemy
Now that made me smile :grin:
as far as vst quality, anyone who didn't do that already should check out Antti Huovilainen's Asynth and Taurus (@ Smartelectronix.com). Especially selfoscillation of filters...
and then check out at what cpu cost the quality comes...
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Post by dawman »

I love to hear that CPU's are at least being used. That's why I figured dual core would be used wisely this time around. Enough horsepower to use quality algo.'s, and still satisfy the overbloated sequencers that will pour your coffee while you are schedeling studio time.
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at0m
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Post by at0m »

If you want realtime OS, check out these:
http://www.qnx.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
That's what gets aboard the space shuttle - not WinCE :>

But as Counterparts points out, with current PC architecture one cannot get the tiny buffers/latency as on our DSP's...
more has been done with less
https://soundcloud.com/at0m-studio
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astroman
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Post by astroman »

QNX won me immediately acouple of years ago with their image of a 1.44 MB floppy that contained:
their bootable realtime OS
the Photon GUI lib
a webbrowser
a webserver

their 'hookline' was kind of:
boot your office PC from the floppy and browse the internet as you like.
All is happening in Ram only. The PC's harddisk is (intentionally) ignored by the OS, so no chances whatsoever for attacks :grin:

one of the most impressive demos I ever loaded - embarassing for Apple and M$

cheers, Tom
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Post by jea »

Not really Tom,

I remember using Macs with just a floppy containing more softs than that.

But I was also impressed some years ago with the QNX bootdisk.

I had lots of fun with it....

In fact I still use it, if I want to poke nose to someone bragging about some softs that is so "small".

Just to watch their face when I boot QNX from the floppy is priceless! :lol:
eh, you're right, :-) I am a luna(t)ech!
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Post by spoimala »

On 2006-06-14 05:53, astroman wrote:
QNX won me immediately acouple of years ago with their image of a 1.44 MB floppy that contained:
their bootable realtime OS
the Photon GUI lib
a webbrowser
a webserver
"Operating system" in it's own right is not really anything complicated. Pretty basic stuff. Realtime operating system is not very much different stuff. It's the extra stuff which is the big thing.
Basic web server is also a few lines of code.
GUI lib here is the most impressive thing.
On 2006-06-14 05:26, at0m wrote:
If you want realtime OS, check out these:
http://www.qnx.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QNX
That's what gets aboard the space shuttle - not WinCE :>
Was it Apollo 13 or which of those unlucky space shuttles which was crashed because of realtime os not having the time to serve all the jobs it was assigned to...
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astroman
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Post by astroman »

On 2006-06-14 10:45, spoimala wrote:
..."Operating system" in it's own right is not really anything complicated. ...
It's the extra stuff which is the big thing.
...GUI lib here is the most impressive thing.
true, but that time the 'market leaders' (note the plural) already had finished their transition to bloated systems :wink:

and of course Jea is right
On 2006-06-14 06:01, jea wrote:
Not really Tom,
I remember using Macs with just a floppy containing more softs than that...
reminding me that a Mac Rom was just 128KB, 64K GUI, 64K OS related stuff...

which basically means that the complete code and data of an original Mac would fit inside any current Pentium CPU - gosh that would be fast :grin:

cheers, Tom
Counterparts
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Post by Counterparts »

spoimala wrote:
"Operating system" in it's own right is not really anything complicated.
I dunno, if you've ever had a look at the NetBSD swap algorithms..! :-!
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Post by spoimala »

I dunno, if you've ever had a look at the NetBSD swap algorithms..! :-!
Uhh, swapping is nothing (I guess) compared to more advanced task scheduling... but those are pretty advanced functionalities. OS in it's simplest form doesnt't need swapping
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