Buy 6dsp or 15 dsp withou plugins.

[lagoausente]

Would buy a 6 dsp card, or a Pro card. Don´t look for a card with a buch of plugins, I´m looking for something afordable.

[lagoausente]

Need that have in/out, and spdif coaxial. Luna 3 dsp are at 100 euro. So I should pay max 200 euro for 6 dsp card. 500 euro for a 15 dsp card.

[lagoausente]

yes I also would buy such a 15 DSP card.

Hello Stardust. Do you think that 500 is too low for a 15 dsp card without plugins? I would like to know your opinion.
If I´m not wrong a 3 dsp card can be found for 100 euro or so. A 15 dsp are equivalent in power to 5 Luna cards, I think..
In the other hand, xite-1 price at Thomann is 2769 euro. 150 dsp would cost proportionally 5000 euro. So 2769 will be cheap proportionally to dsp power.
If we take a 15 dsp card as 700 as some have been sold, that means Xite-1 would cost 7000, even more in favor for the xite-1. I´m considering seriusly waiting and saving money for Xite, since seems people are not going to drop the actual cards price.

[lagoausente]

I am not saying its wrong, but I have seen them selling around 800 when bare and 1100 with a bunch of plugs lately.

So I also would be happy to find a 500 € 15 DSP card.

Maybe this comes with xite release

With a buch of plugins that´s diferent. I´m talking about the card itself. Only dsp power and basic In/out. There are guys spliting there sales into hardware and soft.

[interloper]

I split my bundle into hardware and software because I can appeal to a larger market demographic. Some people already have all the plugs so they won't want to bid on the HW & SW bundle.

Regarding the price drop, or supposed price drop from the release of the Xite-1, I think older hardware will be affected but not that much, and here's why:

1. You can't do a mathematical devaluation of the older hardware just because the Xite-1 is 10 times more powerful than a 14 DSP board. It is a non-linear relationship. To say that a SCOPE Pro board should cost 2700 divided by 10, or 270 euros is absurd.

2. There are many studios equipped with CW cards of all sizes that would occasionally need to or like to upgrade. This drives demand and therefore the price will not drop as far as you may think.

3. Not everyone will run out and get the Xite-1 (me included), but will capitalize on the incremental price drop of second hand boards and build a new system.

Sonic Core is teetering on almost missing the market window for the Xite-1 product, as they have done in the past. It pains me to say this but true it is. A rackmount solution was asked for by the American market for years. Having been a product manager in software I've seen schedules slip and market conditions shift radically to where the product release becomes anti-climactic. I don't think it will be that drastic, but most certainly some opportunity has been lost.

In any case, I've put both the card and the plugs on eBay, and judging by the number of people watching the auction, they will sell at a competitive price.

[lagoausente]

I split my bundle into hardware and software because I can appeal to a larger market demographic. Some people already have all the plugs so they won't want to bid on the HW & SW bundle.

Regarding the price drop, or supposed price drop from the release of the Xite-1, I think older hardware will be affected but not that much, and here's why:

1. You can't do a mathematical devaluation of the older hardware just because the Xite-1 is 10 times more powerful than a 14 DSP board. It is a non-linear relationship. To say that a SCOPE Pro board should cost 2700 divided by 10, or 270 euros is absurd.

2. There are many studios equipped with CW cards of all sizes that would occasionally need to or like to upgrade. This drives demand and therefore the price will not drop as far as you may think.

3. Not everyone will run out and get the Xite-1 (me included), but will capitalize on the incremental price drop of second hand boards and build a new system.

Sonic Core is teetering on almost missing the market window for the Xite-1 product, as they have done in the past. It pains me to say this but true it is. A rackmount solution was asked for by the American market for years. Having been a product manager in software I've seen schedules slip and market conditions shift radically to where the product release becomes anti-climactic. I don't think it will be that drastic, but most certainly some opportunity has been lost.

In any case, I've put both the card and the plugs on eBay, and judging by the number of people watching the auction, they will sell at a competitive price.

You are not the only one who split the selling of plugins and hardware. There are a few that offer that.
I don´t think that comparison of price/power is absurd. One thing is that you don´t like to sell your gear at very low price, and other is what buyers will spend in the future. I think that selling your gear now is a good idea, because in the future will be less payed.
Speculation of what will occur, just what I have done.
Don´t judge the company from your own point of view and needings. The field where Xite will cannot compite is a field that I many people don´t like, me included, and that "field" philosophy is for me more criticable than SC philosophy.
People here know what they want, and SC gives it, and promises more, and that´s why we´ll stay here. You are free to go away, but you don´t need to get angry if your needings are not supplied by this platform.
Have to add that in the 1/10 comparison, is not absurd. Xite will be "new", and actual cards are "old" in terms of life. No gear lives forever, and a 10 years old pci card have much more posibities to die than a new piece of gear, and even it has no guarantee while new one has. So I think it´s not so out of reality an important price drop in the future. Time will tell.

[interloper]

I just don't think the relationship is linear, but I agree that there will be depreciation.

I also agree with you that everybody uses the product differently and each of us has different needs. The zero latency recording is definitely nice. But having bought my first Pulsar II in 2001, I've seen the evolution, and it just isn't fast enough. Not talking synths or plugins, they are definitely nice, but more the operating system. That's just me, everyone else is entitled their own beliefs.

I'm not angry, but maybe a bit frustrated with the company.

I'm not really leaving either, as I'm looking forward to when my Solaris is ready.

But yes, time will tell.

[Shroomz~>]

Do you think that 500 is too low for a 15 dsp card without plugins?

This just my opinion, but NO.. I don't think 500 euro is too low! Not at all in fact, but there are some factors that make me believe that:-

1. I paid 1000 EURO+ for a brand new 14 dsp SRB board bought directly from CW a couple of years ago knowing full well that I could have bought the same board on Ebay for about 500-600 EURO, but I wanted it NEW & also to support CW by buying directly from them.

2. At the beginning of 2008 & also in previous years, £1 sterling (GBP) was equal to approx 1.4 EURO, so if I bought something for 500 EURO it actually cost me approx' £357, but now that the GBP has weekened to all time lows against the EURO (it's recently worth less than 1 EURO), if I bought something for 500 EURO, it would actually cost me OVER £500. So my reasoning is that for someone in the UK to buy a Scope card for 500 EURO now is actually expensive compared to buying one for the same price a year or 2 ago, when a £500 card was actually about 700 EURO.

[interloper]

Do you think that 500 is too low for a 15 dsp card without plugins?

This just my opinion, but NO.. I don't think 500 euro is too low! Not at all in fact, but there are some factors that make me believe that:-

1. I paid 1000 EURO+ for a brand new 14 dsp SRB board bought directly from CW a couple of years ago knowing full well that I could have bought the same board on Ebay for about 500-600 EURO, but I wanted it NEW & also to support CW by buying directly from them.

True, but I was referring to a 14 DSP board with I/Os. I can see an SRB going for 600 euro.

[Shroomz~>]

True, but I was referring to a 14 DSP board with I/Os. I can see an SRB going for 600 euro.

Hi interloper,

I wasn't disagreeing with any of your points. In fact, I think you were absolutely correct to say that the price comparison between used Scope cards & XITE couldn't possibly be linear. I also think that you're doing the right thing trying to sell your hardware & software separately for exactly the reasons that you stated here in this thread. It gives people the chance to get a good deal on software without buying hardware that they perhaps don't need & it also gives people the chance to buy hardware without software that they already own in many cases. It also gives you the chance to hopefully get a good total return on both..

[interloper]

Thanks Shroomz. It's also a good discussion from all posters in this thread.

[Shroomz~>]

It's just an interesting subject.

I'm possibly looking for another Pro board this year, but it's a really bad time for us in the UK, since to buy one now will cost about 40% more than approx' 12 months ago. Crazy...

[interloper]

True. Just a crappy time to buy or sell anywhere.

[Shroomz~>]

Btw interloper, you got a detail wrong in your ebay description of your 14 dsp card by calling it 'Scope Project' (2nd sentence of description) - Project = 6dsp card.. Just letting you know in case it affects your selling price.

[interloper]

Cheers mate, sure did. Good catch. I remember the good old days when it was Luna, Pulsar and Scope.

I shall add this multiple naming convention disaster to my list of grievances.

[lagoausente]

Hey, 500 euro are not linear to Xite-1. Linear to xite would be 277 euro for 15 dps card, if 2769 are thomann price for Xite. That means 500 are near double what would ne linear price.
500 euro referend to linear price between, Luna, scope project and scope pro, for 3, 6 and 15 dsp, 100, 200 and 500 would be linear between them.
I´m sure in a future not so far, prices will be sure under 500 for a 15 dps card.
Some years ago, I bought a interface called Seasound Solo. It was claimed high end preamps and a nice mixer enviroment. Price was 1000 euro. They went out of business quickly. You can get one now for 30-50 euro. I´m not telling that actual pci cards will be the same, but in some sense they have no much future. Because of PCI interface, because new 10x chips will be on the road. With 10x chips, will be no sense to keep selling old slow ones, and even Xite-1 is lot of money, alternatives, must be using new chips, even if they are pci cards, or if they are little expresscard devices, maybe without preamps.. and with less power than Xite.
Consider that actual chips will not die is like if you have considered some time ago that a 500mhz computer would have a place today. A 500 mhz that was very useful some years ago, today has nothing to do. Thats reality.

[interloper]

There are a few things that make this comparison not entirely inaccurate. Sonic Core is still in business. You can't really compare the product of a company that has gone under to that of a company that is still up and running and showing new products at the conferences.

Also, Xite-1 actually has a few of the old chips in it, so Analog Devices is apparently still making them. At one time they were rumored to having been used in military applications, meaning they'll be available for a good number of years. Sonic Core is not the only customer of 60 MHz SHARC's.

If you look at the sites selling cards there has not been any price erosion at this time.

Furthermore, you can't compare the development of Native CPUs to that of DSP chips. They are driven by two different industries with two separate development cycles and product lifetimes.

[lagoausente]

I don´t understand what relation have the production of the chips itself. The thing is that if there is avaible a new one 10x more powerfull, will have no much sense use the old one, even it´s avaible. I don´t they continue with production of old pci cards, if they are now. I even suspect that actual pci new cards are stock from past production.

[interloper]

Well, products usually can get phased out if the is no longer any stock of the existing materials.

I think that before any new PCI cards will be released to the market the old versions will have to be sold out first. That may take a while.

[HUROLURA]

Ok guys, here my own comment on your price tag discussion:

- the number of DSP is NOT the only price criteria
=> the standard plug-in bundle is not the same with the LUNA/HOME, PulsarII/Project or the Pro board
=> the scope software version activated on the board (3.1 or earlier, 4.0 or 4.5 giving you free access to 5.0)
=> the pro board has one main advantage toward the others, as it give you access to the SDK after signing the NDA
=> as you can "only" use 3 boards in one host, the 14 DSP board are the most valuable if you intend to get the most powerfull system (the theoritical maximum system would be a 42/45 DSP system but I read somewhere that the gain between 2x14DSP+1x6DSP and 3x14DSP was not that significant. The optimum Scope PCI system would then be a 2 Pro + 1 Project)
- my recent stat check (mid 2007 untill end of 2008) on ebay for creamware boards give me
=> an average price of 40 €/DSP (all type of boards included)
=> a minimum price of 11 €/DSP (an extreme bargain price for a 19 DSP sale limitated in term of shipping) in sept 2008
=> a maximum price of 94 €/DSP in march 2007 but this particular one was including the RESTORE suite
- focusing on the last 3 month:
=> the 3 DSP boards were most sold at a price from 58€ to 100€ with one noticeable exception for a LUNA board sold 270 € but this one was bundled with the ADAT/Z-Link expansion board
=> the 4 DSP boards were sold between 100 and 140 €, their main advantage towards the LUNA/Home being to provide the ADAT connectors without the need for an extra and rarely sold ADAT expansion board (this is also true for more DSP powerfull PulsarII/Project or Pro boards)
=> the 6 DSP boards were sold between 150 to 220 € for DSP booster/XTC without I/O and 250 to 400 € for a PulsarII/Project boards depending on the plug-in bundle provided and scope software version
=> the rarely sold 14/15 Pro Cards were sold from 650 to 750 €

All these data to explain that the LUNA/Home cannot be used as a reference for other card pricing (because of plug-in provided, scope version, built in ADAT interface for non LUNA/Home board and SDK access for Pro board). Moreover, the 14/15DSP being the most powerfull PCI boards, they would probably maintain to relatively higher price.

Still, all this show the Xite-1 to provide a bargain €/DSP price with a much more futureproof solution as PCI port tend to disappear from PC and are even not available anymore from MAC.

My 2 cents to your discussion

CheerZ