'N00b' needs help/advice on sfp vs xtc and cubase mixing!!

[PoGGiE]

Hi guys, I posted this in the projects forum as was advised to repost here. The original post is at http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php ... 71#p269071 so you can see the advice I've already had! Thanks for any further advice!

"
apologies in advance if these questions have been asked before (as I'm sure many of them have!). But I'm hoping you will humour me and save me a lot of time/to begin acquiring knowledge in a helpful way so that I can order what I need/start producing music again asap! apologies if some of my description below is slightly vague as I'm trying to get to grips again after 4 years of inactivity!

Essentially I'm not a new creamware user. I'm a guitar player who bought creamware lunar with the luna 2496 box about 10 years ago and found this a good system for recording myself and bandmates into cubase at practice sessions etc. What I did back then was to use the 2496 for my inputs, and record and mix in Cubase, using VSTis etc. I did not use XTC mode. I ran the sfp mixer outputs direct to the lunar stereo audio outs and then used a mini jack from that output into my soundcard line-in. Soundcard line in then ran to my hifi. Obviously this was unsatisfactory, at the very least it would have been nicer to directly use the soundcard in in the sfp software but this never worked for me. I always found this setup slightly unsatisfactory: as you can see I never used the creamware for FX etc. because the mixing was done in cubase so any creamware fx were being applied after the signal had left cubase and so would not be recorded to disk! See, I told you I am a n00b! but seriously, I bought a second pulsar card second hand and linked these together as I planned to overcome this problem which I believe means I had 6 dsps. However, at that point music took a back-seat to the dayjob; now I'm unemployed with money in the bank I'm reconsidering everything about my life but at the very least I plan to make music an important part of my life again because I need to express myself! otherwise I seriously will go mad as I have been suppressing myself for corporate bs and money and that is not what life is about! or if it is then screw it. /rant over!

getting back to topic: what I would like to do:

(i) I want to record audio from at least 2 guitars, vocals, bass and have flexibility for more; I recall I did manage to find the 8 2496 in/outs limitting. I believe to mix each track individually I probably want an in/out for every track? so e.g. for playback of 32 tracks of audio/pre-recorded audio I will need 32 i/os? or 2 A16 boxes? I could start with 1 A16 box combined with my 2496 to give me 24 tracks? is it possible to get one s/h? or use a different brand with my platform? how much would it cost? and where should I look! the A16 ultra is very expensive!!
(ii) I will want to use FX in theory on every channel and will want to use VSTi instruments as well as some of the fantastic synths on the creamware platform although I will not be writing electronic music. I'll certainly be using orchestral and other sample packs (e.g. grand pianos, drumkit from hell/bfd/artist drums). I want to apply FX permanently to recorded audio only at the last possible mix-down stage if possible. I'll want to combined the great FX in the scope platform with vst fx in cubase and I'll want to be able to do any automation of sfp fx too where necessary (not something I have much experience of at this stage!).
(iii) Midi/samples. I have a fatar controller master keyboard, a vdrums electronic kit, a phatboy midi controller, a little 2m midi-merger unit, and various external digital fx (quadraverb GT, digitech RP 20) and midi-capable amps (marshall jmp1, marshall 6100). I'm probably going to use the digitech mostly as a midi controller as its useful for potential live use and it has an expression pedal; I think many of the FX on scope/vst platform are likely to be superior and more flexible and the rp20 is only 16 bit and I noticed the impact it made on the guitar signal and did not like it! (probably just poor internal adc/dac or whatever). And it lagged lol, especially on harmonizer.
(iv) Its quite conceivable that I'll want to do all of the above in real time. Like, a band practice: drummer on vdrums, 2 guitar players and vocals, possibly keyboards but at the least pre-recorded keyboard parts doing playback.
(v) I'm currently on sfp 3.1. Should I buy the upgrade for v? I have a deal at the moment, for 150 pounds I can buy the scope 4 and 5 platforms with some synths and fx and mixing as well as a 3rd pulsar card which I think would bring the dsps in my system to 10? This seems like a good deal although I'll need another cable to link the 3rd card in (where can I get this? is it standard or is it expensive?) What do you think? presumably 10 dsps is a good number for what I want to do (probably overkill even?) But I have to upgrade to 5 if I want to be future proof (windows 7)?
(vi) Does XTC now work under scope 5? should I be using sfp platform anyway? (should I sell all my creamware stuff? from what I've read I really don't think so! but am I wrong?)
(vii) I plan to use an HP xw6400x with dualcore Xeon 2.66 ghz processor wihch I already have. I noticed someone was having a problem with sfp and dualcore. Is this going to be an issue? there was mention of a patch. Alternatively I could use my 2 ghz single core AMD system but it seems the Xeon is 4x as fast and cubase 5 (my version) can make use of the fact its dualcore; I think I'm going to need that power fully and the cpu of the PC could be one of the limiting factors in my system? again, creamware could be very useful in taking load off the CPU? My samples will be a real memory/hard disk hog; I have 3 pcs, 2 of these (including the planned music PC) have 4gb of ram and I may have to ultimately run one as an external sampler? I have 2 external hard disks and 4 internal ones so I am hoping too much disk thrashing will not be a limitation? I don't have anything scsi, think they are all 7200 rpm. The hard disk in my music pc is 7200 rpm.
(viii) This may sound weird but I plan to use sibelius to write music. Although I can play by ear on guitar and can get by on piano, I find the moment I make a note I lose whatever is in my head! or most of it is lost. Unless its a noodle/band improve. When I have an idea I want to get it down like putting a pen to paper; I used to be able to do that when I was 14 (although I always struggle with rhythm notation; need to practice that!) Can always refine it later! I'd like to integrate sibelius with my sampler for the best piano/other sound; probably will want to trigger vstis with it too using midi! might even wish to use it as a performance tool! not sure whether it exports performance midi.
(ix) any other questions I haven't asked that I should have!

Thanks to any who can help me! apologies again for being such a n00b. Figured better to provide too much info than too little! I hope I've not forgotten anything important."

[garyb]

the v5 upgrade would be a good idea. yes, xtc mode works. if you would like to discuss the platform's use in depth, i'd be happy to arrange a skype call with you. just pm me.

-btw-cubase is more than capable of notating your score. i'm not sure that sebelius is really needed. it all depends on how you work, and what you like...

[dante]

You might have issues with Sibelius and have to use ASIO4ALL - heres a recent post about it :

http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=29420

[Mr-Bit]

However, at that point music took a back-seat to the dayjob; now I'm unemployed with money in the bank I'm reconsidering everything about my life but at the very least I plan to make music an important part of my life again because I need to express myself! otherwise I seriously will go mad as I have been suppressing myself for corporate bs and money and that is not what life is about! or if it is then screw it. /rant over!

Hehe that sounds familiar my day job was restoring Listed buildings real body bashing work, every days work was taking away my physical music ability and I hated it just not worth the money.This year work has totally dried up which I see as a blessing, SCREW that S&*T back to the love of my life Music now I have even more drive as its all I have left!

btw I'm mag3.1 from ebay

[PoGGiE]

Hi mag 3.1 .

well, my Xeon dualcore mobo only has 2 slots so thats my lunar and pulsar cards in. If I want a 3rd card I would need to buy an adapter to allow usage of the spare PCIe slot. I believe this can work well (in fact there seem to be expansion cards enabling you to run up to 4 PCI cards externally using one PCIe slot) but of course this costs more money (about 30 - 40 pounds for a single adapter so not that much) and I think I might have to sacrifice the option of using four monitors if I did that (slightly less cool). So I'm going to set up with my existing two cards for now. I also need to look into whether scope 5 is worth upgrading to from 3.1? I gather 4 was not much of a change. Yes it would be nice to be able to upgrade to windows 7 at some stage but for now it seems that whilst better than vista, it is slower and uses more memory than XP? Also 200eur for a software upgrade that may realistically not add much to what I have already seems like rather a lot. I might be better off buying an A16/other piece of hardware instead!

Best,

Carl

[dante]

Elsewhere here in this forum, thoughts are not worth buying a PCI expander which often only have the bandwidth to host a one or two card, you're better off selling the cards putting the money to an XITE-1 ... not sure if S|C have the trade in deal still going.

Then 5.0 would come with it and all the latest systh&sampler / mix&master devices. Worth the price if you got the $$.

I dont have the $$ for XITE but the upgrade from 4.0 to 5.0 was worth it in so many ways....especially if you're skipping 4.5 where you might already have some of the stuff.