PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

bad luck Mikael-R
At least you gave us hope for a second

No that is actually good news. Thanks for correcting the info and posting it here. It's so easy to get caught up in the whole "what am I missing out on" scenario.

Here is the test again with the chorus/flanger turned off this time . It's a 256 kbps mp3 file. There seems to be a very slight difference. It starts with 96 and then switches back and forth.

Thank you for the new examples

The 96Khz examples appear to have a very slightly more tight EG attack.
To my ears, for the rest there's not a remarkable difference between the 44.1Khz and 96Khz example.

Note: in the recording, the 96Khz examples give at least one glitch each..
https://www.cantabilesoftware.com/glitchfree/

Since January 2015 I have been on a mission to re-record / mix / master my 35 years of recordings at 96Khz. This is a 2 - 3 year project I am more than half way through and have remixed 203 tracks so far. I estimate that's about 2/3's of the way with 250 - 300 tracks total.

So I have been exporting MIDI and Audio stems (converted to 96Khz) from Cubase or even re-recording some of them at 96Khz.

Reason is now the main mix engine with Scope mastering at 96Khz. I will never go back to 48Khz, or Cubase / Rewire / ASIO routings. My experience tells me large ASIO channel counts (e.g. above 4 stereo pairs like 24 channel mix) cause as much if not more drain on system resources than 96Khz.

And the 96Khz mix/mastering process yields better sounding results overall (even though some vocal and guitar tracks from the 90's were recorded at much lower sample rates to begin with)- during mixing for example I notice more accurate EQ and placement of sources in the stereo field.

Here is another quick test, with minimax.

I believe that the Minimax is "oversampled" as well.

To produce tests that really shows off the difference between synthesis at 44.1khz and 98khz go to the modular.

Some more conclusions regarding minimax:
Flanger/chorus does affect the sound on 96 kHz minimax but not nearly as much as when it's set on 44 kHz. It's like it doesn't work properly even though it does something. The sound with chorus/flanger turned of can still be quite different. I did try some fx stuff that I thought might show a bigger difference. Based on this test a patch created in 44 kHz mode might not sound the same as in 96 kHz. I guess the included patches were ceated in 44 kHz btw, I you are working in both modes then specific patches for both modes might be a good idea.

I'm not sure how much this test helps in deciding between 96 and 44 though.

With any synth or effect (chorus etc) that uses internal Modulation calculations or any other type of internal control signal, these tend not run at full audio rate. Modulated delay lines, envelopes, LFO's and many other Control signals run at typically one quarter to 1/10th of the sampling rate to save on dsp or CPU overhead. To complicate things even more in Scope many of these are the async portion of your DSP usage and that means there can be a CPU based component (as is the case with delay lines etc). What this means is that increasing sampling rate will also increase this lower resolution calculation and alter the timing of the integration between the DSP card and The host CPU. Envelopes and then will sound more percussive and attacky, and LFO's will have changed their "onscreen" values versus timing unless they are sample rate compensated not to do so, and so on. So some of the audible changes may not necessarily just be due to something being "better" but just different. And some things ARE better. This will depend entirely on the implementation of each device and the low level building blocks it is made of in Scope.

Incidentally, Reason benefits a great deal from higher sample rates in my experience. So do the fade in and fade out portions of clips and the realtime time and pitch calculations in programs like ableton live.

thanks for that one

Depending on the synth, it's often clear that running your system at 96 kHz makes a difference, especially when using audio rate modulation. I found when using Minimax that there wasn't that much of a difference. It appears that the code is already oversampling internally so it doesn't make a lot of sense. You just lose voices. You're better off with a Solaris instead of an XITE-1/Pulsar set up. Or both!

My recommendation is to buy a few good analogs to complement your Scope synths and run things at 48 kHz. My dream was that the XITE-1 was going to render all my analogs and native plug ins obsolete. That didn't happen. In fact, I ended up replacing some of the synths I gave up and I'm back to about the same instrument count, though the new instruments take up less space and work better in my space. The KingKORG became a Roland System 1m running the System 100 plug out. The Prophet 12 became a Prophet 6 module. The Waldorf Pulse 2 will become a (probably) Moog Mother 32 that will become part of a small Eurorack system that will also house the 1m. The synths I kept when I got the XITE-1, are in no danger of going anywhere. There's no Scope instrument that can match my Neptune 2 or ATC-X's future vintage vibe. For me the XITE-1 has really become much more about Modular/Flexor. I was excited to get some of the John Bowen synths, but now I don't really think it's worth it based on what I have in hardware and native synths. I actually found I'm using the XITE-1 a lot more as an effect processor for incoming hardware than I thought I would. It's pretty awesome for that.

downsampling ALWAYS wreaks havoc on your audio. artifacts are created. CDs are 44.1k. DVDs can be 96k, but they are almost always 48k.

my suggestions are always the same. for audio, use 44.1k. for DVDs and video, use 48k.

there is little to be gained by thinking about this much further. it's just my opinion.

--> Mikael-R = It's very hard for me to hear any difference. Nevertheless, I really tried, objectively.

--> Valis = You certainly are right : short envelopes may sound more percussive at 96kHz but again, that must be so tenuous that I'm wondering if it's worth it. At 96kHz, you loose 55% of your system calculation power in comparaison with 44.1kHz ! You can find some other solution to make your percussive sound more percussive and stay at 44.1kHz... Imho..!

dante wrote:You are asking the wrong question.

The question should be: How can I combine Native and Scope to run what I need to do at 96Khz ?

I run XITE-1D at 96khz and it runs 4 mastering plugins and proWave at 4 voice poly. My 3 DSP cards can then run another synth @96Khz. Everything else is done Native - and whole system runs at 96Khz.

And to answer the obvious next upcoming question 'will it sound better' - well you wont know without at least a couple of weeks trial, because it wont necessarily be obvious straight off the bat.

Yesterday I did a little experiment to see if my XITE-1 was worth keeping as a sound module on another computer running at 96 khz, though for my test I left it connected to my main computer. I couldn't even get ProWave running at all. All that I had running was a MIDI in, ProWave and an ASIO output module (2 channel). I tried assigning it to specific DSPs, but no luck there. I could not get it to show up to Live as an ASIO device unless I ran it at 48 khz. What could I be doing wrong if you're getting 4 voices out of it (and some mastering plug ins) on a 1D and I can't get one voice of it running alone on my system? Could it be because I'm running Scope on a 64 bit system?

Correct, wave/sample player components do not work on 64-bit (for the most part).

zerocrossing wrote:Yesterday I did a little experiment to see if my XITE-1 was worth keeping as a sound module on another computer running at 96 khz, though for my test I left it connected to my main computer. I couldn't even get ProWave running at all. All that I had running was a MIDI in, ProWave and an ASIO output module (2 channel). I tried assigning it to specific DSPs, but no luck there. I could not get it to show up to Live as an ASIO device unless I ran it at 48 khz. What could I be doing wrong if you're getting 4 voices out of it (and some mastering plug ins) on a 1D and I can't get one voice of it running alone on my system? Could it be because I'm running Scope on a 64 bit system?

Nothing to do with 64 bit - Im running Win8 64 bit here. Its probably down to the presets. I can only get 3 voice poly whilst using the standard issue MasterIT - but last year DAS released MasterIT Lite so when I need 4 voice poly on the proWave I substitute MasterIT Lite into the project.

Here are my presets, under the 'CC-Presets' bank theres a series of 'CC-PadAttack' presets that I use and get 4 voices out of.

dante wrote:

zerocrossing wrote:Yesterday I did a little experiment to see if my XITE-1 was worth keeping as a sound module on another computer running at 96 khz, though for my test I left it connected to my main computer. I couldn't even get ProWave running at all. All that I had running was a MIDI in, ProWave and an ASIO output module (2 channel). I tried assigning it to specific DSPs, but no luck there. I could not get it to show up to Live as an ASIO device unless I ran it at 48 khz. What could I be doing wrong if you're getting 4 voices out of it (and some mastering plug ins) on a 1D and I can't get one voice of it running alone on my system? Could it be because I'm running Scope on a 64 bit system?

Nothing to do with 64 bit - Im running Win8 64 bit here. Its probably down to the presets. I can only get 3 voice poly whilst using the standard issue MasterIT - but last year DAS released MasterIT Lite so when I need 4 voice poly on the proWave I substitute MasterIT Lite into the project.

Here are my presets, under the 'CC-Presets' bank theres a series of 'CC-PadAttack' presets that I use and get 4 voices out of.

Pro-Wave.zip

scope-setup.jpg

Cool. Thanks for that.