I'm sold! More questions...

[zerocrossing]

Oh, okay. Cool...

Yeah, you won't find any good demos of Scope anywhere. I have one somewhere stashed on website from some 10 years ago. It was a Pro-12 plugin back then. I think it's called a Profit-5 now. I don't know if there's a difference. Here are some preset sounds from 10 years ago. Not a very good demo at all, but better than nothing eh?

It's not very aggressive, but I found it to have better sound than my old Jupiter-6. More flexibility.

http://www.thomaslaskowski.com/wp-conte ... 12.wav.mp3

Anyway, I have most of the S|C synths, so if you wanna hear them, just give me a shout. I have too much spare time.

Cheers,

-Tom

Yes please!

So... I'm especially interested in the types of sounds achieved with the Profit 5's polymod. Some of my worries stem from the fact that audio rate modulation is usually something that works best when run at 96khz, though Diva does a good job at 48.

[garyb]

use the XITE as a stand alone synth then. use it at 96k and then stream the stuff into your regular DAW.
still worth the money.

[tlaskows]

What the hell man?

That's the way I've been using it, and it's fine. And you had to say the F word and that's not cool

-Tom

[garyb]

what i said was that if you don't want to leave the sequencer, then certain things are just out.

as you said, it's fine for you, so there's no problem, no?

[tlaskows]

Yes Mister. I never said Scope sucked. It's the best thing out there right now. I only want it for the great synths, so there is no problem. I'm just trying to be helpful/suggest improvements. Like I said, I can wait... I have a lot of time. I watch TV all day and listen to Ace of Base. Ok, that was a bad joke.

Everything is cool

I used to record with a 100$ card at 96k with a SM57 and a Casio toy keyboard... It was still fun. As long as we're having fun, everything is good. I will never do this for a living. It takes too much work, and I really don't want to get into the rotten stuff.

I try to be helpful once in a while, like the 10 year old demo of Pro-12 presets. I don't know where I found it. I don't normally make backups. I swear I had some other demos somewhere (yes, back from 10 years ago), but I gotta dig up my old USB flash drives.

Yes I do wax my computers to make them go faster, but only in spare time. I fried too many, well. That home made water cooling kit for a 6 core i7 back 5 years ago was a bad idea. I think it leaked on the motherboard. Asus replaced it.

I'm having a bit of an issue right now that just started happening. But I will post in another section.

My head really hurts and aspirin is not helping at all. Maybe I need more caffeine...

-Tom

[zerocrossing]

use the XITE as a stand alone synth then. use it at 96k and then stream the stuff into your regular DAW.
still worth the money.

I'm a little confused about how the XITE-1 works. I know it's an audio i/o card as well as a processor. I imagine those two things are totally different numbers, no? For instance, my computer CPU runs 4 cores at 2.5 ghz, but obviously my audio interface doesn't run at that. However, when I ask my audio interface to run at 96 khz instead of 48, it makes my CPU run twice as hard to create twice the info. A lot of times it's meaningless, but for some applications it's clearly better. If you have Reaktor you can tell it to process audio at 96 khz regardless as to what your audio card is doing.

So, on the XITE-1, is this the same type of relationship? It's a fairly important issue, because when I try and run my DAW at 96 khz, it chokes pretty quickly. Of course, when I pushed it I specifically tried to break it, with an instance of Diva, and PSP's N2O processor... and maybe something else... Serum? I can't remember, but I aimed to break it and I did. Running Reaktor at 96 khz independently of the audio interface does yield better audio quality. (as in Monark) NI even recommends this. I guess this is important because it may be economically better for me to upgrade to a 4 ghz i7, buy a better audio interface (My Presonus only does 48) See, I can kind of do exactly that, and buy a .002 rack or Prophet 6 module for the cost of an XITE-1. See what I mean?

[garyb]

yes. higher sample rates require more calculations per second.
96k takes more than twice the resources as 44.1k.

yes, the clock speed of the processor has nothing to do with the audio sample rate.
the audio sample rate is how many frames per second that an image made of a sound uses. it's like how many frames per second of a film. more frames takes more film that must be moved faster. there are limits of practicality. really, the arguments of sample rate are moot, stupid. it's a matter of practicality. don't talk about sound quality and mp3s at the same time.

the CPU does one(theoretically 4 in a quad core, but only in theory) thing at a time. it does a small amount of work measured by an "interrupt", a measure of time. clock speed is about how fast a cpu can make it's cycle of jobs to get back to the first job, the audio signal, for the purpose of making music. if the processor has too many jobs or is too slow, the computer may get very sluggish or you might just get clicks and pops called dropouts(missing pieces of sound due the the fact the cpu missed info).

DSPs can handle several parallel jobs and they only need to do audio calculations. for this reason, better, more complicated algorithms(mathematical models of reality) can be used. dsps often do more complicated audio work that a CPU is asked to do, because the DSP doesn't have to run an internet browser or a manage hard drive resources...

[zerocrossing]

yes. higher sample rates require more calculations per second.
96k takes more than twice the resources as 44.1k.

yes, the clock speed of the processor has nothing to do with the audio sample rate.
the audio sample rate is how many frames per second that an image made of a sound uses. it's like how many frames per second of a film. more frames takes more film that must be moved faster. there are limits of practicality. really, the arguments of sample rate are moot, stupid. it's a matter of practicality. don't talk about sound quality and mp3s at the same time.

the CPU does one(theoretically 4 in a quad core, but only in theory) thing at a time. it does a small amount of work measured by an "interrupt", a measure of time. clock speed is about how fast a cpu can make it's cycle of jobs to get back to the first job, the audio signal, for the purpose of making music. if the processor has too many jobs or is too slow, the computer may get very sluggish or you might just get clicks and pops called dropouts(missing pieces of sound due the the fact the cpu missed info).

DSPs can handle several parallel jobs and they only need to do audio calculations. for this reason, better, more complicated algorithms(mathematical models of reality) can be used. dsps often do more complicated audio work that a CPU is asked to do, because the DSP doesn't have to run an internet browser or a manage hard drive resources...

OK... so... let me rephrase the question a bit. Does running the XITE-1 at 96khz yield a significantly better sound? Would it mean I'd have to run my DAW at the same speed?

Maybe a more concise question is, does the XITE-1 provide a higher sound quality at any given speed than running some of the better native software instruments?

[garyb]

maybe it does.

things like filters benefit from higher sample rates because the frequencies that are subject to aliasing move higher as the sample rate increases. some synths, such as Minimax, have filters that are oversampled, so those filters aren't as affected.

i'd say that higher sample rates sound better as a general rule, but by no means does the higher sample rate equal better music or a better sounding finished product. remember a CD is 44.1k and some CDs sound incredible, while others sound ratty.

in general, i'd say that if it takes 96k to make an awesome sounding product, then one needs to know more about production. in general, i'd say that higher sample rates are a waste of resources for everyone but the extremely wealthy who don't mind the extra space required on drives and the computer horsepower being halved. the extremely wealthy can just use more machines, or hardware for that matter.

[tlaskows]

I thought pretty much all the synths used upsampling for the oscillators and filters. I have no idea how the S|C oscillators are implemented, but they sound extremely well. No aliasing, but some odd low frequency distortion when playing high notes on some of the synths. I'm talking about an audible low frequency sound.

-Tom

[garyb]

no, not all synths.
what synths have that...distortion?

[tlaskows]

I know the Minimax does this for sure. I will have to try to reproduce it later. It may not be the oscillators, but the filter. I wouldn't know.

-Tom

[dante]

To me the benefit of 96khz vs 48khz comes from the mixing /mastering stages. I find it difficult to tell any difference between a CD quality WAV and a lossless MP3 rendered from that WAV. But I can tell the difference between that same track mix/mastered at 96 kHz than if its mixed/ mastered at 48khz.

But it's not a difference I could recognize until after going through the process of working at 96khz over some time. Then actually recording vocals at 96 (rather than just remixing older material recorded at lower sample rate) makes the difference more noticeable, using Rhode Classic mic - albeit mediocre pre.

If it was not for Fra77 bringing this 96khz mixing to my attention during a remix excersize I probably wouldn't have been aware of it. Easy to discard as a placebo effect after first using it on a track or two, but after having worked at 96 over a stretch of time - there's no going back !

[zerocrossing]

maybe it does.

things like filters benefit from higher sample rates because the frequencies that are subject to aliasing move higher as the sample rate increases. some synths, such as Minimax, have filters that are oversampled, so those filters aren't as affected.

i'd say that higher sample rates sound better as a general rule, but by no means does the higher sample rate equal better music or a better sounding finished product. remember a CD is 44.1k and some CDs sound incredible, while others sound ratty.

in general, i'd say that if it takes 96k to make an awesome sounding product, then one needs to know more about production. in general, i'd say that higher sample rates are a waste of resources for everyone but the extremely wealthy who don't mind the extra space required on drives and the computer horsepower being halved. the extremely wealthy can just use more machines, or hardware for that matter.

Thanks for all that. I do have a decent understanding about how digital audio works, but I guess what I wanted was the info about the internal oversampling going on within the software. Over the last few years I've seen big strides with such things and it's pretty easy to find a native VSTi that doesn't alias much, yet Access still seems to be selling it's Virus.

I also see that some sounds benefit clearly from a 96 khz sample rate even if your DAW is running at 48 khz. It's pretty easy if you have Reaktor. It lets you run its sample rate indepentanly from the rate your DAW is running. Diversion, Discovery Pro and Mpowersynth also let you choose a level of oversampling. On some sounds it makes little or no difference, other times it's pretty clear. But, and there is always a big but, sometimes those higher sample rates do kill your CPU. What I was hoping for with the XITE-1 was to get that extra ooomph for no CPU price.

I'll apologize now. I know I'm being a pain in the posterior. It's rough though. It's a pretty big chunk of change for me... as well as a change in work flow. If it were something I could buy at Guitar Center, try for a week and then return, I'd just do it. I kind of just want to be done with this selection process. I'm getting tired of searching for the perfect digital hardware synth... and wondering if I already had it in native plug ins.

[dante]

Running Scope and DAW have to run together at same sample rate- this makes sense if you think about ASIO being the bridge that joins the 2 together - ASiO essentially becomes the clocking sync between the 2 systems.

Scope starts up before DAW therefore whatever sample rate you run it at is the sample rate the DAW sees in its ASIO I/O !

Well, thats what I'm guessing is going on anyway.

[garyb]

not a pain in the butt.

[garyb]

want a REAL testimony about the quality of Scope stuff?
people are still using 18 year old cards in their new computers. find me another computer ANYTHING that people still use after all this time.

an XITE isn't expensive at all when you compare it in price to other high-end audio and consider that it will be useful for the next 20 years, upgrade or not.

[dante]

Mind you - once Scope is loaded, then Cubase - if you then change the sample rate in Scope, Cubase asks if you want to change it to match. I've never tried replying 'no' to that - so maybe its possible to run DAW and Scope at different rates - but either Cubase would have to do conversion on the fly, or you end up with Mickey Mouse or Darth Vader !

But yeah - either way - Scope is the best for quality and longevity.

[zerocrossing]

OK, I just found a Minimax video that cheered me right up. It does sound f'n fantastic.

As for me being a pain in the butt.. well my wife would argue otherwise.



Now some other questions have hit my mind.

I'm wondering if I can layer different synthesizers. For instance, create a patch that has presets of say Minimax and Vectron that play together as in a basic multitimbral synth. Or set it up like a split.

I imagine all LFO and delay type things can be synced to MIDI clock. Does it work well?

I'm very interested in wavetable/digital synthesis options especially ones with very good analog modeled kinds of filters. The Solaris 5 demos sound good, but there are only a few I can find. Are there better options?

[tlaskows]

You can mix the synths in the mixer while sending MIDI to them both, is that what you mean?

Have a look at Vectron, I think it uses wavetables. So neat sounds.

-Tom