Scope platform - need advice and information

keyznstuff · Post by **keyznstuff** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:12 am

Hi,

I'm new to this forum, please forgive this overly long first post.

I am thinking about moving to the Scope platform with the Scope Professional card, but i need some of my queries answered first...

My situation is as follows... I am currently working on a few audio projects. My setup is RME 9652 with Nuendo, and a UAD-1 card. I don't have the money to mixdown in a pro studio, but I would like a dramatic improvement in my mixes. Also, a few more classy Reverbs and good mixing and mastering compressers would be handy.

I imagine I'll run my tracks out of Nuendo routing them to the Scope mixer. Questions:

1. Will the Scope Pro mixer offer a dramatic improvement to my Nuendo mixes? Can it be compared to outboard consoles, or is it on a par or better than Pro Tools internal mixing? I have heard the summing is good.

2. In the Scope mixing environment, will i be able to access my other VST effects, and my UAD-1 effects?

3. Is there a way to transport tracks from Nuendo or other formats to VDAT? Does VDAT hold audio better than other native multitracks eg. Sonar, Nuendo.

4. Scope is also an ASIO Audio I/O card. Can i then get rid of my RME card in that case?

5. Is this setup possible? ie. running nuendo via Scope ASIO, and then routing to Scope mixer utilising VST and UAD-1 effects?

6. I've heard there are problems and glitches with the platform. is the situation getting better or worse? What do you honestly think about the future of the platform?

Finally, in summation, my main reasons for getting scope would be - mixing and summing quality, and additional classy effects (the sonic timeworks stuff sounds interesting). If the VDAT thing works out, i may eventually use that permanently.

Thank you very, very much for any info you can provide. i know this was a mind-numbingly long message, so i appreciate it if you got this far!

kind regards, joel.

wayne · Post by **wayne** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:36 am

Good questions, joel, and not overly verbal either i assure you

1.- many (most) of us prefer the summing on the scope cards to cpu-based solutions,
as you will hear.

2.- vst's aren't accessed in Scope SFP mode, XTC is available, but no mixers

(check scope xtc forum )

3. I'll let someone else answer that - no VDAT here yet

4. Plenty of ASIO drivers, and hardware i/o choices

5. Done all the time

6. Set it up well on the right machine and it's good

keyznstuff · Post by **keyznstuff** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:44 am

Thanks for the fast response Wayne. I have a good feeling that this forum is pretty supportive.

Just to clear something up, you said that VSTs aren't accessed in SFP mode. But you also said that people have similar setups to what i intend to do.

so I assume i would have to use my VST and UAD plugins within Nuendo, then rout them to the Scope mixer? Will the Scope mixer ever be able to load VST plugs?

Kind regards, Joel.

wayne · Post by **wayne** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:46 am

Also, if you would like to hear that setup (Scope + UAD) in action, check out some of the posts by Thalamus in the music forum.

You've obviously read well on this board already, and you will have noticed that sound sculptors of all shapes, sizes, styles & creeds use this platform - an indication of what it's capable of

A trip to the Modular and Devices forums is also recommended, to see what's being done in 3rd party/Modular/SDK

wayne · Post by **wayne** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 7:47 am

Yeah, mate, buss 'em out

keyznstuff · Post by **keyznstuff** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 8:12 am

thanks again!

firubbi · Post by **firubbi** » Fri Aug 12, 2005 9:34 am

Welcome to PlanetZ keyznstuff. if you don't have the money to buy protools HD or MixPlus. your next choice should be Scope Professional(with 2 14DSP SRB Expansion to Maximize your workstation) + A16 Ultra 16ch AD/DA converter to 100% complete our scope setup.
What to tell about Creamware. this amazing cards put me back to business where most of my competitors has protools digirack2 or Mixplus in my country.
Also you'll get Mix n master and synth pack for free which is another Great deal for new users(save another $1000)
And nothing like this wonderful forum where people will help you top to bottom

thanks

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 3:34 am

On 2005-08-12 08:12, keyznstuff wrote:
...
3. Is there a way to transport tracks from Nuendo or other formats to VDAT? Does VDAT hold audio better than other native multitracks eg. Sonar, Nuendo.
...

if you use the SFP mixer as your main mixing device, then VDAT records exactly what passes through the DSPs - there's absolutely no difference between monitoring and playback.

if you'd use (for example) 'software monitoring' of a sequencer, then the audio engine does not necessarily generate the exact same data for both record and monitor path. The result depends on the sequencer in question - not all are created equal.

that makes VDAT a very convenient tool - it always plays the pure signal (unless you intentionally inserted processing modules).

nevertheless there's no quality difference in storage itself (imho) compared to a well regarded sequencer if you write only the unprocessed(!) signal to disk - e.g. what comes from your converters without(!) any channel inserts like eq and comp

for non-SFP DAWs this is probably the exception.
it's often reported that an SFP mix sounds 'better' (more precise or transparent) compared to (say) Cubase.

a common (SFP) setup is to use the sequencer strictly for tracking only: all channels are routed via ASIO to SFP for mixing and fx and then back to the sequencer app for writing it to disk.
This way the audio engine of the sequencer is bypassed completely - and in this context I really doubt you can detect a difference between VDAT and such a record.

VSTis or UAD plugins can of course be included in this setup, but may need some latency adjustment.

in this context VDAT isn't required for precision's sake, and in fact your question ought to be asked reverse to get to one it's main advantages...

It can record an enormous amount of tracks simultaneously without(!) glitches, afaik much more than any sequencer.
So the point would be to move records from VDAT into your favourite sequencer for cutting and editing, which is rather straight forward as those 'tapes' are .wav files.

cheers, Tom

astroman · Post by **astroman** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 4:10 am

On 2005-08-12 08:12, keyznstuff wrote:
...
4. Scope is also an ASIO Audio I/O card. Can i then get rid of my RME card in that case?

5. Is this setup possible? ie. running nuendo via Scope ASIO, and then routing to Scope mixer utilising VST and UAD-1 effects?
...

if I were in this situation I'd keep the RME and put SFP in a dedicated 19" rackmount and
transfer channels via Adat - it's the convenient way to mix both worlds.

If you don't want to buy an outdated server for this (100 bucks on ebay) then possibly some of the new VIA thingies seem to be usable in this context.
Yesterday I tried an EPIA 1GHZ (1 PCI slot) which costs 150 Euro which ran 4 Masterverbs on an old Pulsar One - or one STW A100 and a Masterverb, which is the same (for that card) as on Intel 815/865.
(the original Pulsar One has a different IO system and is much slower than the current versions of the card)

I couldn't try more due to lack of DSP resources, but on the infamous VIA KT chipsets it probably would have complained already at the 2nd Masterverb...
at least I was quite surprised by the toy's performance - it's of course not a full blown sequencer DAW, but for a nice 2 units rack extension it looked promising

anyway, those 'glitches' you refer to are probably those caused by unsufficient capacity of the PCI bus. The reverbs in the test above are known to be very demanding in this context, that's why I focussed on them.

It's (imho) the only true flaw of the SFP system, but on a proper setup it's not really an issue. There IS a limit in instances of the top high end reverbs, but usually one doesn't apply half a dozen real-world Lexicons to a single track either

cheers, Tom

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: astroman on 2005-08-13 05:13 ]</font>

Post by **garyb** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 9:33 am

you can most certainly lose the rme...

R.D. Olivaw · Post by **R.D. Olivaw** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:16 am

hi

how many internal asio audio pathes are available for sending tracks/busses from a native seq to the Scope PF?
I'm interested in buying a Scope System for using the Scope mixer after my VST seq, but i need to send at least 24 separated channels.

thx

marcuspocus · Post by **marcuspocus** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:26 am

You have 64 asio channels i/o that can be made available to host

keyznstuff · Post by **keyznstuff** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:26 am

Thank you very much for all the information. this is very useful stuff.

I am hoping to do this in a one system setup, but i'll look into rackmounting a second server with just the Scope.

Just a couple more questions...

I've read that when the Scope mixer loads up, it preloads channels with eqs, compressors etc. I'm assuming this would be a DSP hog. Can you unload some of these devices as to your requirements?

Also, do you think there will come a day when VST plugins can be directly imported into the Scope Mixer?

Also, it was implyed that it's only the mixer functions of Nuendo that degrade the audio signal. ie. a wav file recorded in Nuendo should sound the same as a wav file recorded in VDAT once removed from the different mixing environments. Is that correct? I always thought that there were deeper audio capture problems with some sequencers.

kind regards, joel.

R.D. Olivaw · Post by **R.D. Olivaw** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 10:36 am

merci marcuspocus. 64 is enough

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 11:14 am

Yes, you can unload the EQs and compressors on the mixer channels. Each of them has a "bypass" button that will unload the device to free up some DSP power.

No, you won't ever be able to run VST within the SFP mixer. You might be able to do some routing hacks to "load one" into a mixer insert or aux path, using the "External Effects" device, but I've only tried loading them outside of a mixer, never inside. And this is just a routing hack, i.e. it'll send the signal over ASIO, to get processed by VST, and back over ASIO again, so you still need to run a VST host, and the VST's interface will be within the VST host. You'll also get ASIO delay, which might or might not matter depending on the effect and how you set it up.

But no, don't expect to be able to load VST effects directly in the SFP mixer any time soon. I can ramble endlessly about why if that's something you have an interest in, but I seem to mostly irritate people here when I do that, so I've stopped doing it =P

As for sequencer vs VDAT, it *should* be the same recording in both, but people report it's not. Some sequencers might be doing things to recorded audio signals, which should never happen, given Steinberg's track record, I wouldn't be surprised if they *did* stuff to what was being recorded.

Post by **garyb** » Sat Aug 13, 2005 6:29 pm

use the vsts in nuendo, it's no problem. you can DEFINITELY use one computer. two just adds horsepower to the system.....

emzee · Post by **emzee** » Mon Aug 15, 2005 5:06 pm

Re: Vdat. I've just started using it for recording and I'm delighted. What goes in is what comes out. From other posts by wiser folks, it appears that some other recording software "corrupts" some of the signal by passing it through Asio drivers. This was tested at the 1/0 level. (Naturally, each piece of software will perform differently. I was using Acid, which is a better editor than recorder.)

So personally, I'll be doing all recording using Vdat, then editing (if needed) in other software. My ears are happier

geoffd99 · Post by **geoffd99** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 9:24 am

Hi all
VDAT
I am thinking of getting this, as a multi track recorder (I have 20 inputs, plus from VST in sequencers), presumably the data is recorded onto the HD, into some default folder, then I pick up the WAVs.
Are they mono? I think so.
What is the track count at 32 bits (which I think is the internal of Scope), or 24?

I don't need any ADAT control etc, so is there a cheaper/free recorder out there for SFP?

Apols for asking, but I can't find any info on the CW site...

Incidentally, is there manual latency compensation in SFP mixers, as if I am using a seq. with say a VST instrument (or a recorded audio track), then adding midi synths (external) how do I make sure it is all lined up OK?

Thanks for any tips.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 12:46 pm

Each VDAT device can record 8 mono channels, and you can cascade up to 16 VDATs, for a theoritical total of 128 mono tracks in 32 bit integer (you'll need that ADAT controller thing called VRC-128 to control more than one VDAT at a time tho.) Practical maximum will depend on your PCI bandwidth, you shouldn't have any problems doing 32 mono channels tho.

As for the mixers' delay compensation, in the STM mixers, each channels has a "delay" setting that lets you adjust latency. You could also adjust the delay in your sequencer, since it's much easier to have negative delay with MIDI (so that the VSTi plays back in time with your zero-latency external signals) than with audio.

More infos, check VDAT.PDF and STM*.PDF included in the Scope 4 manual =P.

symbiote · Post by **symbiote** » Wed Nov 02, 2005 12:49 pm

Mm forgot to cover a few other points. As far as I know, there is no other free/cheap recorder for SFP. The STS samplers have some recording functions, but they always sounded glitchy to me, is limited to a stereo signal, and I don't think it'll do more than 24 bit.

Even with native software, the only nice free Win32 recorder I know is SilentBob, and again it's stereo only, and uses the DirectSound drivers, so won't go above 24bit either.

edit: typos etc
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