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I am new to the world of creamware and I am finding the way the products are marketed a little confusing. I am thinking of trading in my powercore virus and putting the funds towards a Luna 2 or a Noah. At the moment I am leaning towards the Noah as I already own a Powercore and a UAD, the idea of dealing with having 3 different DSP cards in one computer is a little daunting as getting the powercore and uad to play nice was not without work. I want quick and easy access to great synth sounds with little to no load on my cpu with good computer interface. It seems to me that Noah is offering this. I am confused as to what exactly the Noah is. For example is it basicly the same thing as a hardware synth? (midi cable in the back sounds go out back via D/A's). Or is it a dsp in a box? For example will intergrate with my sequencer as if it where a vst? with all the sound being sent via usb. I am sorry if this post is all over the place but as I said I find the product line quite hard to get my head around.

Any feedback is welcome.

Thanks

Noah is basically an hw synth with some unique features.
Luna2 is basically a recording card with very limited dsp power, so it's not intended as a synth or extensive mixing platform, larger cards are more functional.

Noah has an Asio driver and the possibility to work as an audio card, but only in a very limited way because of the USB1.1 protocol. But it can receive through BNC connection digital clock and send audio signals through optical port, as adat (8 channels) or spdif (stereo). It has analog unbalanced hi quality inputs and outputs, an internal mixer with great fx, the EX version can load 4 instruments and process audio signals at the same time.

As an instrument is absolutely wonderful, the audio card like functions are to be seen as a bonus that could well serve you if you take some vacations with your laptop and want to keep working, but not to run a studio. It's not integrated as VST, it's an external unit.

Sounds are fantastic.

welcome Mike

first, the NOAH is a discontinued product and only that makes it as cheap as you can currently get it. If you don't have any Creamware synths then a full featured NOAH EX is absolutely bargain and probably the most versatile hardware synth you can get your hands on.
If you have a look at CWA's shop pricelist and estimate the total of Minimax, B2003, ProOne, Prodyssey, Sixstring, Interpole etc, then you have the hardware for free.

NOAH IS true hardware and latency free, but those devices are also available for Scope cards as 'plugins' (with identical processing code)

it's probably the most effective way to get trustworthy Hammond, Moog, Wavestation, Sequential and Arp sounds under one hood and it is of course a top quality FX box as well.
Leslie, tube distortion, chorus vibrato, Moog filter, vocoder and the usual suspects.
The audio is excellent and (best of all) it will be different to what you already have, so it nicely completes your setup.

As you may have guessed, that box was much more expensive originally, but it turned out that it's difficult to market (something went awefully wrong in this context) and obviously it's too expensive to produce.

You can safely buy it, tho (if you like what's in the package). It's still supported and uses a mature technology.
My Pulsar card (from 1998) runs the same (basic) audio software and is in no way 'outdated'. In fact I've exploited at best 15% of it's synth potential, honestly.

I don't have a NOAH myself because I have almost any synth available for the card and I'm not touring live

cheers, Tom

I want quick and easy access to great synth sounds with little to no load on my cpu with good computer interface. It seems to me that Noah is offering this.

It certainly does

I am confused as to what exactly the Noah is. For example is it basicly the same thing as a hardware synth? (midi cable in the back sounds go out back via D/A's). Or is it a dsp in a box?

Yes. If you think of it as a hardware synth that can be used in this fashion. However, it can also have a USB connection to your computer which can be used for midi and audio. The included midi and ASIO drivers basically make your sequencer see the synth as if it were a usb midi/audio interface (full midi control of up to four synths, mixer and FX. Plus 6 channels of audio out and 2 channels of audio in). The control software is a standalone program which runs alongside your sequencer and has always worked very well for me.

At the moment I am leaning towards the Noah as I already own a Powercore and a UAD

Noah should integrate perfectly into this system and will give you a good view of what Creamware has to offer

I would definitely recommend the Noah ahead of the Luna card, especially if it's synths you're after. Trust me when I say that some of the synths in the Noah are probably the best VA's out there. Not to mention the fact that Noah EX has almost 4x the dsp power of the Luna (11dsps versus 3 dsp's).

Hi Mike G & welcome

These guys have mostly covered things, but something which is worth mentioning is that due to the 4-slot architecture, you can have 4 synths running simultaneously. When routing through a sequencer, you could essentially (if you wished ) have 4 or more separate midi controllers in the form of Keyboards, midi fader/knob box's etc all simultaneously sending midi to separate Noah channels (midi channels 1-4 for example) which can be running your choice of 4 different or multiple instance synths. This means that U could be playing a minimax, while someone else plays a Prodyssey, someone else a Pro-one, while someone else could be remote mixing & editinng FX send/rtn levels & FX parameters from a midi fader set or whatever. I wouldn't imagine many people use the Noah this way, but it's a very powerfull and expressional way of playing it live & will work just as well as hitting the Noah with a whole load of midi programmed in Cubase or Logic (which also works perfectly)

All in all the Noah EX is one of, if not THE most flexible, powerfull & best sounding hardware synths around. It's a DSP based synth just like the Nord Modular in some respects. (like the 4 slot architecture, the use of DSPs, the PC/Mac software control interface, the normal or expanded version etc) These trates & similarities to the Nord Modular are not features or issues which make the Nord less of a hardware synth, just as with the Noah.

It's a wonderfull synth & some might say it's four

Have a look at the extensive descriptions and Specs on the Noah & Noah EX on Creamware's site, which is an excellent resource if you're really interested <a href="http://www.cwaudio.de/">www.cwaudio.de</a>