PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi everyone, I am new to forum. It is my first time posting here to seek for some help as well.

I am not too familier to all musical PC software/hardware things. I am about to make a choose to get into electronic musics as one of my goals now. However, after some reading and browsing, I have found that SCOPE seems to be a very powerful musical tool.

I can sense most people that are current using SCOPE DSP products are very satisified with its sound and abilities. However, I would like to know if there is any alternative choices out there? Just to have another product to compare with? and how's Creamware's standing in current music technology develeopments(Is creamware product still consider to be one of the top dogs in the league?) Since I am new to this, I am not planning to invest too much money into it right away.

My main goal is to first record, second mix, third compose, and latency is not a problem to me since I will not be doing any live performances. from what I have read, I can see that SCOPE Home can do all that? I have just heard about the Scope 4.5 release, and I am wondering if there is any Scope Home product already updated with the 4.5 version instead of the 4.0, so if I do purchase a Scope Home then it will already be updated with the most current version. Or Scope 4.5 is only available to upgrade users?


Thanks in advance

scope is a very good choice and the only comparable platform. it is quite unique, singular.

as stardust said, as a new user, you are entitled to 4.5.

bite the bullet and get a bigger card. the package is MUCH greater for the money and you'll want more dsps anyway. sell something if you must!

Today, new Scope v4.5 cards are highly competitive near to unbelievable deals, concerning the quantity of very high quality plugins delivered with these new v4.5 cards, and the numbers of I/O that can be potentially reached (with the purchase of two A-16 Ultra to use them with the proprietary Z-Link interface, for the Scope Home v4.5 card, you could reach 36 I/O).
http://scope.creamware.de/scope_home.htm


But, it has to be said that Scope home v4.5 is a product that could lead you to buy more Creamware products in the future. 3 Sharcs DSP are not enough to use a lot of Creamware plugins comfortably. The A-16 Ultra has to be bought to reach the full I/O potential of the Scope Home Card, with the proprietary Z-Link interface. You will have to buy more DSPs to use several Creamware's synths and FXes simultaneously.


Two very strong points of the Scope cards:
1) Nobrainer very low latency, very good for live uses
2) Some synths really have it soundwise, (but they are for equal tempered music only); be aware that a Scope Home card has not enough DSP power to use these sonically very good synths more than one monophonic instance at a time and only at 44,1/48 kHz samplerate. e.g. Minimax. So, it could eventually lead you to a kind of frustration in your composing process, if you have only 3DSPs as the Scope Home v4.5 card has. The same can be said with the use of Creamware's FXes if mixing with Scope plugins with a Scope Home v4.5 card and only 3DSPs, but the FXes use generally less DSP than the best Creamware's synths.

One weak point for today's standards: no "freeze" feature (no faster than realtime bounce; you will have to record your Creamware's synths and mix with Scope in realtime).

My personal advice would be to buy at least a Scope Project v4.5 card, to be less limited by not enough DSPs like you will be soon or later with only the Scope Home v4.5. The best would be a Scope Professional v4.5 card, for sure.

- You can also expand a Scope home with other Creamware cards later. Be prepared to that if you begin with only a Scope home card.
- You can also expand the PC part of the system with VSTis and VST plugins, powerful PCs are cheap, today, and some VSTis are very good, allowing you to use Scala's scales tuning files that Creamware's synths can't use. You can move to "a all in PC" mix and composing process, using the I/O capacities of the Scope home card. If so, you will have to take in account that not all PC softwares are equals for mixing, soundwise. Creamware's mixing is superior to some of the PC's softwares mixing concerning sound quality, but is not superior to all of them.


In conclusion: you can buy a Scope Home v4.5 card, being aware that it has no enough DSP power to comfortably use several Creamware's plugins at a time, and evolve later when you will have a deeper understanding of the Creamware's PCI card / PC computer association.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Grok on 2005-12-04 01:23 ]</font>