20 dsps are not enough

ARCADIOS · Post by **ARCADIOS** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 11:23 am

unfortunatelly 20 dsps are not enough.
you know why

hifiboom · Post by **hifiboom** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 3:07 pm

if you are unhappy with your 20 DSPs, you can send them to me...

hahaha

contact me via PM...

ARCADIOS · Post by **ARCADIOS** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 3:12 pm

katano · Post by **katano** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:00 pm

i could live with one, if the one is able to load all i need...

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Mon Oct 23, 2006 6:01 pm

20 DSP's seems to be my magic number when using SFP for synths during live gigs. When I tried 2 or 3 15 DSP cards I was perplexed by the small amount of power that was multiplied. I seem to get better results by using multiple DAW's. I had a couple of extra P4 CPU's, mobo's, and RAM laying around, and also an extra Conroe CPU, and a total of seven cards. I tried many combinations and came to the conclusion that 3 15 DSP cards in the same box isn't as efficient as 3 DAW's ( which are dirt cheap now ) with 1 x 15 DSP card in each. This is my observation. For recording, and large projects, I'm sure that some people will disagree with me. But for my application, I like multiple DAW's. Even with just 2 15 DSP cards, i expected to see double the amount of verbs and synths. But this isn't the case, and I am cabled up to the max. I don't wish to bad rapp my beloved platform, but this is what works better for me. It reminds me of the old polyphony tests with VSTi's during the GHz races. Double the GHz, or even dual CPU's like the the AMD Tiger Tyan boxes I saw, and the most you would see was about 40 - 50%. Go figure.

katano · Post by **katano** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 2:54 am

i noticed the same. still think the main issue is the pci-bus architecture, which leads me again to: CREAMWARE, Give us some new hardware instead of the body of Ralf!!

stay tuned
Roman

hifiboom · Post by **hifiboom** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 4:15 am

scope4live wrote:20 DSP's seems to be my magic number when using SFP for synths during live gigs. When I tried 2 or 3 15 DSP cards I was perplexed by the small amount of power that was multiplied. I seem to get better results by using multiple DAW's. I had a couple of extra P4 CPU's, mobo's, and RAM laying around, and also an extra Conroe CPU, and a total of seven cards. I tried many combinations and came to the conclusion that 3 15 DSP cards in the same box isn't as efficient as 3 DAW's ( which are dirt cheap now ) with 1 x 15 DSP card in each. This is my observation. For recording, and large projects, I'm sure that some people will disagree with me. But for my application, I like multiple DAW's. Even with just 2 15 DSP cards, i expected to see double the amount of verbs and synths. But this isn't the case, and I am cabled up to the max. I don't wish to bad rapp my beloved platform, but this is what works better for me. It reminds me of the old polyphony tests with VSTi's during the GHz races. Double the GHz, or even dual CPU's like the the AMD Tiger Tyan boxes I saw, and the most you would see was about 40 - 50%. Go figure.

hehehe

interesting news....

now there will be a run on that Luna boards.... People will build server farms with Luna boards....

hehhee

just joking...

firubbi · Post by **firubbi** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:40 am

yes i'll also vote for new hardware.
external HW like waves but enormous power. I saw a dvd call charles dye (mix it like a record) he did the mix with protools and don’t know how much dsp he has….. maybe 40 tracks each with 4-5 plugin

valis · Post by **valis** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:07 am

firubbi, you do know that the waves boxes are basically pc's right? Personally I think that if waves had allowed some sort of fx-teleport or 'logic node' style processing that you can do on your OWN additional pc's it would have been better than trying to sell you overpriced 1u rackmount pc's that basically act as hardware dongles at the same time they give you a bit of a performance boost. Also keep in mind the PDC overhead added by using native processing externally like that.

soul-synthesis · Post by **soul-synthesis** » Tue Oct 24, 2006 5:35 pm

i also agree that distributing it via multiple daws is a good idea. 45dsp in one system can put a significant load your daw, in particular the PCI bus, and then u got possible issues with overheating etc.

but yes you can never have enough dsp. i have 18 at the moment and i'm still having dsp lust.

ChampionSound · Post by **ChampionSound** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:26 am

Seconded, I just got my third 6-DSP card so now I'm going from 12 DSP's to 18 DSP's , whoohoo!! I still have to install it though... I think that will be enough for my needs for this moment

erminardi · Post by **erminardi** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 2:50 am

valis wrote:firubbi, you do know that the waves boxes are basically pc's right? Personally I think that if waves had allowed some sort of fx-teleport or 'logic node' style processing that you can do on your OWN additional pc's it would have been better than trying to sell you overpriced 1u rackmount pc's that basically act as hardware dongles at the same time they give you a bit of a performance boost. Also keep in mind the PDC overhead added by using native processing externally like that.

I use 2 PCs with FXteleport.
Very stable and useful: one PC [16DSP] as Host (recording+FX) and one [17 DSP] as Synthesizer expander.
Latency is not an issue with modern P4/AMD64

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 3:43 pm

Brotha' Man Erminardi,
It sounds to me like you have contracted the deadly disease, known as MDS in medical circles. ( Multiple DAW Syndrome ). To which there is no cure. You can only relive it's symptoms by adding more DAW's and 3rd party SFP devices to an evergrowing DSP farm. This will temporarily alleviate your symptoms, but you will need to continue making purchases to stay healthy. I am going for DAW #3, and #4 next month, as I have incredibly devastating symptoms, and must go in for my therapy with Dr.GaryB. He does house visits like the old days. Only carrying a DSP card, and an A16, he can do wonders.

Strength THrough Superior SHARC's,

arela · Post by **arela** » Wed Oct 25, 2006 11:02 pm

hi emeraldi
I use FXTeleport too, but only for VST (Nuendo Surround ed + HALion mostly)
The server pc got this high class AC97 soundcard, witch, sorry to say, i don't use.
But how do you connect the soundcards together? adat?

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 1:36 pm

I just confirmed my suspicions about a multi-DAW scenario I'm about to embark in. This took two days for my lame ass to figure out, but I am getting better everyday with SFP related issues.
2 x 20 DSP's set-ups in 2 x DAW's total of DSP's = 40 DSP's
I ran 2 instances of Solaris w/ 8 voice polyphony,ProOne w/ 5 voices, B2003, Prodyssey w/ 8 voices, OBX-c Modular w/ 8 voices, and 2 x STM 1632's with all 4 AUX's running, and Gigastudio 3 Orchestra w/ 600+ voice polyphony, and 3 instances of GigaPulse Pro.
Then here is my " Super Synth DAW ",...not!
3 x 15 DSP's: Solaris w/ 8 voice,ProOne w/ 5 voice, B2003, ProWave Modular w/ 6 voices, Prodyssey w/ 6 voices, and STM 1632 w/ the same AUX FX running.

While the top 2 DAW's rose to 95% in the DSP meter, the " Super Synth DAW ", would not allow me to go past 85-90%!!

I love Scope and wish no harm to sales by posting this information. But to any one who wants more power for live performance, i.e. synths galore with no fear of global optimisation windows. I maintain that 1 x Type II Pro, and 1 x Type II Project, are more bang for the buck as far as polyphony and DSP usage is concerned.

In recording scenarios, I haven't tried such testing. I'm sure you all know how DSP hungry synths are. But I smile more than Ray Charles did when I play, thanks to this ungodly beautifull sounding rig. When people dance in front of my Sona's , and my Pro 3t, they obviously hear it too. As they too seem to smile and groove. When I die, let it be onstage.

Shroomz~> · Post by **Shroomz~>** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 2:02 pm

STM2448s are better mixers allround.

ARCADIOS · Post by **ARCADIOS** » Sat Oct 28, 2006 9:42 pm

scope4live it seems we have the same scope configuration but i got 1.
pro 14dsp+pulsar2, 6dsp=20.
i would like to know your cset ini and other info about your system cause i suppose since you play live with it it must be very stable.
i wonder though if it is a good idea to get another scope pro to have 34 dsps, cause i really feel that even if i do not work live with scope the feeling that i have with many synths with big polyphony makes my spontaniety fill the music.
of course i see that to play well with synths doing atmo pads or piano style rythm needs defenatelly 16 polyphony.

dawman · Post by **dawman** » Sun Oct 29, 2006 5:46 am

I am in Florida for one week for vacation again. Remind me when I return next week. GaryB does all of my DAW building, so he would be better at answering that question. He will be with me in three weeks in Las Vegas to build some more DAW's for my band.He is a God amongst men.

I will not sway you in my direction, as my projects all involve heavy polyphony of synths. Once I load Solaris w/ 8 voices the DSP's need to be observed from that point on. When loading an all Creamware project, i.e. Minimax, Pro-12, etc.I can load the shit up on all channels w/o the opti. wndw. ( I fuckin' hate that pop up ). 34 DSP's didn't seem to work as well as I wanted, and 45 DSP's was downright disappointing IMHO. But as I said, you might prefer the single DAW approach for recording. If you would PM me the day before Thanksgiving in November, GaryB will be sitting in front of multiple DAW's, and hardware synths and FX. This would be the perfect time to gather bits and peices of relevant info from this mad scientist as he will be overlooking the strip in Las Vegas once again.

I have a great patch which consists of two EP samples in Gigastudio, one is Celmo BlueWave Magic EP sampled by Chris Werner, the other is the FM Encyclopedia. I have Chris Werner when he has time to sample pads from Solaris 4.1 the next one is Meditating sine waves by Marco Polo or something like that. This is a beautiful patch, and I agree that 16 voice poly is a must for atmo pads, but Solaris at 16 voice would need it's own DAW. So sample as much as possible when using 16 voices. You won't notice the change, other than your DSP meter won't be at high levels.

Solaris w/ 8 voice polyphony is critical 4 my sound. It takes all priority over anything else. But the sampling of Mulholland Falls, Meditating Sinewaves, and other great sounding pre.'s is the way to go. That's why the SFP / GS3 Orchestra DAW works so well for me.