PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi all,

I have the following computer configuration:

CPU Athlon 2700+
MSI Motherboard
1GB DDR RAM
2x200 Go SATA HDD with RAID1 (400Go)
1 ATI Radeon 9600 series video card
1 Scope Professional 15 DSP audio card
1 Firewire TC Electronic Konnekt 24d audio card
(Firewire, RAID and Gigabit controllers included in mainboard)

I have the following problem:
I can't setup ULLI to go under 13ms at 44.1KHz. I have the message:
"Your hardware does not support this latency. The min. latency of your hardware is 13 msec at 44.1 Khz"

Would it possible that a Scope pro board couldn't function with lower latencies than 13ms and 44.1?? Anybody did hear about series of Pro cards acting like that? I'm asking as I bought it 2nd hand on eBay during August 2007 but been sent back to sonicCore for a repair during september...

If anybody could tell me if it's a possibility or not, than a Scope Professionnal board couldn't have lower latency than 44.1 - 13ms...

Denis

It seems to be a Scope Pro of the first generation. These cards have no lower latency as 13 ms on 44.1 kHz.
When you buy a 3-DSP-card of the second generation and declare it to your 1st card in the cset.ini, you should get lower latencies - down to 3 ms at 44,1 kHz.

Greetz, Thomas

Hello,

sorry for the late answer, I just received keys for scope 4.5 + mIII
Thanks, that's what I thought and it would be confirmed because it's been produced in 1999. Guess it was still ancient gen. Scope Pro boards.

I will have it that way anyhow

I've been used to a certain wealth and it could be hard for me not to get back to 2nd gen world again

Do you also mean it for samplerate? Would be the last thing (and flexor in a cpl of months and solaris and... ) I would ask from da beast.

Thanks for this info Stardust!
No reason not to proceed to purchase of a complementary one (Home or Project/Pulsar II) then... But for money

well, I also have a few first generation cards.
I don't mind the latency as I monitor before the tracks and there's no time critical VST stuff for me.
But my A100 and P100 reverbs suffer from the lower PCI bandwidth, cant' use them together (the Ambient is the heavyweight).
My PCI bandwidth test result is 5 Masterverbs - a 2nd generation card would increase this to 10.
I'd prefer a Scope Project, since the 3 DSP cards have been reported to be more 'difficult' in some setups, for whatever reason.

cheers, Tom

Thank you Astroman, for this.
The MV test did show some limitations with PCI bandwith use for 1st gen cards then... A shame I didn't ask the guy who sold it to me before. Let's see what can be done to soon correct the shoot if possible. Anybody would know if I can ask SonicCore to transfer some keys to another card?

iSiStOy wrote:Anybody would know if I can ask SonicCore to transfer some keys to another card?

they do. it's not for free, though, and could be a risk to the card you want to transfer the keys from (but afaik none that can't be corrected by sending in the card). go to the shop, buy a multiple plugin transfer and contact ralf after the payment is done for the details.

-greetings, markus-

Thank you Kylie.

God of musicians, give me the strengh (or at least the money)...
I will to wait a bit I think...

Once again, thanks to all here for your precious infos

Denis

iSiStOy wrote:Thank you Astroman, for this.
The MV test did show some limitations with PCI bandwith use for 1st gen cards then...

you're welcome
there is indeed a limitation, but as long as you don't own the STW A100 reverb it's not such a big deal - or do you use more than 5 different hardware reverbs on a track ?

Those Masterverbs don't sound bad at all - but as 'stock devices' they kind of suffer from an 'avarage because it didn't cost an arm and a leg...' imgage
And one high class plate reverb plus 2 Masterverbs is also likely to run.

better check it out and get familiar with the system before placing your next steps... it's all solvable

cheers, Tom

isn't there something to do in the pci latency timer of the motherboard's biosc ?

I have a board1 (good for developpers, to ensure board1/2 cross-compatibility
i don't really have problems loading anything (for STW reverb i use the Classic "light" (not the lightest, the one in the "middle", which already sounds very good and smooth and different from the masterverb). I played with a board2 recently, and was not sure about a big difference, but may be it was due to motherboard/latency timer settings. not sure (there is something in the manual or the "read me" files: check this may be it is helpful, as it relates to the pci bandwith).

no, the PCI latency timer just sets the maximum unit a device can hog the bus (in my humble understanding)
since I have only 1st generation cards I've tweaked it up and down various chipsets, Intel 815 leading with 5 (active and connected) Masterverbs.
Chipset and interrupt configuration had a larger influence than the latency timer, but actually it concerns only a very small number of systems.

my rule of thumb from the Masterverb test thread

1st generation card (ULLI not possible below 10 ms) is 100%
a (additional) 2nd generation card will double the PCI performance
2nd generation only cards would add another 30% improvement

cheers, Tom

Hello,

My PCI latency timer is 32 at the moment and It doesn't have a particular impact on the sound (happily no cracks or anything). I should be more careful about BIOS IRQ settings as I have seen the Scope is sharing its with the Firewire 1394 controller. Concerning chipset, it could also be a problem with lot of DSP load, as it is VIA technology for a quite "old" AMD socket.

Does anybody know reasons (in terms of PCI bandwith consumption) why the test has been done with MV and not some other plugs?

Regarding reverbs, I must say that my little setup may be efficient enough: TC Electronic Konnekt Fabrik R in combination with an E-mu E4 RFX 32 card.
If I need some more, I think the STW will be the ones for the job but I have to buy Flexor first!!!

Anyway, my thanks to you again because I didn't know 1st gen. Pro boards were limited and less did I know that STDM combining 1st gen and 2nd gen boards could help lowering latency to match the 2nd gen specs

cheers

astroman wrote:no, the PCI latency timer just sets the maximum unit a device can hog the bus (in my humble understanding)

Actually I believe the BIOS level PCI latency setting only gives a default value for a device to initialize to when the BIOS starts up the attached peripherals. I don't know if there's a hardware method to override this (perhaps it requires a built in bios on the device as with scsi?).

When an OS initializes the hardware on loading up I believe most things can be and often are overridden by the OS's drivers for a given device (ie, if you set your BIOS to default to 64 the latest nvidia/ati drivers will still override that on booting Xp/Vista and set the damn thing to 248 or so in the interests of gaming).

That's precisely what I've seen around here a couple of days ago:
http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic ... doubledawg
I tried the soft at mine but it could only find my ATI graphic during its scan but not the SC nor the SCSI one. Quite strange. I changed its latency to 96 as adviced on the soft's website.
That made clear to me that bios pci latency timer is a "default" value that apply to "compliant" cards and manufacturers and that can be "overwritten" (probably within the driver) individually by some of our devices.

Denis

Yep. This one is now known to me as is.
Lots of memories from my past Creamware user experiences are coming back and more quickly than I thought but what a brutal way back into tweaking and stuff!!! I can't say I don't like that though
5 days I got it mounted already and 2 days with Flexor 3 installed: just THE hugest, enormous sounding creation tool I've ever had on computer (I don't talk about machines like the E4 sampler, as it's a colossal PITA... to manage, without talking of the interface bugs)!
One prob. remaining: I couldn''t manage to install the Scope with its single, non-shared IRQ assigned. Some of the slots are physically inaccessible to it on the MoBo and I have a lot of onboard chips wanting to be part of the game...
And I definitively won't saw it to fit in the PCI 3 slot

I didn't mention it but know I can hear it:

I heard some crackles in the sound when playing an MP3 song on Wave Source module, when the project contains some reverb FX like the Ambience one and some Modular modules.
As long as it doesn't alter ASIO and Scope devices sounds, I will handle that with projects but do anybody have hints to share about this? I guess it's also related to PCI bandwith mngt of 1st gen. card

removed.

Sorry, chaps. Wrong topic.

ns