PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

if i load vocodizer.... it works ok. BUT.... if want it to be saved in that project as it is, then when closing and opening scopes project again.. it does not work!!!

ok.. i see from others here in Z that it is a bug.


well, hopefully will be solved in the 5.1 version

Well it'll only get fixed if people report it to S|C.

did someone report it? I reported it again today, it still doesnt work, vocodizer is a nice plug though.

tomylee wrote:did someone report it? I reported it again today, it still doesnt work, vocodizer is a nice plug though.

Yes it is and I wanted it in a larger synth project on XITE-1 w/ SCOPE 5.1 32Bit on Win XP Pro SP3.
After founding out there are several preset and MIDI CC storage/recall issues, related to several old Creamware devices running in SCOPE 5.1, I tried to load Vocodizer into my project,- and ran out of SAT connections too, like w/ some other devices when loaded into a project showing less or ~50% load.

To me, it seems, waiting for SCOPE 6 and all devices being optimized, is the only way to get preset management, MIDI and DSP load/unload perfect.

Developement wise, it might be a hard time for S|C, maintaining devices for usage on old Creamware hardware and in legacy Creamware SCOPE environments AND improving SCOPE for XITE machines simultaneously AND come up w/ Mac OSX compatibility and all the other bells and whistles planned.

If we´d all ditch the old cards and buy XITE units,- I assume it would be much easier for ´em to concentrate on developement for the future,- at least w/ the limited manpower existing.

There´s nothing holding me back from using a 15DSP card w/ SCOPE 4 in a old machine,- as a standalone modular synth, sampler or mixer w/ some aus FX,- and running XITE-1 w/ a higher OS and SCOPE conneced to a 2nd faster machine then.

So, I hope, more users buy XITE boxes.

Bud

with limited manpower you dont focus on something like xcite, you rather focus on something like scope 5 to eradicate all of the bugs of 4.5 to regain trust in the userbase which creamware sadly had lost before. but SC didnt do that, instead they created something bigger than they could handle, now they have twice the work, half the time, nothing gets done, scope gets older and older...I just wonder who finances all such naive journeys...

scope 5 could have been stable, bugfree, new gui, new & FASTER workflow, just freaking up to date. The scope concept still rocks on 10 year old pci cards, they should have focussed on software, not hardware, if anything at all they shold have given the cards pci-e, and in a second step more powerful dsps...but not before getting the software straight and earning good money for it!

correct me if I am wrong, but as long as there is nothing wrong with scope pci cards hardwarewise, I think xcite is a strategic mistake.

Well there's lots of issues with PCI cards. First the infamous PCI overflow issue can never be resolved as that's the technology. Plus in people's minds PCI is a harder sell as they are seeing computers with fewer and fewer (if any) PCI ports so it is considered out of date and certainly not future-proof. Of course we all know PCI motherboards are actually still easy to source, but perception is a hard thing to overcome, people just don't want PCI cards anymore. Also with laptops being used more than ever where does the PCI slot even go?

So with nothing to sell where do you suggest SC make their money? Should they just keep updating an old system to keep the old users happy? They've already bought their systems over 12 years ago in some instances so where's SC's money coming from? Not from PCI sales.

tomylee wrote:with limited manpower you dont focus on something like xcite, you rather focus on something like scope 5 to eradicate all of the bugs of 4.5 to regain trust in the userbase which creamware sadly had lost before. but SC didnt do that, instead they created something bigger than they could handle, now they have twice the work, half the time, nothing gets done, scope gets older and older...I just wonder who finances all such naive journeys...

I cannot comment in depth on this assumptions, but talking about loss of userbase by Creamware and expecting a new founded company, S|C, has to compensate that on a 100% level is possibly not a fair expectation.
If you look at other companies, they go w/ the new products and leave the discontinued ones in the dust.

tomylee wrote: scope 5 could have been stable, bugfree, new gui, new & FASTER workflow, just freaking up to date.

Perhaps.
There must have been a reason to decide to leave the route w/ the old PCI cards.
In the past, a 6DSP or 14DSP card w/ old SHARCs was something powerfull and welcome for all the users of slow PC & MAC machines,- today it wouldn´t.
In the past, users were willing to buy more (expensive) cards to use ´em in one machine or across several machines,- today they won´t.

tomylee wrote: The scope concept still rocks on 10 year old pci cards,

Yep, but CARDS,- not 1 card.
Tell any potential customer, spending ~ 2.000.- bucks for a 14 DSP thingy, he cannot run Zarg Solaris w/ lots of polyphony, but "it rocks" ...

Thinking marketing,- they go and set up a fast PC, buy native plugins and a VST/AU host and run largest projects.
The argument of almost no latency and better sonic quality simply doesn´t count for the masses creating music @home.

So, something more powerfull and more mobile was necessary to introduce.
The XITE-1, as a piece of hardware, is excellent value and well made.
Yes, we run out of SAT connections much too early actually and cannot use much more than 50%DSP,- but what I´m able to load into a XITE-1 on that 50% DSP basis already, is beyond the capacities of a 2 or 3 PCI card configuration in one 4HU rackmount PC machine.

In fact, it´s only the optimizations I´m waiting for and I believe they do everything they can to deliver.

tomylee wrote: they should have focussed on software, not hardware, if anything at all they shold have given the cards pci-e, and in a second step more powerful dsps...but not before getting the software straight and earning good money for it!

Since the XITE- is existing, there is no choice because it´s their product and Creamware cards aren´t.
A new PCIe and DSP loaded card would have been a cool product for many, but there´s no guarantee if these had been sold to most of the users of old PCI/DSP cards,- practically same as w/ XITE.

The advantage of the XITE is, you can use it w/ your desktop AND a laptop machine !
Not all users of the SCOPE platform are studio gurus only.
Me, as a keyboardist and home studio user, arranger, composer etc., I think of using the hardware in my home w/ my desktop and on the road as a synth rack device w/ a laptop and not buying several different hardware units.
Users w/ focus on live sound environments like FOH mixing, live-recording and doing the editing & mixes of the live recording at home might have the same intention.

So, if S|C ever would have created a SCOPE PCIe card, revison 1 w/ the old SHARCs and later a revision 2 w/ new SHARCs, that would have been a total waste of hardware development IMO.

Regarding the software,- maybe it´s not possible to do that perfect for the old SHARCs and for the new ones,- who knows better than S|C themselves ?

tomylee wrote: correct me if I am wrong, but as long as there is nothing wrong with scope pci cards hardwarewise, I think xcite is a strategic mistake.

See above,- any user being satisfied w/ his old setup the way you are, won´t buy a new hardware product from S|C as long he doesn´t see any advantage from that.
Y´all will use your old card farms as long you find motherboards working w/ these, but when the last PCI slot disappears from modern motherboards, you´ll see there isn´t any value anymore in the card farm setup.

XITE actually deals w/ a HDMI connector (and PCIe on the other end) and there´s the XTDM bus.
In future and if PCIe will disappear eventually, w/ XITE, there will be ways to deal w/ other connection formats just by changing the cable and the interface-card, but using the HDMI connector,- and/or by using any new hardware on the XTDM bus.
I don´t see that´s a strategic mistake.

If SCOPE 6 appears, being optimized for preset management, MIDI, OSC, MADI as also for every included software instrument, FX and mixer device and ParseQ will become reality, no one will use the term "strategic mistake" anymore.

It´s only a matter of time and staying power.
Financing is a different story,- as always.
It´s also a fact, they only can sell enough XITE if the software environment and incl. devices work as expected, which means as good as any quality VST/AU plugin does,- functionality wise.
Latency and sound is better anyway.

Bud

well who do you think is gonna bother buying scope 6 then if sc didnt bother to solve the issues 4.5 had on xp with 5.1 on windows 7?

why would customers trust an unknown new player to do things right with a new hardware while the buggy outdated software basically remained the same if they dont proove it beforehand? Instead they just create a new expensive hardware unit - they could have prooven that they can clean up the 4.5 mess which would have created trust

that seems extreme.

there are multimillion dollar projects done with this buggy outdated software. this issue need a fix, but it's hardly a big problem.

you can still make presets, and a workaround has been given to you here: http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29070
also, there's this:
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31088

just fyi, S|C owes the pci card users NOTHING. however, they did do something that Creamware never did. they spent 2 1/2 years, many tens of thousands and more tens of thousands of dollars of Holger's personal money, so that win7 users could continue to use their pci cards. you can give the literally handfull of people at S|C a thank you for that, or i do, which is why i'm involved with the company.

i can count three Grammy winners and a member of the motion picture academy as my clients. they have all done award winning work with this "buggy" software, and they all paid for the priviledge of working with it too. yep, folks that are used to getting things for free, paid for Scope.

v5 only looks like v4. a lot had to be changed to make it work with win7. unfortunately, that was the bandaid that stopped the bleeding. v6 is how that "outdated" software comes up to date. by the way, the only thing "outdated" about Scope is the graphics elements. they aren't cross platform anymore, and they go all the way back to win 95/98. changing those elements is a big change to the system. still, the actual functional part of Scope is as ahead of the curve now as 15 years ago. there is no other hard/software that can do a fraction of what Scope does, even with it's few annoyances. yes, annoyances. as a whole, Scope is still one of the most stable applications in the music world. you wanna talk BUGS? talk to Cakewalk and Steinberg(i'm very hapy with Cubase, bugs and all). talk to Microsoft or Apple. all complex software has bugs, ALL of it. whether or not you meet those bugs depends on how you use it.

oh, and 4.5 really wasn't a mess. it had a few bugs, yes, but it worked very well. plenty of people still use it.

I'm getting at least the same stability / usability from Scope than I am from Cubase or Reason. not bad for S|C since they have the least resources out of any of those three companies.

And true Holger could have easily just stuck with his more lucrative ventures. Admire the mans spirit.

My jump from Scope 4.0 to 5.1 was bundled with so many new plugs I never had I thought it a $2000 upgrade rather than a $200 one.

dante wrote:I'm getting at least the same stability / usability from Scope than I am from Cubase or Reason.

How many of reasons synths and effects doesn't work at all? Are there a lot of defects in the Cubase plug-in suite? If there are any plugins that doesn't work in 64 bit, do the companies supply this information?

I think SC has more short-comings than we like to admit. Sure, its a fine product, but once they sell you 5.1, don't expect anything to be fixed. It's been years since v5 was released, yet they are not even able to provide a patch to reverse the stereo of a wave source (not to mention fixing wave drivers in general), or even make clear what works and what doesn't. I think this reality makes finding new investors hard, compared to if they showed some commitment to their product and actually started fixing stuff.

When you use several weeks just for generating a key i take it as a lack of commitment, not manpower. I understand that they are now working on a new key gen, so that is sort of a good sign. Sort of, because online keygen for Scope has been existing for several years.

none of that is true, except that there are things that don't work in 64bit.

it's not true that only S|C has software or plugins that don't work in 64bit. many major software producers have important products that are not 64bit ready. it sucks, but it's not a crime.
it's not true about the lack of commitment. sometimes failure is just failure. sometimes that's the only possible outcome. S|C has generally succeeded. if you don't want to use your Scope card, DON"T buy v5.1. if it's valuable to you, then by all means DO use it.

you have no idea what goes into the product, you only know what you want. there's no problem with that, it's your own business and it's well and good. however, since you don't know what goes into it, you have no business saying what could or could not be done, unless it's qualified as your opinion. a opinion can be on the mark or wildly inaccurate.

i've seen first hand what goes on, and i can tell you, because these people work harder than others, you have a miracle to be able to use this system. again, if it's not useful to you, that's ok. not everybody is for everything and vice versa. if you want it improved, that's great! if you think it's not awesomely great anyway, maybe it's not for you. again, all i can say is that for many real working musicians, engineers, composers and producers, not bedroom guys, this stuff is freaking cool and it is the thing to use. Scope is something that other makers CAN'T do, it's not just that they won't do it. some would say shouldn't do, but again, that's fine, just leave it alone in that case.

it's really easy to sit on both cheeks and feel all knowing, but there's no one in the entire world who would've done better with the same matereial and circumstances. i say that knowing just a little bit of what actually goes on. again, i'm not saying that there aren't mistakes, missteps, accidents, things that one can just never quite get to. i'm just saying that it's absolutely untrue that those negatives are because S|C doesn't care, or is asleep at the wheel, or is just plain incompetent or crooked.

garyb wrote:that seems extreme.

there are multimillion dollar projects done with this buggy outdated software. this issue need a fix, but it's hardly a big problem.

you can still make presets, and a workaround has been given to you here: http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29070
also, there's this:
http://forums.planetz.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31088

Thx for the links, Gary and thx to DJMicron offering the fixed device !

And yes, that post above is extreme.
There are only very few devices in SCOPE introducing issues, but I can only talk from 32Bit Windows XP SP3, not Win 7 and 64Bit.

There are the STS Samplers and I think they have it on their list for SCOPE 6.
There´s the graphic bug in Minimax when switching octaves/footage in OSC #1
There is the Vocodizer bug which now got a workaround and a custom fixed device which I´m not able to test before thursday or friday.
I didn´t try to record w/ VDAT up to now, so better someone else comments on this if necessary.

All the other devices work for me the way I use ´em in SCOPE 5.1 32Bit and it´s all usable in a studio environment when some workarounds necessary don´t prevent from being creative.

In addition, all my 3rd party devices work, 4 ZARG synths which load presets slower than original Sonic Core devices and my only optional S|C device Prodyssey works too.

I´m able to create presets and to load these,- but if it comes to build large projects w/ as much as possible synth devices included, plus aux FX and a large mixer, a AD/DA connected for my hardware instruments running into this mixer, using XITE-1 as analog and digital signal splitter in addition, issues come up when the demand is "autostart"-project at machine bootup and fully working MIDI control once the project is up and running without any error messages.

If I have found a configuration working and SCOPE is up and running,- it runs ´til the cows come home.
There are NO crashes for me, never.

I beg for better MIDI CC-presets storage and recall (not preset patches for devices) without the necessity to control if there are MIDI CC entries missing and I hope this will be adressed in SCOPE 6.
I beg for SCOPE 6 will recognize 3rd party MIDI interfaces being connected to the PC machine in any way, USB or LTP and it will respond to MIDI controllers being connected directly to USB, offering more than 1 MIDI port,- all in all giving us more MIDI ports without the need using virtual MIDI cables in addition.

The ice on the cake would be a routine optimizing DSP load while loading devices into projects, maybe coming up w/ a message like "busy w/ optimizing DSP load and SAT connections" before running out of these. If done, you go ahead building your project until a final limit is reached.
I hope, I´ll be able to load some more devices incl. STS, VDAT and WAVE module and it probably helps loading more than 50-60% on a XITE-1.

Actually when loading devices, DSP meter shows greyed out DSPs you already loaded and assigned devices to, but if the project loads later or next day, these entries are gone,- possibly because DSP assignment changed then.
It would be great to have better visual info what went where after a recall of a project and SCOPE auto assignment done.
It would help loading and assigning more devices into a project later and at any time.

So, there´s nothing wrong w/ XITE hardware and there are some software issues (as always), some above is hope for optimizations and some is feature request for the live gigging extreme.

In the studio, SCOPE 5.1 and XITE-1 works.

Bud

one other point i'd like to clarify-

about the automated online keyfile gen being in existence "from long time", yes, Creamware did have such a system on their original website. all of that mechanism was scrapped by Creamware before the first insolvancy because it was insecure and the entire site was hacked. Sonic|Core NEVER inherited that system, which would be unusable anyway. setting such a system up is the equivalent of designing a new version of Scope. it's a huge job and it must be dome from scratch. it's just not possible to make it happen NOW with the snap of a finger. it's not a matter of being stupid or lazy or unconcerned.

it's not like work can just be done without making money either. both the company and the people in it must make money to survive. S|C does many jobs for other companies that Scope users wouldn't know about or care about that actually make money, unlike software for pci cards which just helps stave off the wolves that gather while that software is produced. still, the committment to Scope hasn't wavered and work goes on. that's a cause for celebration and thanks, not snide remarks, imo.

i can say unabashedly that i love Scope. these forums are for fanboys, John Cooper set them up as a fanboy from the start. it seems that the reason some post is to troll fanboys so that as trolls, they can feel the self righteousness well up from within. back at you, if that's the case.

garyb wrote:none of that is true, except that there are things that don't work in 64bit.

it's not true that only S|C has software or plugins that don't work in 64bit. many major software producers have important products that are not 64bit ready. it sucks, but it's not a crime.

I have never stated SC is the only company having 32-bit only plugins. What i am saying is most companies doesn't hide the fact that a lot of their plugins does not run in 64 bit, while specifically recommending W7 64bit for running their system. I still haven't seen a clarification on SC homepage as to what is working and what isn't working, even if they are very aware of the issue. Have there been an update for the wave source i am not aware of? It still plays stereo reversed here, so it can't be totally untrue.

However i am glad my claim that nothing will be fixed in 5.1 is untrue, and i am eagerly awaiting the update.

Most serious companies tries to fix their mistakes. Like for the ModIV-installer which was uploaded in 2009 is still not possible to install on a 64bit OS as it is provided on the ftp. Both You and SC is aware of this, still noone takes the 5 minute job of making it installable. Its not an unfixable failure. By the way, did they include the dll making the the tape echo not BSOD your pc yet? Or is it still only available "elsewhere"? If not, thats another 5 minute job not done.

Yes these are my opinions but they are still not lies. I would rather say it's my observations. But thank you for providing me with some wisdom i can use in my professional use when we deliver our next $200.000.000 vessel. "sometimes failure is just failure. sometimes that's the only possible outcome." I am sure we will have a bunch of new customers.


PS: I saw your last post just before this one was posted. If that troll remark was aimed at me, i am totally fine with it. I didn't expect you to come creeping along the floor crying "sorry".

well, i'm not making excuses for problems in the past, i'm only pointing out that there is no malfeasance. i have to accept criticism for failure when it's true, i don't resent a simple criticism.

actually, most of the computer business is failure, yet microsoft and Steinberg do quite a bit of business.

aimed at you? not necessarily.
aimed at an attitude? definitely.

there's no need to troll me or any other supporter of S|C. your observations are legitimate, if not always completely accurate, like the observation about the keygen server. i'll admit that i don't appreciate posts that are always in the negative. at some point, if one is that dissatisfied with a product, anyone who is not simply looking to stir trouble would move on to a place that was more suited to one's needs.

NTN, i don't know you personally. i don't really know the circumstance of your life or experience. i'm happy to be your internet friend, enemy, whatever you prefer. you typically post when you want to be sarcastic and dismissive, rarely when you want to just be friendly, or so it seems. if i misunderstand and have wronged you, then i really do apologize profusely, humbly and genuinely. otherwise, i'm just joining in on the fun.

I say lets do MORE of those 5 minute jobs that S|C never got round to doing, and leave them to the 5 month jobs.

In fact, I really don't mind if they take 5 years to make Scope 6. I'll be there in 2017 waiting to appreciate it having spent 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 still discovering things to do with this platform that I haven't done before, fossicking around, like a beggar on a beach of gold.

oh well...the only reason I´m complaining is because I cant get my multicard setup to work reliably right after the start. I either have to wait quite long before I get no more sync losses, or reboot & swap cards etc etc, the logic behind this is beyond me. SC supports those cards so they should take care of this, I know they won't/can't cause of lacking manpower and xcite...

so what will I do? limit scope to 1 card which seems to work fine, and work around the bugs, or ditch scope. I'll take reliabilty over features all the time, I would rather drive a 60hp vw beetle which is a workhorse rather than a 600hp maserati.

with realiability I mean not crashing when loading certain plugs, software is doing what you expect the software to do, working drivers, no bsod, and no freaking sync loss or lost connection messages!

didn't know about the 50% dsp issues with xcite, but if you pay close to 4k€ instead of 2k you expect it to load up 100% right? so I would not call xcite reliable in terms of "do what you expect the software to do" either. apart from that it is really close to consciously misleading behaviour if you dont point out thise things on the website of SC, new customers get kind of tricked into buying such stuff and then cant even tell the truth about it or they would loose their investment...

that's certainly a problem on your system. i have two multicard systems, that are absolutely reliable. one is used for live stage use. maybe there really is something wrong with one of those cards.

about the 50% thing, yes, you might expect 100%, but that's not how things work. it is possible to use almost 100% of dsp resounrces, it depends on what you load and how you load it. most people are about 60%, which is a buttload of devices and more than worth what is a little bit more than two 15 dsp cards. in fact it's about 6 15 dsp cards worth. it's a good value.

when devices get split between dsps, they may or may not work. also, there are a limited number of connections possible between dsps. ProTools is the same. in fact PT's traditional loading is much less dynamic than Scope's. Scope can retry and reshuffle the load(global optimisation). PT just says, "no". as i've said before, there are limits to every system. can this be improved upon? yes. that's part of v6, improving the load routines, making dsps loading more efficient. it's not as linear and simple as it appears. as Jimmy will attest, since he had the first XITE, it took several early revisions to get those routines acceptable. they work quite well now

again, just because there is confusion, S|C does NOT support the pci cards. in fact, they never made them, Creamware made all of them. they did sell off the remaing cards that were left from Creamware's demise. for a time, while parts still existed and Ralf Dressel was a regular, they did repair them. now, the cards are long discontinued and no parts exist at S|C. they are not supported. Sonic|Core DOES make software for those card owners who may want it, and i do my best to help people with their problems, but this is all in goodwill.

as the old stock ran out, S|C pondered, "shall we make pci cards? the pci slot is going, going gone.". it became clear almost immediately that S|C HAD to look to the future, and Holger and Juergen really wanted to make "the ultimate dsp hardware" for the Scope platform. at first, it wasn't clear that the software wouldn't be exactly the same for the old cards and the new pci-e hardware. it became clear quickly, that the XITE software wouldn't be the same as the software for the pci cards, and that even many devices would need to be optomised for the XITE environment to work properly. still, S|C made the pci version because they couldn't just ask people to throw away perfectly good cards, and because people wanted it.

if you think about it, it's really quite amazing that they made a hardware box from scratch that even Analog Devices engineeers thought to be impossible because that many dsps wouldn't function at all, with a pair of custom designed preamps and TWO versions of Scope. during this time, they also did OEM work for many high level clients so that they could keep the doors open. i think that they've done amazingly well. i understand people's expectations, but the fact remains that the product is awesome even with it's faults, asumming that your hardware is set up properly and is functioning correctly. or that's my story and i'm sticking with it.