PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Hi peoples,

Now that i have a new pc i7 16gig win7x64 ,
i have to buy a new soundcard or put in my 10-year old creamware pulsar II (6dsp) and upgrade to scope 5.1.

What i found in the support section on SlC is that you have to turn of lotsastuff in your bios like HT.
Since i'm not that technical i'm not keen on doing that at all, because some of that stuff i've never heard of and don't know what that will do to my performance level/how much degradation it causes and other things on my pc and (also don't know if you HAVE to do these or only if you're having trouble with audioclicks)

So question is, is it worth all the trouble in terms of how is my card comparing to all those other brands of modern (usb) audio cards and also the included plugins which of i can't find any decent reviews...

Is there someone who has experience with this and can help me out here please?

as far as quality goes, the Scope card is unbeatable by usb anything.

as to turning off the stuff in bios, you won't be degrading your computer's performance by turning that stuff off. except for hyperthreading(which you may not need to disable), all of the features being disabled are power management features. they make the computer use less power at idle, but they make problems in realtime, because they leave the cpu partially powered off until a program demands the resources. this makes clicks and pops in realtime because the system takes a fraction of a second to respond. turning off the power stepping options just provides full power to the cpu at all times. hyperthreading is something that makes very little difference to audio, as there's no way that a virtual core can do any work unless the real core does it.

the biggest thing, is that you may need to disable a usb controller or two(not the ports, the controller which shares duty with several other usb controllers, so you can live without one or two without even noticing) in order to get a free irq for the card. again, this is because the card is a true realtime device and it can't wait for another device to talk to the cpu first.

usb is for consumers, not quality. it's for manufacturers to be able to make cheap toys that can quickly be used, but not for doing any real work(although a good engineer can get great results with many of these devices).

if you actually use the Scope card's devices, it can actually SAVE your computer's resources.

thanx garyb for your clear answer

...but how will i know wich usb controller to disable and will the usbports automatically switch to the other controllers?

There are lots of usb AI's, can they be all bad?...some of them have "famous" mic pre-amps and other fine stuff

Neva22 wrote:So question is, is it worth all the trouble in terms of how is my card comparing to all those other brands of modern (usb) audio cards and also the included plugins which of i can't find any decent reviews...

Is there someone who has experience with this and can help me out here please?

You can find some plugin reviews in ScopeRise archive :

http://www.hitfoundry.com/archives/

Including some 3rd party and some of the ones bundled with 5.0 / 5.1 ( SL9000 upcoming this month, SC Ambience, RMX160 ) .

look, marketing is marketing.
real high end mic pres cost about $1000 a pair minimum. the FMR RNP is about that quality for $500-600, but it has a wall-wart and consumer gear quality construction to keep the price down. please don't tell me about high end mic pres in an interface that costs even $1000. it's not going to happen, no matter what the marketing department writes. then again, the built in pres on some of the nicer stuff available could still do good work in the right hands, just like the pres on those ULTRA-crappy Mackie mixers can.

usb=consumer stuff. that's not to say that it might not work well, it just is what it is. i'm also NOT saying to avoid usb stuff.

as to what to disable, usb or otherwise to get the card on it's own irq, after installing the card and driver, you can use system information(the hardware resources\conflict/sharing section) to tell if the card is sharing an irq with anything. if it is, you can
a: disable the offending device in the device manager(easily reenabled) or
b: move the card to another slot

another thing that helps make irqs available and less likely to be shared, is to turn off devices that definitely will not be used, for instance, serial or parallel ports.

yes, the ports can usualy use a couple of different controllers and the controllers monitor more than one port. sometimes, depending on the motherboard and which controller gets disabled, you may lose function on one or two ports, but most modern motherboards have a plethora of usb ports, so it's really no big deal.

if you do decide to install the Scope card, it's no big deal. just pm me when the time comes and i'll help you optimize your system for the best performance with the minimum of tweaks. actually, it's windows 7 eye candy that will really eat the most resources and waste the potential of your system the most. turning off aero and all the nice win7 or xp visual features is the best thing you can do for any computer audio workstation.

welcome on board, Neva22...
Gary explained it already, but I'll add a couple of pieces for an even more complete picture:
Intel tries to get 2 birds with one stone - energy efficiency (to reduce heat) when the CPU is idle (or close to idle) and powerboost when it's under heavy load.
This scheme is supposed to fit the needs of most average users - and is based on permanent powerswitching and shutting off 'unused' parts of the CPU.
As Gary mentioned you will have to shut that off (most likely) if you do real time processing, and that's what the talk was about, which you didn't understand. Don't worry - I didn't understand it either when first reading about it.

You could just turn off a number of USB ports in Bios and check the documentation of the board to which physical connectors they belong...
or simply plug in an USB memory stick and watch on which connectors it's recognized by the OS.
If less IRQ are allocated before Windoze boots, it's more likely that it has an IRQ free for the card.

Most USB audio devices use codecs, which are general designs to a/d d/a conversion on a single chip
(codec is an abreviation for encoder-decoder and means to encode analog signals by digitizing them plus decoding the digital data into an analog signal for playback sound)
Many are plain rubbish, some are decent, very few are really good...

regarding 'famous mic-preamps' ... well, that's just kidding folks who never had the opportunity to access a real good preamp.
(marketing blurb, you guessed it)
I have 2 pres that are considered a very good design (Telefunken V676a to be precise) and I can assure you that 'just' a proper powersupply improved their (already great) tone significantly.
Opposed to that USB devices are either supplied by noisy powerlines from the PC or cheapo wallwarts...

cheers, Tom
(Gary was faster...)

Just turn off the redundant crap, and Win7 will 'smoke' (and that's a good thing)

Greg

Thanxz guys for all ya helpfull information
i get it now!

Seems like i have 2 perform those steps anyway...
Some of u won't like it but i've orderded Focusrite pro 24 dsp for now
I'm lettin my card stick in my old pc, that way its easier to move all my projects to my new pc without any stress (the intergrated sound from the MO is broken)

Since i never had another soundcard i will find out the difference myself...
I think i will switchback in a couple of months and upgrade!

Thanxz again