Status?

A place to talk about whatever Scope music/gear related stuff you want.

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the19thbear
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Status?

Post by the19thbear »

Hi. Some may remember me. I was a very active scope user from about 2000 to 2011.

I pop in from time to time to see if there is any progress on scope/sonic core.

I miss some aspects of scope (and some I happily don’t miss at all!). The good stuff: the routing! And all the real-time manipulation and midi control.

So what I the status? Still no scope 7? No Mac version? Has anyone talked to the company owners the past year or so, to get an update/roadmap? Is there a future for scope? I mean future development. Scope itself will survive as long as the hardware doesn’t break down of course.

I remember back on 2013 or so where there was a daw being developed, scope would be opened up for development etc. what happened with all of that? I know about the xite etc but it’s not a product for me.

Any general hints etc are most welcome.

Hope you are all doing well:)
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garyb
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Re: Status?

Post by garyb »

Scope 7 is out. v7.1 is pretty much ready, from what i hear.
no Mac version. it is not economically possible at this time.

the DAW failed as did v6. the developer working on those made a huge mess, set the company back years, and then walked away.
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dante
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Re: Status?

Post by dante »

the19thbear wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 2:15 pm So what I the status? Still no scope 7? No Mac version? Has anyone talked to the company owners the past year or so, to get an update/roadmap? Is there a future for scope? I mean future development. Scope itself will survive as long as the hardware doesn’t break down of course.

I remember back on 2013 or so where there was a daw being developed, scope would be opened up for development etc. what happened with all of that? I know about the xite etc but it’s not a product for me.

Any general hints etc are most welcome.

Hope you are all doing well:)
ParseQ (DSP driven DAW) failed. Scope 7 is out and works well as an x64 pathway. If you want a MAC DSP Powered DAW, UAD have Luna with Neve summing. Ill get into that if/when there's a Windows version (I have Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt capability)

Scope is king of classic synths and modular and is open for development. EG get into Ocean Swift - I just got their OS20 which is great coz its the modular synth for those that don't want to build one from scratch. Spelrium makes heaps of free stuff too.
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Re: Status?

Post by dawman »

So until when ever I get to keep having the luxury of using the finest Automated mixing solution ever made.

My Physis K4 was discontinued so I bought a 2nd unit for 1800 USD, and spare parts just to play it safe.
Haven’t done that with the XITE-1 but if there’s an update coming I will pre pay for another.

Life without Scope or my K4 would be unacceptable.
So I will make it acceptable.

I fear change...

Garth from Wayne’s World.
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

Ok. Dang. I would love to find an old scope card and fire up scope again, but no mac=no go for me.
Might write SC an email and hear whats up.
I guess the only email on their site is support@soniccore.de
Wont that lead to you Garyb?

:)
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

Ok. Just got off the phone. Called their offices. I live in Denmark which is just "on top" of Germany.

The polite guy I talked to said that there will be no support for mac with scope (at least he said that it didnt really make sense).
Bohoooo:(

But I have got some very exiting news!
They are working on a new product. He said that he hoped they would release it within a year or two.
It probably would not be directly compatible with scope, but would be built around the same flexible architecture. Would allow 3rd party developers for plugins etc. The old dsp plugins should generally be compatible, but would need conversion etc.
This unit would be mac compatible.

This was all him just speaking of the top of his head, so expect things to be very different in the end, but it was super nice to hear!
I got all nostalgic talking to a guy from SonicCore. I want to work there now:)

I'm pretty beefed up now! I could go back to Soniccore eventually.
Was great to talk to him.
Weird how a piece of hardware or software can hold so much emotional power. It's like listening to old records I listened to in my youth. Somehow a part of my life is tied up in the scope platform. I'm weird!

Have a great day.
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yayajohn
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Re: Status?

Post by yayajohn »

That is exciting news! Thanks.
dawman
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Re: Status?

Post by dawman »

Wow.
I would love to support these guys again in whatever they do.
Even bought a Ferrofish to support old Scope engineers, plus it’s a great converter too.

Thanks for calling Bear, really made my day too.
I know more Scope products won’t happen, but my love for everything they made, plus the money I made really makes me proud to have been part of the community.

Looking forward to sending a hologram of myself to a gig while I WiFi songs from the bar...
A virtual band but real booze and babes.

Ankyu
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dante
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Re: Status?

Post by dante »

the19thbear wrote: Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:40 pm Ok. Dang. I would love to find an old scope card and fire up scope again, but no mac=no go for me.
Bootcamp ?

https://www.scopeusers.com/ScopeRise/is ... c_mast.htm
https://www.scopeusers.com/ScopeRise/is ... s_mast.htm
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

No bootcamp. I want scope running on mac OS:) But thanks
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ronnie
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Re: Status?

Post by ronnie »

I have 3 PCI cards from 2003, They run on a $198 refurb HP desktop. Windows 7 64, Scope 5.1. It is on 24X7X365. Runs rugged, tight and rarely a glitch. I run my DAW on a separate custom laptop with 8.1, Intel i7 @ 3320 GHz, 32 GB RAM and SSDs connected via ADAT. One day I will probably get an XITE when I can afford it. In any case, I will likely never get a Mac.
"I’ve come to the conclusion that synths are like potatoes, they’re no good raw—you’ve got to cook ‘em, and I cooked these sounds for months before I got them to the point where they sounded musical to me." Lyle Mays
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Spindrift
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Re: Status?

Post by Spindrift »

Always seemed curious with users insisting running OSX for their DAW. Ok that there are some apps you might like on OSX, and you might think finder is superior and window management is better, so for everyday use I can understand. But personally I couldn't care less about that when working with a DAW, and typically only have Scope and DAW running on my DAW machine. Then I have programming machine, media machine and so forth. If Bitwig and Scope would run better on another OS I would switch in a heartbeat.

Of course it is up to everyone what they prioritize, I just never understood what functionality is so important in one OS over another nowadays that people get hung up on the OS itself instead of what they can run on their machine. I used OS9, OSX, XP, Win7, Win 10, Android, iOS and would be happy to switch to any of them for my DAW as long as it supported the hardware and software I need. However OSX not only lacks a replacement for scope as well as other utilities I use like AutoHotKey, but from the benchmarks I have seen with for example Ableton on the same hardware it actually performs worse.

In the end the question is if a computer with windows and scope is worse studio machine than a computer with OSX and without Scope. If you think the windows management or finder is so great for your music productivity that it outweighs having Scope, then the decision to not use bootcamp make total sense. But it is surprising when someone is happy to spend a few $1000 on hardware that they think is less valuable than what one OS provides over another.

Great news that they are working on a new product, and of course OSX support is in demand. But with it being such a developer hostile platform it is IMO a shame that S|C even bother since it will cost a lot of developer time, and not only for initial implementations, but Apple always screws up old API's expecting developers to constantly change their codebase.

Hopefully it works out and they sell a bunch of extra units for mac users so they get money to employ more developers. But personally I see it as a big plus if a product doesn't have mac support since I know how much extra that can cost to develop, and I don't have to see that reflected in the pricetag or as lack of updates due to slowed down development.

Not an attack on you the19thbear, and if you prefer OSX it is fair that you nag for support, but I work as a programmer myself and just spent this whole week working with updates for our products since Apple broke a bunch of things in WebAudio with iOS 14. So I feel I'm allowed to vent my hate for Apples lousy platforms!
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valis
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Re: Status?

Post by valis »

I use MacOS for audio, among other things. And Win...and Scope runs on its own PC too. Life is easy, we have so many tools available!
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

I have my own reasons to want to run macOS for audio (hackintosh). Each to his own:)

I’m just glad that soniccore are working on something new.
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valis
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Re: Status?

Post by valis »

Again, I run Logic on Macs for my primary DAW (and Ableton on Mac). I have too many Mac plugins to abandon ship. I also have too much windows software, including non-audio stuff, to just use one platform. Scope works great on a secondary machine alongside my Mac, and there's very little benefit to wanting it to be all-in-one.

In fact due to some of the tuning issues over the years, this is actually imho superior as each machine can be tuned to its specific usage. This was my practice in the 90's and early 00's out of sheer necessity, and while machines are much more powerful and easier to maintain/configure now than ever before, it still remains a solid practice in terms of productivity. The only real tradeoff is the time spent maintaining more than one machine.
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

What about pcie/pci?
any adapters that actually work with scope cards?
Any real world testers here on planetz?

Thanks
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dante
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Re: Status?

Post by dante »

Some work but with limits on the number of cards and overall bandwidth. Cheaper and easier to get a HP or equivalent with PCI slots … per Ronnie. Gary ?
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valis
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Re: Status?

Post by valis »

Magma works, as far as I have seen here on the forums. Others are not as reliable, and just like lesser chipsets with Scope your experience may be not so ideal.

However as Scope doesn't even run on modern MacOS, that's not going to help with a Macintosh.

The same flexibility in routing signals that Scope offers can be found with other solutions like RME, MOTU, Metric Halo and so on. And Scope connected via ADAT, Midi, Analog I/O is only a few samples more 'latent' than inside the same machine for all the audio, and Midi timing is actually tighter for me this way than Scope native but that's because the host PC for Scope isn't doing much besides ONLY scope (Midi via hardware i/o to my Mac, versus midi sequencer modules which are async and also require host CPU time in addition to the shuffling of PCI data and your DAW's operation when it's on the same PC as scope)).
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the19thbear
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Re: Status?

Post by the19thbear »

Been toying with the idea now, of getting a very small pc with just 1 pci a lot. Getting a Dirt cheap pulsar 1 card and fitting that in there.
Pulsar 1s has high latency but I won’t be using this as a sound card per se. (no ASIO). So latency will not be an issue.

Will be routing it’s outputs via adat or analog out to my RME card instead.

Will primarily be using this for synths and real-time fx.

Do you know of a very small form factor pc with a pci slot? Can be super old. It only needs to run Windows 10 or xp and scope. Nothing more.

Maybe scope 7. But also just maybe an old version instead, running on xp or whatever.

Don’t know if I will be doing this for real, but it definitely has me thinking:)

The old pulsar 1 cards supports the latest scope version, right?

Thanks:)
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garyb
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Re: Status?

Post by garyb »

an old hp xw4400 or 4600 is probably the best bang for the buck. cheap on ebay, just be sure it has 8gb of ram if you are using 64bit os, or 4gb for a 32bit os.

sure, a Pulsar1 will use v7.

adapters suck if PCI bandwidth matters.
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