Namm Show and Sonic-core

[petal]

Give people what they didn't know they wanted...

[braincell]

Yeah tell them what they want.

[Gordon Gekko]

I thought NostraDumbAss was a bit over the top, but to think about it, it suits your internet character pretty well

[garyb]

braincell, it's just that they paid attention when folks like you cackled, not that there was a survey. most of the changes came as a result of pzer's comments, although they listened to comments wherever the product was shown including Messe and this year's NAMM.

there's no clique here, just a couple of nice and fortunately for us, bright guys who are doing their best to take Scope to it's next 15 years. they did a very nice job with the first go around for all it's faults, and they're doing a good job with this. if you love Scope, XITE is a really great thing. as i understand it, it's a miracle that this much dsp power actually works at all. Analog Devices was impressed. Digidesign was impressed. I'm impressed. at any rate, even if one hates XITE, but still likes Scope, isn't it nice to know that the old cards are still supported and good? show me another computer part that is still supported 10 years later...

petal, i don't think that the current team can handle anything more on the plate, but yes, i agree, some word about progress is always nice and inspires confidence.

[siriusbliss]

One thing is for certain,
XITE-1 is an entire live FOH/Monitor enviroment.
I tried to explain this to Holger and Jurgen and I have to send them some screenshots of routing window projects w/ hardware attached.
They acted surprised when I explained the wireless headset mic/earpieces and external reverbs. They were more surprised when I told them about the 6 AUX Monitor/FOH mixer from DAS. So the mic pres being of a high quality were much appreciated.

If I were a Guitarist I would be in Hog Heaven with an XITE-1.
We have so many tools to use already from 3rd Party and SDK developers.
XITE-1 w/a laptop, 2 x powered monitors and additional mic pres would be amazing live and of course in a studio enviroment.

The most important thing to me is support, and I can only say when I spoke to the team and mentioned things I would like to see down the road I could tell by the looks on their " Honest " faces that it would be no problem. These guys are 100% on our side, and having this kind of power with their amount of programming knowledge, we are very fortunate.
I could care less about marketing and which old hardware console company signs on to " authorise " their designs. They make hardware, not software, and we have all of the talent right here in house, not to mention the 3rd party and SDK guys.

Yes, after meeting Holger and Jurgen personally, I was enthused by how sort of humble, personable, and knowledgable they were - very refreshing indeed.
And you can REALLY get the feeling that they have the weight of the world on their shoulders developing this thing.

And yeah, I'm a guitarist, and I think I'll be in hog-heaven soon

Greg

[siriusbliss]

It has all the good features of good marketing: proof that they are listening to user-requests,

Thomas

ROTFLMAO!

Good marketing? Who was asked? I didn't get the survey! They should of asked us what we want before they even began this monster project. Asking people what they want should include all customers not just a few ass kissing friends. I heard about this with the third party plugins, only their friends are accepted not anyone who wants to. Down with walled gardens!

Yeah, but what you want is what everybody else already has anyways IMO.

The market provides what it can within margin - otherwise we would all be developing our own open-system junk, and I do NOT have time, knowledge, or where-with-all to give a shit at this point.

what most companies are doing now is doing a lot of bundling and scaled-down packaging to cater to existing markets. V-machine being one example. The NI Maschine being another - more repackaging of the same old thing - and people think they're getting something different.

If I had my way, I'd be using many other technologies that just simply are not available, not yet developed, too expensive, or just too scary to even consider using anyways

So, no you didn't get a survey, but there WERE many threads back over a year ago where people posted their desires and wishes - even if it WAS only for good pres, a freakin' headphone jack, guitar jacks, whatever - all taken into consideration, including your 64-bit stuff.

And believe me, I've been doing hardware design for a long time, and I know better than to kiss SC's ass. I WILL support their endeavors, since I know what's at stake, rather than shoot them down for not coming up with yet one more little widget box or fukin' VST plugin.

NAMM was SWIMMING in yet more synths and plugins. It was nausiating. If I saw one more fargin' DJ widget I was going to puke. I went downstairs and played some amazing acoustic guitars just to get away from the din and blathering marketing spiel. All 3 major host demos (PT, Sonar, Cubase) were all touting their latest plugin (no matter how amazing) rather than showing off the updates to the host itself. (Which made the Magix booth right next door to SC stand out in the crowd for me, and became one of my favorite hangouts at the show).

It's all relative.

'For those with a hammer, the world looks like a nail'.


Greg

[braincell]

I don't want Sonic Core to be like all the other cards. I like it as it is. The Xite-1 is something totally different. I remember when Creamware had that $10,000 card or whatever it was. That was a stupid idea.

I'm sure live musicians just have tons of expendable money waiting for the Xite-1. We know how wealthy live musicians are.

Anyway you are right there are a lot of plugins. I think plugins are wonderful. Some of them have been made with a great deal of imagination and sound fantastic. Physical modeling can't do everything. Samples are a tremendous. You will never have physical modeling of a human voice sound real and do as many variations for instance. I disagree with Mike Metlay who thinks samples will soon be dead. Synthesizers are beautiful and interesting but they do not replace real sounds in my opinion. The STS series is weak.

[dawman]

Since this is a NAMM thread also, and there are acoustic instrument performers abound, I thought I'd share some pics of some really sweet sounding design builds of Acoustic stuff.
I was backstage with some Nashville buddies at the CMA awards, and was shocked at all of the ProTools rigs that 90% of the JoeBobs used so they could pretend they were singing and playing.
Allison Krause & Union Station however, demanded they play in front of the curtain, all natural, all live, and far away from the posers, and right in the face of the audience.
There's nothing more moving than real acoustic instruments and voices sometimes.

[braincell]

Yehaw! We's gonna have a hootenanny!

[pollux]

I don't want Sonic Core to be like all the other cards. I like it as it is.

Then keep your existing cards and stop whining and bashing them with nonsense b******t.. If you're happy with it, then why even bother to think about the XITE. People who need a car, and cannot afford a Ferrari, buy a Ford, but they don't spend countless hours bashing Ferrari and whining that the next-to-come model is way too expensive for them.

I'm sure live musicians just have tons of expendable money waiting for the Xite-1. We know how wealthy live musicians are.

The fact that YOU don't have enough money to buy an XITE does not imply that the target SC chose is wrong. They give their product a value, they chose their target, and one can be either in or out, period.
What makes YOU think that YOU are in any way representative of a vast majority of potential customers, and that the XITE, or any other SC product should be specifically targeted to YOU and tailored to suit YOUR and only YOUR needs in order to achieve any degree of success?

[Tau]

A few times, when contacting Ralf for support, I told him about my aim to have Scope in a 12v portable package and the ability to use it with my MacBook - which meant doing OSX drivers, or rewriting the Windows driver so that it had better performance with the Magma. When they announced the XITE, I wrote again, and asked for Z-Link to be implemented, to maintain A16U usability. I guess that I wasn't the only one to do this, but I did get a response regarding Z-Link and OSX drivers. My point is, even though nobody asked me, I spoke out, and they were listening. I believe they are also paying attention to the forums, at least every now and then, so I disagree that S|C is having an elitist approach to the development of the hardware. We should give them time to work this out first, enjoy the new Scope5 platform (available to all current users) and then maybe they can do a smaller portable unit. One step at a time.

The price of the XITE is not out of league with the rest of the DSP manufacturers, considering what it is and what it does. IMO, the high price tag is not so much to do with artificial discrimination between Pro and amateur users, but with the actual cost of re-design and manufacturing with hi-quality components.

That said, I tend to believe they would pay more attention to users who actually believe in the value of DSP solutions, and are willing to put it to good use, instead of throwing everything away for a Native platform. I'm willing to buy the XITE as a matter of economy, because I will be able to port my knowledge and tools to a more powerful platform, and gain portability and power-efficiency. This will beat any Magma+PCI Scope combination any day, and actually be a lot less expensive than that. So, I will have to sell some of my hardware, and maybe the PCI Scopes, but it will be worth it.

[siriusbliss]

I don't want Sonic Core to be like all the other cards. I like it as it is. The Xite-1 is something totally different. I remember when Creamware had that $10,000 card or whatever it was. That was a stupid idea.

I'm sure live musicians just have tons of expendable money waiting for the Xite-1. We know how wealthy live musicians are.

Anyway you are right there are a lot of plugins. I think plugins are wonderful. Some of them have been made with a great deal of imagination and sound fantastic. Physical modeling can't do everything. Samples are a tremendous. You will never have physical modeling of a human voice sound real and do as many variations for instance. I disagree with Mike Metlay who thinks samples will soon be dead. Synthesizers are beautiful and interesting but they do not replace real sounds in my opinion. The STS series is weak.

Yes, agreed - STS needs a major update at best.

We're already seeing a blending of samples and modeling (or remodeling) coming into the marketplace, and with high-res transient modeling etc. (or whatever) getting better, we may see a morphing of the two approaches soon enough. Sampling as we know it may go away, while another 'reverse convolution' or some such thing comes into play. Not sure.

Greg

[garyb]

one nice thing about the XITE is that the cable connecting to the computer can be 10 meters long! there a lot of money to be saved on a quiet pc right there, if the pc can be 10 meters away. it think they did the right thing with the box, and those who remember know i was opposed to an external box originally...

[Shroomz~>]

it think they did the right thing with the box, and those who remember know i was opposed to an external box originally...

I remember Gary. ... I also remember being amongst those supporting the external box concept, but I got a bit carried away with suggested I/O specs. ... Just as well SC weren't listening to me or it wouldn't just have been Braincell having kittens about the price tag. My box would have cost double what XITE-1 will.

Got to say, XITE definitely looks to be stunning value for money & like you said earlier, it's got the potential to be a 10yr + investment.

[siriusbliss]

Compare what you get with Xite to the Roland V-Studio (at close to $6K), except here you get to use YOUR host, and YOUR extraneous plugins (if you're still attached to VST stuff - hehe), and plug it into YOUR existing studio, etc.

I don't think the new Roland/Sonar and Yamaha/Cubase bundles entering the market will give you as much longevity and overall horsepower as Xite will.

Greg

[dawman]

Those companies do not listen to their users, but actually work with each other to slice up the pie evenly.
The more companies they gobble up, the less quality we get.
Yamaha/Steinberg also now own Syncrosoft.........hmmm.
Being a slave to M$ is bad enough, I can't imagine having these giant corporations pissing on my back and trying to tell me that it's raining.

Greg, your booth babes were hotter than mine,

[astroman]

I have a nice example, featuring Roland (no complaints tho as I bought it el cheapo at the bay)

the SP-808 can be turned into an SP-808ex or into an Edirol A6 by a simple midi file
the 808 versions fail (at least partly) with compact flash memory, while the A6 has full support for it
it's exactly the very same hardware...
which could be cured from it's annoying, constantly whining zip drive by a few firmware bytes sent via midi...
Does Roland support any of the afforementioned ? NO, NOTHING AT ALL
(I guess the process only works because someone modded the file's checksums)

how'd you feel if your $2k investment was prevented from doing what it was supposed to do by artificially inhibit access to current technology ?

cheers, Tom

[braincell]

Like I said, I am sure the Xite is good. I don't think that saying that everything they do is gold and not complaining about anything does them any good whatsover. I am not an ass kisser so get used to it. There is always room for improvement and technology is young so if you don't like my complaints then just shut the fuck up! My cards are good, I just need about twice the performance and half the latency. I don't need 30 times as much DSP or whatever the xite is and i surely don't need analog and ADAT etc.. because I have the A16... at the cost of $800 as I remember!

As for support... I miss Paul Tanti!

[Neutron]

one nice thing about the XITE is that the cable connecting to the computer can be 10 meters long! there a lot of money to be saved on a quiet pc right there, if the pc can be 10 meters away. it think they did the right thing with the box, and those who remember know i was opposed to an external box originally...

how much does the 10M cable cost though

[siriusbliss]

Like I said, I am sure the Xite is good. I don't think that saying that everything they do is gold and not complaining about anything does them any good whatsover. I am not an ass kisser so get used to it. There is always room for improvement and technology is young so if you don't like my complaints then just shut the fuck up! My cards are good, I just need about twice the performance and half the latency. I don't need 30 times as much DSP or whatever the xite is and i surely don't need analog and ADAT etc.. because I have the A16... at the cost of $800 as I remember!

As for support... I miss Paul Tanti!

So buy a second card - like an SRB or whatever - on the for sale forum. They're cheap.
Also try lowering your settings to reduce latency.
You're complaints are a bit premature, since you don't know where things are heading yet, so it's nonconstructive I believe to complain ahead of time

Greg