PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

erminardi wrote:new generation DSP has power of 140 old gen DSP
the Xite features 18 phisical (new) DSP inside
ergo: 140/18 = 7,7777
One new DSP has the power of 7,7 old DSP

I get that part just fine.

80-100 $ for PulsarII equivalent
160-200 $ fro a Scope Pro equivalent

They could KILL the global "2 channel audio card" market (M-Audio, Tascam, ESI, Roland, etc.)

And here, I don't get it. How do you manage to have a significantly lower price pr. DSP than in the Xite-1 ... and at the same time ignore, that part of the price has nothing to do with hardware - but is covering software development.

Ralf told me reagrding the "10 times the power" it just depends. It is round about 10 times or even higher. Some DSP power is used for controlling tasks (like the 15th DSP in the older 15 DSP cards which couldn't be used for devices). With the new software you are able to assign every device to a certain DSP via right mouseclick, choosing one of the 18. So a big device isn't distributed to two DSPs anymore which could happen on the old cards if I got it right. This could prevent some issues (like the DSP overflow messages, when you have to rearrange the distribution overall) providing much more stability when changing the project.
DSP power could even be more than 10 times Ralf mentioned. I think the distribution over all 18 DSPs has to be perfect for this. Of course the software does a good and fast job in distribution, as I have seen very fast loading times. Assigning a big device to a certain one of the very powerful DSPs is some kind of finetuning on top I think.

case + pci-e card are probably over $100 already. without counting software & dsp hardware..........

...They could KILL the global "2 channel audio card" market (M-Audio, Tascam, ESI, Roland, etc.)...

all they'd ever kill would be themselves - and that's about it
you cannot sell a thing for $100 if one single part on it costs you $20 already.

such a card would have to be available in stores worldwide, produced and pre-financed in at least mid 10k quantities.

a few of the afforementioned competitors could easily dry out SC's revenues by beating any price for any given time.

product support would break down completely and the product would earn a horrible reputation within a couple of weeks.

last but not least 90% of the customers would probably have a hard time telling the difference to one of the recent hi-quality onboard audio chipsets.

I really wouldn't overestimate the numeric specs.
The real performance usually depends on what is processed and how...
I assumed a basic factor of 10 as it's equal the floaring point performance ratio
it's also close to 5 times the clockrate and 2 times the data rate (w. SIMD).

That a real application will deliver a factor of 8 is perfectly reasonable imho.
Under any condition it's significantly more processing power than before and there's the important change that SFP 5 makes it easier to assign code to specific DSPs to avoid the 'micro delays'

cheers, Tom

also vid here
http://www.delamar.de/musikmesse-2008-s ... e-1-video/

widy wrote:also vid here
http://www.delamar.de/musikmesse-2008-s ... e-1-video/

Very interesting: Ralf Dressel also mentioned that Xite-1 could have even more than 10 times the power of Scope, up to 20 times he said!
Read here what Ralf Bach told me regarding this feature:
http://www.planetz.com/phpBB2/viewtopic ... 016#208016

Marvin wrote: With the new software you are able to assign every device to a certain DSP via right mouseclick, choosing one of the 18. So a big device isn't distributed to two DSPs anymore which could happen on the old cards if I got it right.

Can a device be created and used that requires more then one XITE-1 dsp worth of power? Or are all future devices within the 1 dsp limit?

more power more power more power more power

Sounddesigner wrote: Can a device be created and used that requires more then one XITE-1 dsp worth of power? Or are all future devices within the 1 dsp limit?

The answer is just YES. Imagine you want to recreate some sort of Kawai K 5000 additive synth enhancement.
That would for example mean a synth providing 16 voices each with 64 sinus oscillator each with its own pitch and level modulation sources from a 32 to 64 modulation matrix.
Then you can feed the result in some waveshaping and filter elements towards a 5.1 output amp with some effects built-in.
That could rock.

Anyway, I think this power also gives enough room for the last released VOID and COS.

And just keep in mind there IS one "plug-in" that requires more than one DSP: its name is the SOLARIS from John Bowen as I guess they just use the same hardware basis and as John Bowen also announced that his great synth would have 10 x the power of the 14/15 DSP scope Pro boards.

CheerZ

The Solaris is certainly a great synth. I never tried the plug-in, but the hardware version has more than the density you expect from such a machine. I know there have been a lot of work in fine tuning some parts. Also, the polyphony is just as it should be. The video doesn't make the strings any justice, whereas the other sounds give a good impression of what they are for real, the strings in the video lack a very large band of what makes them different. I've needed 9 oscillators to make an equivalent sound in multisynth factory presets, whereas the Solaris uses only 4 oscillators. The fact that it is @ 96khz by default (as i've read somwhere or in a past interview) plays it role too in the clarity of the sound.

HUROLURA wrote: And just keep in mind there IS one "plug-in" that requires more than one DSP: its name is the SOLARIS from John Bowen as I guess they just use the same hardware basis and as John Bowen also announced that his great synth would have 10 x the power of the 14/15 DSP scope Pro boards.

Hmmmm, VERY good point. Which goes a long way to explain why Xite-1 is the spec that it is (inherited part of the Solaris hardware design) and how SC were able to come up with Xite-1 product so quickly (I am still amazed!)

I just think the SonicCore grounder just had this Xite-1 hardware platform project started for a while now.
Then they must have had 2 opportunities good for them.
First and most important one was to be able to join force with John Bowen to launch the SOLARIS hardware project.
Then they had something to run on their new DSP platform. Second opportunity was the creamware financial problem that give them the opportunity to gain right on the scope technology.

This should be good for both John Bowen and SonicCore business as if they share common hardware pieces they can get them for a lower price thus allowing to achieve a smaller hardware cost thus allowing to offer more software with their hardware.

This just seems very promising though out of what I can afford but who knows I was really interested by the scope solution from the very first version but only had access to this type of solution when I bought my first Scope Home 4.0 two and a half years ago. Now my setup has got further by including a NOAH Ex, a Scope Pro SRB (and then the access to the SDK) and more rencently a set of 3/4 DSP boards acquired on ebay to set up a Mac OS 9 host test setup to enforce the team.

I was a bit disappointed to see a conflict rising between SonicCore and InDSP but as the InDSP/Use-audio offer for Scope plug-in has ended (or at least calm down), I hope things will get better now.
I think there is a place for the offer of both companies :
- Use-Audio providing low cost entry-level acces to taste the Scope Technology Sound (not that much competitor at that price !!!) with device which provide more than a klangbox for the same amount of money (low cost user interface and multiplugin capability). The only further enhancement I would clame for would be to get it provide possibilities to offer a 4 part multimode.
- SonicCore going on providing the much more flexibel full-featured Scope environnement available through the full range of Scope board now enhanced further with the Xite-1 (this last unit offering a solution to bring Scope on the road much easier than before)
... and this offer is even broaden by the SOLARIS which should be a success as it seems to provide (well the NOAH was a dream to me and I have one beside me now - just hope I just have to wait and spare !!!)

This year 2008 seems very promising !!!

CheerZ

HUROLURA wrote:

Sounddesigner wrote: Can a device be created and used that requires more then one XITE-1 dsp worth of power? Or are all future devices within the 1 dsp limit?

The answer is just YES.

Anyway, I think this power also gives enough room for the last released VOID and COS.

CheerZ

Great to hear! Thanks!

Of course, this doesn't have to mean anything at all, but in the delamar video, you can clearly see the Mod2 shell being used. I'd say a manufacturer would show off his latest stuff...
or its older, more stable version???

or the 100% compatibility (let's say 99.999999999 just in case)
the same sound(s)
and the zero learning curve ?

hehe, that's another way of looking at it, yes
But as an almost certain buyer of the new thing (together with laptop), and as a MacOS9 user who won't get a feel of the new v5, I would find it reassuring that SC find Mod3 stable and smooth running enough to show at the Messe... Maybe due to some bug fixes?

What was unstable about Mod3? I hardly had any problems with it...

Well, I wouldn't call myself an experienced guru modder, but there was a time I was starting to get into it, and the consensus back then was, that the Mod2 shell was far more 'stable', iirc, presets seemed to be the problem.

Yes, Mod III shell has some small bugs in it which make it more frustrating to use. I always stick to Mod2 shell.

Though it would be fantastic if they could update Mod III and fix the bugs with Scope v5!

I had an hour of work deleted because of this bug. Someone on this forum insisted to me that this is not a bug but the way it is intended to work and that it is not a problem so I should just shut up about it. Whatever! It's a bad bug that Creamware pretended didn't exist. As far as I can tell no effort was made to fix it.


Just to clear up a misunderstanding. Sonic Core supports Creamware not to be nice but because they bought the company.