PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Double post by accident

Hi,

I managed to get Creamware Scope 4.5 working in Windows Vista. (The performance is very bad, however)
Things to do:

1. Set compatability mode to Windows XP SP2 (sfp.exe)
2. Run as "Administrator" (sfp.exe)
3. Change the path from "C:/SFP45/app/bin/sfp.exe -s" to "C:\SFP45\app\bin\sfp.exe -s" (automatic startup)

However, the ASIO ports do not seem to work in Vista.

Vista completely changes the driver model and so your WMD drivers running in 'compatibility' mode still don't have the same low level access they once had. ASIO isn't just up to Creamware either, it's also something steinberg will need to help address since they control the ASIO spec.

Incidentally in my previous replies I really didn't mean to come off as overly rude, my lighthearted sarcasm is mostly due to the fact that I recall the days of WinXP coming out (well after win2k had been stable) and musicians here were still reticent to give up running win98 'since it aint broke'. I'm also used to commercial studios sticking with a solid machine for several years before bothering to do ANY sort of changes, since downtime is such a productivity killer.


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Certainly best case scenario would be a new system and updates for the current install base, but having PCIe cards that run at 333mhz & co-exist with your current PCI cards and Scope 5.0 running all of it seems a rather complicated mess for a small company with only a handful of NEW developers who weren't involved in the longterm development of the project. Having been around software development a bit myself, I know that the first reaction of any developer when tackling a new system is going to be to sidestep as much of the legacy crap as possible. Consider the graphical performance of the current Scope (which still runs far slower than most other audio software UI's even with modern cpu's), or the phase compensation issues that exist in the current system, the difficulties that 3rd party developers have encountered creating their own atoms, and there are probably numerous other 'gotchas' that only the internal Creamware developers are aware of. Those things will most likely REMAIN if they simply patch the current codebase.

And I don't want to dash the hopes for wonderful new toys & features & drivers for an existing customerbase, but given Creamware's limited resources these days I think you guys are counting on an awful lot & setting yourself up for a lot of complaining when it doesn't turn out that way. Having a new system to migrate to would mean that our current systems become orphaned & run as standalone machines (assuming you kept yours) and while this doesn't fit the typical upgrade path that the average pc user has become used to, I think that even HAVING a new system would speak wonders for Creamware's future viability. Keep in mind that Digidesign finally broke compatibility themselves to achieve modern performance levels & full PDC in their systems, and even Powercore doesn't support all of their software on their older cards (which came out after Creamware's IIRC).

Now it's possible that when a new system launches there's either an easy upgrade path for existing customers with some sort of trade-in or credit for existing devices. It's common knowledge that there are newer faster SHARC chips which are fully compatible with existing code and that the newer codebase from A.D. also supports built in PDC (iirc). So having your current devices available on your new card(s) isn't unimaginable. Heck perhaps they'll even come through with everything you've dreamt of and that which i'm reticent to, in that case my lowered expectations will only mean that I'll wind up pleasantly surprised.

valis wrote: ... and even Powercore doesn't support all of their software on their older cards (which came out after Creamware's IIRC).

that is partially true, from what I've read. the problem is, that the newer pcore software is not officially supported on the mk1 cards (although it runs fine). most plugins are supposed to run, but not in demo mode, since that requires more sram on the dsps (to store the countdown information for the demo limit in ).
this is just a slight design upgrade, but does prevent things already.

I'm sure there will be no coexistence of (the imaginary) new cards and your existing ones, since you will still have to connect the cards via stdm for running them in sync. I can hardly imagine that you can cluster the new and old sharcs, unless you are able to underclock the new ones...

-greetings, markus-

the future, like it or not.

good gear is good gear. a future form of scope is likely for the same reason as minimoogs, U67s and 1176s are still sought out and reproduced. these algos are already done and the new chips use the same code, but more efficiently. there's no reason not to move forward with scope unless those who own it decide they just don't want it to exist or can't afford to pay for production, advertising or distribution.

my guess is that there are more than one source for high level coders and that everything's a secret until finished. if i'm wrong, hand wringing wouldn't have helped anyway.

future is there already, at least here in my little studio :
Found a 6 DSP SRB on Planetz, ordered the Creamware ADAT expansion board to hook it at, got my RME ADAT expansion board from ebay today, have already OSX working on my main mac, so the future can start
I just have to buy a new system backup battery for my old mac, as the voltage is low already
I think I even don't need to buy the fan silencing set for the G4 'windtunnel', as the fans never start to blow at full speed, even not at startup since I installed the latest firmware update.
I just hope the added noise from the old mac isn't too loud, otherwise I have to build a box for it.
cheers

garyb wrote:the future, like it or not.

good gear is good gear. a future form of scope is likely for the same reason as minimoogs, U67s and 1176s are still sought out and reproduced. these algos are already done and the new chips use the same code, but more efficiently. there's no reason not to move forward with scope unless those who own it decide they just don't want it to exist or can't afford to pay for production, advertising or distribution.

my guess is that there are more than one source for high level coders and that everything's a secret until finished. if i'm wrong, hand wringing wouldn't have helped anyway.

I see no reason to reinvent the wheel. UAD-1 PCI cards have 64 bit drivers. RME PCI cards have 64 bit drivers (beta last I looked, but functioning extremely well with 32k buffers possible) No reason why this couldn't be done for Scope PCI cards. If Creamware wants to introduce a PCIe card as well, then more power to them. I'd certainly look into buying one because the PCIe bus has a much bigger pipe so extremes of disgustingly wretched excess should be possible It's not that hard to integrate PCI and PCIe. It's just a different form factor for the blade. There is a PCIe>PCI host adapter for certain Magma host cards already. I don't see Creamware coming out with one of these, but someone may start producing a universal version. If Magma can do it, perhaps it's possible to do in a more general way. UAD-1 PCI and PCIe cards can coexist in the same system as long as the card limit that is mandated solely by the driver isn't exceeded. I sorta know a few folks over there and I talked to them about a week ago. They've got something up their sleeve though they wouldn't say what. I anticipate that it will be a way to boost their DSP capabilities so that single plugin won't take over 70% of a DSP card like the Neve 33609. A Scope PCI and PCIe card could, in theory, use the same driver.but the driver development is what's important. The PCIe card will likely allow the Scope system to use more bandwidth so it could be a good thing for Creamware to look into and not a huge cost situation to manufacture. I'd hate to have to go back to the RME hardware. I much prefer the Scope environment, but I'm not selling my HDSP hardware. It's boxed and ready to ship out, but I'm going to hold on to it for the next year and if I have to go back to it due to lack of driver development by Creamware, then that will definitely happen.

You have to take in consideration, that there must be an sdk and drivers for programming the SHARK processors under VISTA. If there is no sdk or drivers, creamware can not develop any VISTA SFP.

And if the SHARKs are not up to date there will be no programming environment for the SHARKs.

Have a nice day
Marcus

just read your other post in anouncements...
sorry to come over a bit harsh, but your statement above is pure nonsense

the SFP interface to the OS, i.e filesystem and memory, are only a tiny small part at the 'peripheral' of DSP programming.
The latter is a virtualized system anyway and as such can be executed from whatever OS, it's in fact completely encapsulated.
The DSP part anyway, the GUI in a cross-platform (read abstract) lib.

to write a driver for the Vista sh*t is a no-brainer in technical terms (for someone who knows the card's internal operation), yet it's existence wouldn't sell one extra piece of hardware - and that's why resources are focussed on more profitable parts of the business.

cheers, Tom

It's not only a driver-problem. New hardware-architecture needs to get optimized programming. Before there only was a PC with one processor sometimes hyperthreading, what brought difficulties to the SFP.

Today more and more DAWs are multiprocessor-driven. Core Duo, Core 2 Duo, Quadcore. It is not only applying the multithreading library from the intel-compiler. It has to be manually optimized. Processes have to be synchronized.

May be, that SFP is a virtual Soundbox encapsulated like a virtual pc but the interface and programming has to be developed for that new tasks (synchronized multithreading processes).

If every fool could do this job, the SFP were Version 12.3.

cheers
Marcus

if you quote you might want to keep the context...
I didn't write 'any fool...' but that it is not a particular demanding task for someone who knows about the card's internals.

This includes the fact that the person in question does have a certain qualification and it also implies that this process needs it's regular amount of time...
in other words: money
and who runs Vista for professional audio - now ?
... or who will sack his ProTools rig because there's a CWA 64bit driver - now ?

you waffle about multiprocessing as if it were a X86 (OS) feature - LOL -
if you want to see mp at it's best, run a 10 year old Creamware system and it will do exactly what your 'latest and greatest' OS is still lightyears behind.
SFP does scale linearly with the number of CPUs (except for a marginal administration overhead).
I'm 20 years in this business and I've heard or read hundreds of vapourware statements and broken promises by ALL major PC hard- and software suppliers...

this industry isn't run by fools, but relies on the existence of the latter to repeat and spread unqualified technical statements with lots of buzzwords to confuse the audience. Makes sales easier...

cheers, Tom

I only know, if you look into Steinberg forums (Cubase/Nuendo) you will see, that many DAW work with multiprocessors and these two applications are optimized to support multiprocessors. And as more and more virtual instruments demand more and more memory, it demands Windows64bit or VISTA64bit to support more than 3 or 4 Gigabytes of memory.

And many of the good manufacturers (RME, MOTU, ... ) have released 64bit drivers. They did it not for fun. It's very annoying if one manufacturer (Creamware) makes a WindowsXP64bit- or VISTA64bit-configuration impossible by ignoring the demands of an uptodate production-environment.

And if you say today nobody uses that kind of production-environment (with VISTA). That's true, because nobody can use it without drivers.

For me it is a major wish to have 64bit drivers and a performant running application. I'd like to pay for that features a little more money (as I did for SFP4.5Update), but I want to be shure to have an unsatisfactorily solution.

And nobody has to get rid of ProTools if SFP is 64bit, but then there would be more possibilities to work with.

If I would not loose money, I would sell my Scope Fusion, because it's anoying to run the 100m hurdles with a wood-leg. (I allready sold my Pulsar2, because of this unsatisfactorily situation.)

simulfan wrote:...many DAW work with multiprocessors and these two applications are optimized to support multiprocessors.

indeed, they call it optimized, but that does only mean the application is aware of a 2nd CPU. The 'opti' syllabe probably suggests more than in can hold...
Does it give you 4 times the instances on a quad cpu system ?
there goes your mp support... it reads all great, but it does not deliver

SFP works great on dual core systems (even under live! conditions) with the latest Intel boards, so where's the problem ?
It doesn't specifically take advantage of multiple CPUs, but that is no wonder since the processing is done on the DSP card.

... as more and more virtual instruments demand more and more memory, it demands Windows64bit or VISTA64bit to support more than 3 or 4 Gigabytes of memory...

well, faster CPUs and cheap memory didn't exactly improve software quality (there are exceptions, though) - you do already run the 100m hurdles with a wooden leg on your Windows or the latest Mac box...
You possibly didn't notice because they sold you a wooden eye, too...

sarcasm aside (it's nothing personal btw, and you're welcome to call me a boring old fart... ), but I've seen people typeset books with color pics on boxes which had (in figure specs) only 3% of the 'power' a 'minimal' office system is supposed to have today, or 1 humble percent of a typical DAW.
This applies to both clockrate and memory installed...

Do you really think that the job those folks did in front of the screen during 3 months could be done today in a single day - because the current workstation is 99 times bigger and faster ?
Dude, on those lame machines the CPU even did the full screen graphics - and screen response wasn't 1000 times slower - it was (say) 4 or maybe 10 times less responsive...

and that leaves a huge gap in predicted versus delivered performance
as with the CPU - if you're 10 times faster, but need 100 times the resources, you've been fooled somewhere or somehow...

Vista will just be another step in the game and it will offer a few new niceties - as already disgussed
there is not even the slightest evidence that it will be in any way more 'productive', in fact experience should have told you that the opposite will be the case.
It's a spiral that will never stop unless people leave the sh*t where it belongs, getting dust on the shelf or in the trashcan.

I've serviced machines as the 'lame' boxes mentioned above (btw Protools earned it's reputation on those), and if I remember right we had between 100 and 200 machines to support in a 50 miles circle - which we could handle easily with 2 technicians, but do not even think they were constantly on 'emergency' cases...

but for me it's all good, the more people buy what ads promise, the more trouble they'll get (it's as safe a bet as Murphy's law), and the bigger my pay check will be...

cheers, Tom

ps I run 3 Pulsar Ones in a 19" inch rack from a flashdisk under Win98 on a P3 Tualatin (the rack case was more expensive than the computer...) which gives me 48 Adat channels in both directions.
Wherever I want to connect, I can - and as the software on that box doesn't change (and it's not on the internet), I don't even have to care for 'updates' , nice...

to hell with vista!

I need to find a few tuatalin boards myself as well. I run my 2 scope cards in a bx-based p3 700mhz system (slot 1 with a slotket adaptor), 768 Mb ram running @ 100mhz fsb. My scope cards are wired to my RME box attached to my main desktop using ADAT & midi, and to my laptop's firewire interface using optical spdif.

astroman wrote:
to write a driver for the Vista sh*t is a no-brainer in technical terms (for someone who knows the card's internal operation), yet it's existence wouldn't sell one extra piece of hardware - and that's why resources are focussed on more profitable parts of the business.

cheers, Tom

Might not sell hardwrae Tom but it might hold onto their userbase a bit longer so more devices are sold. As we have seen over the last few years, CW success on the Scope platform relies solely on selling addons, not hardware.

My guess is ASB is the only thing they are selling now, and if CW shows no support on one product line(Scope), new users might just be inclined to pass on other offerings in fear of that same abysmal support applying to them. I know I research a companies support record before I I invest in their products.

As for Protools earning their rep on old machines, you forgot to mention, they were the only real player at the time and digi in those days used to literally give hardware away to get in bigger studios doors. They did at the studio I worked at in the late 80's anyways

Like it or Not Vista is coming and most people will switch sooner or later. The only hope for us as users for new modules is a port to Vista. Most people will not run Scope in a dedicated box or keep an outdated machine as a primary just because CW did not keep up. How many people still use their Opcode midi interfaces?
Personally, I think choosing the OS before the platform ( Scope) is kind of putting the cart before the horse, but the majority of people out there don't think like that. They want the latest and greatest and ,irregadless of how illogical it is, that is the reality. Every new PC from here on in will have Vista installed. If CW does not port, it is insureing failure. I will be sticking with XP for the foreseeable futrue, but sure would like to see more module development. Time will tell , thats for sure.

CH

craighuddy wrote:... As we have seen over the last few years, CW success on the Scope platform relies solely on selling addons, not hardware....

yes, that's why they bundle it and shell it out in one special offer after the other...
Like it or not, but as loyal as a (small) part of this customer base is, as 'unrewarding' is the rest - in business context.
If a 3rd party developer says that (according to his experience) 2% of the demo downloads lead to a purchase, then you can only do one thing...

...As for Protools earning their rep on old machines, you forgot to mention, they were the only real player at the time ...

sorry Craig, I was 'praising' the machines, not Protools
The latter wouldn't even exist today if Digidesign didn't have the chance to start out on Macs - that is not kidding... Windows was called 3.x back then...

It were those undestructable 68K Macs on which you could do a complete system backup and reinstall within 10 minutes, malware-free by heritage, rarely crashing and operatable by any idiot.
One of those boxes still serves the company's ISDN lines, occasionally saving the day when internet communication breaks down, after 10 years of duty, 365/24 non-stop.

...Personally, I think choosing the OS before the platform ( Scope) is kind of putting the cart before the horse, but the majority of people out there don't think like that. They want the latest and greatest and ,irregadless of how illogical it is, that is the reality. ...

the majority out there won't buy whatever Scope system anyway - not much to add to your verdict about intellectual capabilities...

IT isn't a service to support business (as it originally started) but has become a self-fulfilling prophecy...
Have you never heard of people, who spend a considerable (not to write 'most'...) of their paid worktime to evaluate 'software tools' supposed to be used on the job - and they actually cannot start working because there's always someone who's offer is too tempting not to be considered...

It would have a severe impact on the employees' motivation if they were 'kept out' and away from the internet due to (so-called) outdated systems.
Nevertheless their job is (often) essentially the same as it was 10 years ago, they don't think faster and they don't write faster - let alone because there's a GHZ box under the table - but they get distracted a little bit more easily...

As mentioned, I have few reasons to complain - yet V remains what it is- something stupid...

cheers, Tom

astroman wrote: As mentioned, I have few reasons to complain - yet V remains what it is- something stupid...

cheers, Tom

Of that we can both agree!

Unfortunatly, it still affects nothing , poeple who stopped writting drivers with win95 have fallen into the abyss, even if win95 worked fine with that hardware. Nobody want to invest in something that the manufacturer has forgotten.

I know several guys that have come to my studio and been impressed with Scope, but once they find out that CW has not really updated the fundamental software since 2002, they are not that interested anymore. That is the reality.

Having been stung by Yamaha with their DS2416 support, I certainly understand where they are coming from.

People might not invest in Scope if CW supports Vista, they definetly won't invest if they don't.

Just my 2 cents anyways....

CH

BTW, I still have one of those old 68k macs here in a back room. still works like a champ with software from the same era!

there are plans and energy going in the direction of vista support.