PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

So I was at Guitar Center and started talking to the pros. They keep telling me that the PC does not use a sound card for processing, but instead only the CPU and RAM. I thought Scope offloads all DSP processing to its chips. For example, when I was using VSTs in FL Studio with an avg of 3 FX on each channel, about 10 channels total, I noticed a tremendous difference between having the Scope Pulsar in the PC vs not having it in. Most other cards have like one maybe two chips. So I am wondering how many Sharc chips are actually used for general VST processing without using any Scope FX? Or all the Sharc chips are used for Scope FX only?

quantum wrote: So I am wondering how many Sharc chips are actually used for general VST processing without using any Scope FX? Or all the Sharc chips are used for Scope FX only?

Creamware/S|C Pulsar/SCOPE hardware doesn´t process native VST software !
It´s stricktly SCOPE environment, FX, synths, MIDI and I/O handling.
In XTC / VSTIM mode, the DLLs are related to the SCOPE devices only.

Bud

quantum wrote:So I was at Guitar Center and started talking to the pros. They keep telling me that the PC does not use a sound card for processing, but instead only the CPU and RAM. I thought Scope offloads all DSP processing to its chips. For example, when I was using VSTs in FL Studio with an avg of 3 FX on each channel, about 10 channels total, I noticed a tremendous difference between having the Scope Pulsar in the PC vs not having it in. Most other cards have like one maybe two chips. So I am wondering how many Sharc chips are actually used for general VST processing without using any Scope FX? Or all the Sharc chips are used for Scope FX only?

The difference you noticed was due to having proper ASIO drivers versus the crap onboard sound drivers. Onboard soundcards CAN have properly low latency operation but will still have poor sound quality (s/n ratio & $0.20 components), but in almost all cases there's no attention paid to low latency operation as onboard soundcards are for 'multimedia' and 'gaming' under modern OSes.

Also, sounds like you missed out on using Scope for anything other than ASIO, you should learn to use more of what the cards can do. It's basically like having external hardware right in your PC running ALONGSIDE your DAW (FLStudio or etc). The trick is finding a workflow that works for you to combine external hardware (and Scope) along with your ITB (inthebox) tools.

beside onboard synth/fx/mix/dsp i would spend a word about scope endless routing possibilities, both in audio and in midi.

i can patch/handle/modify every midi or audio signal from anything to anything, hardware or software. in 15 years, this solved me a lot of problems and permitted me to integrate effortlessly and seamlessly every toy that i bought into my system.

if you have several external midi/audio devices, scope offers solutions that i bet cannot be achieved with any other system.

a Scope card isn't a sound card. it doesn't have anything to do with processing vsts, as the folks at GC have told you.

a Scope card can function like a sound card, since it does offer wav, midi and ASIO drivers to connect data streams to the os and it's apps. a Scope card is a dedicated piece of audio hardware that is controlled by the computer.

the computer does some things better than the Scope card, mainly running the sequencer and streaming samples. the Scope card tends to be superior in routing, mixing, fx and synths, but ymmv.

Thank you all for the clarifications!

I have used Scope for many years now, and wow, it really is fantastic, I recomend you to get into this train, you will not regret it. The only problem I can see, is that you will need some time to learn it, the learning curve can be a little bit cumbersome for the first two months, becuase you can do anything with it, and mix it with anything else, so there are so meny variants and posibilities that you get crazy, but hey, this is a good thing after all, more posibilites.

If you are thinking about getting something serious to sound like heaven, get a Scope, and you will be an angel.

Believe me I know what Scope can do. It's just that my setup is freakin complicated because I am using Scope for production and mastering along with FL Studio for MIDI control of hardware synths, and Samplitude as DAW and host for FL Studio. So since I've invested into hardware, Scope Pulsar 1 is used here just for monitoring and routing, which it still does better than most soundcards, if not all.