Creamware

[Stephen Fortner]

I am opinion-shopping about Creamware products, such as Pulsar II. Anyone have any experience running these on a Mac with Logic? More specifically, given all their onboard DSP for routing, mixing, etc, would using a Pulsar II card with outboard A/D's as my front end make my life happier than if I just ran a 2408mkII like everyone else ?

[Dave Bryce]

I had a Pulsar card for a while, and I must say, I didn't dig it.

 

First of all, the card itself caused me to have problems with my computer, specifically my monitor, believe it or not. Secondly, the Mac version that I tried about a year ago appeared to be the Windows version running under a Mac shell; and, frankly, I found the interface to be a bit rough. After having a variety of problems, including encountering significant obstacles in my search for technical support, I just gave up and returned it.

 

I also found that while the virtual synths in the program sounded okay, I didn't think that they sounded much like the synths that they were supposed to be emulating, except for maybe the Juno emulation.

 

Just my opinion - your mileage may vary.

 

dB

[synthfoolsynthfool.com]

I had one of the large 15 DSP boards in a 600 Mhz Pentium on loan about a year back.

Played with it for about 6 months.

It came with their full "Pulsar Development system".

 

Now I'm a Mac guy from way back, so I don't get along immediately with Windows, but the system was still impressive enough to want to mess with.

(I have VPC4.0 on my G4 Cube though... ;-)

 

However, the Pulsar back then lacked even the most simplistic things such as responding to MIDI program change commands, undo for many operations, etc.

 

The user interface was harder to get uased to as well. Not as much as the whole Mac vs PC mouse control issue, but rather in the algorithm used for turning knobs on screen.

The Creamware system (at the time, I can' t speak of updates, new versions,etc) drove me mad as it required the user to move the mouse in an actual circle to turn the knob. It was sensetive to both Axis', so it felt "overboosted" - hard to make fine changes, especially upon a first try or edit.

 

I don't get along with most soft synths, though I'd prefer they'd have chosen the method used by Koblo in their software.

It feels more natural and as a user, I approach the softsynth editing environment with less aprehension and reserve.

I'm sure one could get used to the feel of the Pulsar, but I never did.

 

Sound was incredible, but if you asked for extreme polyphony upon a very complex patch, you were asking for probs.

This was a 15 DSP board with 60 Mhz Sharc DSP's. Nowadays they're probably quicker. I don't follow their product line offerings.

I was outputting the audio via optical cable to a Fostex "ADAT" as an D/A converter in a non-studio environment.

Certainly they have a large user base and patches galore now. I didn't have that much to work with preset-wise back then, so even though the basic DSP engine was very powerful, it felt like being all dressed up with no place to go.

 

The graphic editor was impressive at that stage of development also.

 

Probably none of this is terribly relevant to their offerings of today, but those are my experiences of about a year ago. http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/smile.gif

 

Kevin

[Guest]

My biggest problem with the Pulsar system is that they keep coming out with new modules for it, but each one costs as much as a normal softsynth! The reason I complain this way is because its main competitor is Korg's OASYS which ships with all the modules and effects, boasting things like 135 effects algorithms and 44 different types of synthesis (now including the entire Triton soundset and all the extra Korg patches). I have more trust in the OASYS since I know it's been under development for a long time - it's basically the system on which Korg developed their VA design and their MOSS system. Plus Korg has always been Mac friendly (remember the 1212). The Pulsar has had a few years in the making but its modules haven't had any test market the way the OASYS has. It's an underdog. I really see it as a synth money pit - you spend over a grand for the card, and then you keep popping another 300 bucks into new soft-synths. For that kind of thing, you should check out the new TC Powercore instead so you don't have to learn a new system, just use VST stuff.

 

I'm a PC guy so the company doesn't bug me at all.. I'm actually very interested in their "Elektra" which is about $550 street and is kind of like a nord micro-modular but it's also a 24bit D/A and it's got tons of different synth types.

 

I'm sorry that I can't give hands on advice, but as a college student (and not at Berklee) I only get to read about this stuff..

 

 

Steve

[murph]

The only Pulsar card that I saw working was the one the rep used to bring around, and that didn't even work all the time. I saw a on of other ones fail. It seemed to me that if you tried to put anything else in the computer-- like solitaire, for example-- the Pulsar would get sick and wretch and never work. That's what I've seen... again, your results may vary.

[Steve44]

Whoa! Mr. Fortner!

 

I was just looking at for some sounds of yours.. demos of the Voyetra Eight from a past Keyboard Vintage gear column. I was bummed to find out that apparently keyboardonline.com doesn't have archives for that column. Now I realized you've been posting here. Do you have a link to those files? I'd love to hear them.

 

Thanks,

 

Steve

[Stephen Fortner]

Hey Steve44,

 

Thanks for the compliment. I checked the link and it seems to be working fine. On Keyboard mag's website, you want to select the piano key on the left that says "Features," then scroll down to the V's for "vintage gear." The mp3's are all there.

The Voyetra is a cool, but finicky, synth. FYI, on the multitrack ditty "RaveToy" I used no MIDI, as the V8 didn't seem to receive very well.. just played all the parts live into an old Roland VS-880.