Anderton Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 I've had one to work with for a while, I've just sent the review in for the March EQ. I must admit it's blowing my mind. I'm starting to wonder if I need any outboard gear at all...and the ability to play/record soft synths without latency is a real treat. Any other fans out there? Craig Anderton Educational site: http://www.craiganderton.org Music: http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/craig_anderton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not coaster MODERATOR Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 I've been looking at this thing for about a week but have no idea what it's like. The other DSP cards are pretty well documented. Does it work on MAS? No latency? Maybe you can throw us a bone and tell us a little about it?! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alndln Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 Apart from the modular synth features,I'd like to hear/see an a-b comparison of the effects compared to UAD/TC quality-wise,especially the Timeworks comp designed for this card,and of course verbs/EQ ect.I'd also like to know how powerful the onboard DSP chip is naturally.I'll look forward to the March issue/review. ;) "A Robot Playing Trumpet Blows" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anderton Posted February 9, 2003 Author Share Posted February 9, 2003 <> Well it's a little difficult to describe because no other products really do the same thing. On the most basic level, it's a DSP board with 15 Analog Devices SHARC chips (that's a lot of DSP power), with a daughterboard that provides I/O (four different configurations; I'm using the one with 16 channels of ADAT, analog I/O, SPDIF I/O, and MIDI I/O/T). The simplest application is treating it like a "powered plug-in" type card for a VST host like Cubase. All the CreamWare instruments and processors then become available as plug-ins. BTW the new instruments like Six-String and MiniMax are awesome, but that's because a LOT of DSP is being thrown at them. Certainly it would be a lot harder to pull off in a native environment. Ditto the reverb, which sounds really good. A more complex application is using it as a "virtual studio." Yeah, I know, that's what Cubase, Sonar, Logic, DP, etc. do. But as a Sonar/Cubase user, I still have outboard gear: the DA7 mixer, a Lexicon reverb, etc. It seems that I keep running into horsepower issues and the only way around it is outboard gear. But the PP finally solves that problem by providing enough DSP to do the things my outboard gear does. I said something in the review like "It's as if someone did an inventory of my outboard gear, ripped out all the DSP chips, put them on a board, then wrote a software interface." I also really like the patch bay/routing aspect of it, I can do lots of rendering to tracks through processors, go off to outboard processors, then come back into the system. The "no latency" thing is because with the CreamWare synths, they're NOT serving as plug-ins in the host. Rather, they exist as separate entities whose audio outputs patch into the host's audio input -- like plugging a "real" synth out into a mixer, then recording the mixer output. You can patch the MIDI in to the synth, play, and the latency is undetectable -- less than many hardware synths, that's for sure. This also means you can plug in a mic, add various effects and EQ, and monitor the results without that annoying echo effect from latency. In this type of context, a program like Sonar, Cubase, etc. fulfills more of the function of a multitrack recorder in a standard studio, with PowerPulsar "hosting" the program as well as the synths, processors, etc. Of course, you can still run plug-ins in the sequencer, so you have the best of both worlds. Frankly, I've been really impressed. It has also been really stable. Drawbacks: it doesn't run under OS X yet (I'm using it with Windows XP) and it's VST only -- no MAS, RTAS, etc. But it has really changed the way my studio works, and projects seem to flow a lot faster. It does WDM for Sonar, but now that Sonar does ASIO, I'll probably go that route. Craig Anderton Educational site: http://www.craiganderton.org Music: http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/craig_anderton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dogfur Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 [quote]Originally posted by Anderton: [b] The "no latency" thing is because with the CreamWare synths, they're NOT serving as plug-ins in the host. Rather, they exist as separate entities whose audio outputs patch into the host's audio input -- like plugging a "real" synth out into a mixer, then recording the mixer output. You can patch the MIDI in to the synth, play, and the latency is undetectable -- less than many hardware synths, that's for sure. [/b][/quote]You Sir, have attracted my interest... Woof! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not coaster MODERATOR Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 I'm actually relieved that this doesn't work on MAS. I would be tossing at night trying to figure out how to afford one. The Noah box looks equally awesome. It appears you can bus back and forth via usb and have softs & dsp on a notebook. I see Dr Walker is very involved with the products. The Germans would do well to appeal to more platforms other than their own Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim P. Dyndale Posted February 9, 2003 Share Posted February 9, 2003 Are the DSPs on the PP different than the ones on the Luna card? I have a Luna II card, with only 3 DSPs, and those DSPs are worthless when it comes to using them to run plug-ins in Cubase. I can maybe run 2 or 3 small plug-ins at the same time on these 3 DSPs. 50% of their power is allready used for handling the standard audio stuff. I like the routing possibilities on the card, but I am very disappointed with the "power" of the DSPs. I think I remember reading on Creamware's site that one PP DSPs is equivalent to 1 G4 450 MHz CPU! That is certainly not the case for the DSPs on the Luna card. It just seems that, in comparison to the TC Powercore and Universal Audio cards, the Power Pulsar is pretty expensive. This may have changed since the last time I checked though. -Joachim Dyndale -------------------- Einstein: The difference between genius and stupidity is: Genius has limits My Blog... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gchildpblutah.com Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 The DSPs on the Luna are the same as on any other Creamware product. The Luna really is only good for recording and audio routing or the occasional small synth or effect. Creamware really wants you to get hooked on their product linup and buy two or three cards which can be hooked up to, in effect, create one huge card with however many DSPs there are. You can hook up to three cards together. There are those with 3 x 15DSP configurations (or 45 total DSPs). The US reviews in the Mags up to now (at least the review I read in Keyboard Mag a while back) were positive but guarded. I don't understand. I have a 25 DSP system on a Mac and love it even though it has a non-standard GUI (you've got to try it out to understand.) It's the equivalent of a Powercore AND a UAD Powered plugin AND Korg's old Oasys design. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joachim P. Dyndale Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 It's probably a great setup, but a PowerPulsar Plus card with two additional Scope SRB cards costs over $5,000. That's pretty expensive. You'd probably get as much DSP power if you bought 3 PowerCore or Universal Audio cards for around $3,000. The routing possibilities don't seem to be worth the extra $2,000. And the effects on the TC PC & the UA cards are probably better. I don't have much experience with any of these, but this is how I see it. If I've got it all wrong I'd love it if anyone could set me straight :) . -Joachim Dyndale -------------------- Einstein: The difference between genius and stupidity is: Genius has limits My Blog... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfonso Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 Hi, i'm an old Pulsar user and currently i'm using 3 dsp cards, a Power Pulsar, a Pulsar2 and my old Pulsar1, getting 25 dsp's. I must say that i don't have anything outboard and i don't miss it. the sound of the cards themselves is awesome. the masterverb is the only reverb i'm able to use. some effects are incredible, like all the sbb series or the pattern delay (a delay in wich you program a seq.like grid with 16 steps for L, C and R,)..... But what makes me crazy really is the instruments i can play. First of all the sound of the sharcs' coding has no equal. Vst's are virtual stuff with a virtual sound, no matter how good they are. I build also vst's, so i'm not fanatic, but the truth has to be said... Sharc Synths sound real. I'm a big Modular User. i made many many patches, i've made additive, subtractive, am, fm, and with some new modules of the ModularIII, granular, and also mixed all of them, i've made multiband splitters with the inversion of filters, and all the good that the gods of synthesis spreaded over humanity....and all this with an ultraphat ,aliasing free (unless wanted),warm and detailed sound. Well, you can think that you have to be synth nerds to achieve all that....on your own maybe, but there is a worldwide famous community of patch developers for the Pulsar Modular, and "hundreds" of free (they are all free) patches are downloadable and ready to play. also new free modules for the modular are developed from owners of the developement sw. the last one of few days ago, for example, permits to apply an lfo or any modulation signal to a continous controller (cc), to be sent via midi... Then you have first class samplers, synth emulations, wavetables mixers, crossovers, control room devices with test tones.... Then unsurpassed routing capabilities, every software or hardware port is a connectable visual object, in the same environment with instruments and mixers..... that's not a simple card or some dsp processing... it's a studio. not virtual, real. 15 dsp's its a very powerful solution, more than enough to have a lot of stuff. Guess the Amp .... now it's finished... Here it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
not coaster MODERATOR Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 Creamware has not marketed their products to Americans very effectively. You would think there would be more buzz about something this good. From what I sense however is that a great many of our members are DP3, Sonar & Protools, none of which support the Creamware stuff. Check me if that's wrong. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alfonso Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 If you consider it as an environment accessible via midi, asio or wdm drivers.... the friend who suggested me Pulsar in 1999 was using Cakewalk, and uses Sonar today. and asio drivers will be used by sonar too... For Craig and those who own the Modular2....some patches i made to play, and easier to understand: http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=4222&forum=15&7 http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=2783&forum=15&6 http://www.planetz.com/forums/viewtopic.php?topic=3742&forum=15&1 Guess the Amp .... now it's finished... Here it is! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dylan Posted February 10, 2003 Share Posted February 10, 2003 I think that Creamware has provided an ASIO driver for quite some time now, so their hardware should play nice with most big-name sequencers. I used the old TripeDat system a long time ago and I always thought their hardware sounded very good. I didn't care for the TripleDat software very much, but the card performed very well for all of the mastering I did in Sound Forge. I have to admit that buying dsp-based cards is not exciting as it was a few years ago with the way today's desktop CPU's are performing natively. Especially for how expensive cards w/ DSP chips are compared to even the most expensive desktop processor. Today, even the most modest single-processor system can churn out enough power to provide a reliable 24-track DAW w/ EQ+compression on every track and a couple of reverbs. It blows my mind that one can get a kick-ass DAW w/ 24-bit operation for well under a grand today. My MasterPort hardware cost that much alone just a few years ago! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anderton Posted February 10, 2003 Author Share Posted February 10, 2003 <> Absolutely, and right on all your other points. The synths do sound absolutely fantastic. While it's true that native systems are pretty amazing, the extra power that CreamWare throws at their algorithms makes a big difference. Ditto on the reverb -- I'd say it's my favorite software reverb, but really, it's a hardware reverb that just happens to live in the computer. When I run out of power by running lots of soft syhths, I just repatch the output to a track in Sonar or Cubase and "render" it as a digital audio track. Pulsar also has a cool feature where hiding a synth removes it from the DSP. I just downloaded the Sonar ASIO update and will see if that works (WDM works fine, though). I've tried Acid with PowerPulsar and got a lot of pops, though...I had to raise the system latency a lot to get rid of them. But I didn't have those problems with Cubase, Sonar, Wavelab, etc., so I'm assuming it's a certain lack of maturity in Acid's ASIO implementation. Craig Anderton Educational site: http://www.craiganderton.org Music: http://www.youtube.com/thecraiganderton Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/craig_anderton Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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