PCI DSP
Does anyone have experience with PCI DSP cards with N? I am interested in accuiring one to bost firtuar rack power but have no experience with them and thought this was a good place to start.
sorry for the typo’s
I have had Universal Audio’s UAD-1 Projekt Pak for about a six months and I do like it… a lot. Works pretty smoothly with the N. High quality effects: the UAD-1 is most famed for the compressors, and for a reason. Pultec EQ is also nice. Don’t care so much about the Realverb Pro or the Nigel guitar amp sim, although the latter has some nice effect components that can be used separately.
The true secret weapon is the CS-1 channel strip with its separate components (eq/compressor, delay, reverb). Less DSP CPU power hungry than those “famed” effects, but sound great.
I got a free LA2A compressor registration when I bought the Projekt Pak (a campaign offer) and I happened to start the 14 day demo for the Plate 140 reverb for a song I just finished… loved it, just need to shell some dough to buy it.
Do I recommend it? I do, if you can afford it. I’ve sometimes played with an idea to buy another one, but so far my DSP needs are pretty well catered…
Oh yes, my EMU 1820 has some DSP power, too. Haven’t use those effects much, some are nice, some are sort of dull. Seems to need more adjusting to run smoothly, though. (As a conventional soundcard with ins and outs and such, it’s great, though. I consider the DSP thing as an extra.)
Here’s my theory. I learned this as an engineer working on communications cards for VME chassis computers.
The main processor keeps getting faster and cheaper. Meanwhile, your expensive add-on doesn’t get any faster or cheaper.
DSP cards were very important a few years ago (say, 5) when processors could hardly keep up with just a couple plugins. These days, processors can do most plugins in their sleep, except for a few really CPU-intensive ones.
IMHO, the reason to buy a DSP module is because you like the way it SOUNDS: you like the way the designers made it, or it has features you want and can’t get from using a vanilla host processor. If you’re happy with that, you won’t care that in 5 years it’s slow as crap compared to a $1000 laptop – it will still have it’s signature sound or key features.
I’m sure there are applications where I’m wrong: where someone day in and day out records 24 tracks and uses FX on all of them at once (but separately, not on an aux bus!) and needs fast turnaround so can’t wait for “freeze” or other workarounds for insufficient CPU time. Really, I’m sure there are studios where something like this is the case. It wouldn’t be typical for an n-Track studio, though, or folks doing it at home.
Fortunately, us home-boys usually aren’t running so many FX at once, and when we are, we can do a bit of submix freezing until this year’s hottest processor is dirt cheap on the resale market.
| Quote (learjeff @ Jan. 05 2006,16:38) |
| DSP cards were very important a few years ago (say, 5) when processors could hardly keep up with just a couple plugins. These days, processors can do most plugins in their sleep, except for a few really CPU-intensive ones. |
... which includes at least some of the UAD ones. I still don't know what the processor is they're using, but apparently it's a pretty mean number cruncher.
The market for DSP cards don't seem to be dwindling, anyway. I'd say they sell much better now than, say, five years ago.
One of the reasons might be that, as the CPUs keep getting faster, the software keeps getting heavier to run. There's a price for all these fancier graphics and other stuff.
And multitracking is so processor-intensive anyway that every bit of load that's taken off the CPU's shoulders is a plus.
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| The market for DSP cards don’t seem to be dwindling, anyway. I’d say they sell much better now than, say, five years ago. |
Well, you can get the powercore in a firewire version too now.