Anybody? Whats is the best way to Have 2 CW cards in a PC ?

[kallyintern]

Hello everyone


I'd like to know the best way to run 2 Creamware cards on 1 machine, Do I need some sort of link cable ? Will Scope automatically detect both and use both as long as I have them connected through their analog outputs to a monitor mix?

I just bought a Pulsar 1 card from the early 90's, it like 10 years old and works like a champ* btw! And I also have a Scope 4.0 Home Card from a couple years ago.

Can I have 2 totally different Scope platforms running at the same time if I install the new Scope in a different directory?

Any help would be much appriciated. I do recall being able to expand with just raw DSP modules using the Scope 4.0 home card, but thats totally different.

Thanks

[kallyintern]

Thank you Stardust for your reply



Another dumb question if you dont mind.

Q: Does it matter which order I put the cards in, you think the Home card has the best latency rate "your totally right" but it's also
a 3dsp not a 4dsp like the P1 . I guess it shouldn't matter only the lowest latency really matters? So if I connect them with a STDM cable scope will recognize both of them and their will be more ASIO module outputs or something in Scope platform? If I have them
connected together with STDM cable will I still need to route one into the other input through analog connections? Cause I want to be able to monitor both through one card. I havent found the right sound card to capture the sound of the creamware without adding noise to it and using XTC plugins is not* the same sound as the sound inside of scope platform. Of course Ive been atemping to record P1 through a Steinberg MI4 soundcard external. So made MI4 has pretty bad A/D converters I dont know.

Do you happen to know where I can buy this STDM cable? I really would rather not make it myself Cable changes the sound as you know and your only as strong as your weakest link in the studio chain.

Thanks again Stardust

[kallyintern]

Thanks man



I was just wondering about the routing internally because sometimes scope doesnt let you make " Y" cable connections or sum a few
0utputs together outside of the main connecting block. I just want to be able to monitor both cards but from a single Scope card analog output. I guess I can use any of the cards output I want at this point SonicCore calims it will add I/O by doing this too. I cant believe ULLi will work even with Pulsar 1, thats amazing for creamware to do that. I could only get Pulsar 1 to go as low as 18ms for some reason it wouldnt go lower I have no idea as to why. But my scope home goes down to ULLi 1ms lowest setting. I guess Scope will use the best crystal it can find to sync to and in this case Scope Home being the newer of the 2 would have the best Crystal in terms of frequency.

Q: I forgot to mention I'm planning to Buy a PCI-e to PCI direct adapter from cooldrives.com or a place simular, to make my Scope Home 4.0 fit into my system. will this alter anything we were talking about or have you even heard of this adapter before?

Dell only built 1 PCI into my PC so I have to figure something out. I was reading allot about that Magma Alternative from Cooldrives.com
the 4 PCI slot expander. I almost built one myself,hehe. Anyway I read people were having problems getting 2 scope cards to work on it,
Then I read maybe there was a solution but i was unclear about that.

Thanks again Scope Guru Stardust *

[kallyintern]

Your most awesome Stardust in any case


I've been looking into PCI expanders for a couple years but I haven't been able to make much out of what ive read here about Scope card relations. Anybody you know who has actually got 2 scope cards to work on an expander board? I kept reading people can only get 1 to work and maybe there's an issue with power consumption. But if several UAD cards can work why not scope you know. Then I read I was
an issue of IRQ and something else and someone fixed it but now its offered as a higher priced PCI extender w/ fix.
I don't know I'll just keep reading to see if I come across the right artical.

Thanks man for all your help

[kylie]

Dell only built 1 PCI into my PC so I have to figure something out. I was reading allot about that Magma Alternative from Cooldrives.com
the 4 PCI slot expander. I almost built one myself,hehe. Anyway I read people were having problems getting 2 scope cards to work on it,
Then I read maybe there was a solution but i was unclear about that.

there is this external box (2 versions exist, one for short cards only, and one for full length cards), but both lack sufficient power distribution. some guy developed an action plan including soldering off some pins and exchanging the psu for a more powerful one (I saw once the pdf manual; one fellow scoper got it from the UAD forum). this news must have somehow reached the original manufacturer who came up with a board that can be hooked up to a standard atx psu and built into a standard atx case. there are even people selling that thing preinstalled in a case. I did not test it, but it looks promising. they claim to be able to support 4 UAD-1 cards (the original case was not able to power more than one, and that's why no more than one scope card ran as well).

-greetings, markus-

ps. stardust has already advanced from Guru Pulsarian to Levitating Fire-Breathing Pulsar Overlord, but the old ranking system was never re-established after some phpBB upgrades...

[kallyintern]

Lol thanks , Kylie.


That really clears up allot , that box does look promising. I dont want to spread the cash for a magma new. Its way over priced, I saw some digi design magma boxes used but I doubt they would work directly with pci, looks more like a serial port.

And then the PCI to PCI-e converter looks promising too for 50$ EURO But my PC is on lock down I dont think my box design can handle it , might be worth trying though.


thanks again

[kylie]

And then the PCI to PCI-e converter looks promising too for 50$ EURO But my PC is on lock down I dont think my box design can handle it , might be worth trying though.

no. you won't be able to fit a scope card into that. there was a discussion before on that matter, and I think I remember we agreed on leaving our hands off it...
yeah, that box... I have one, but knowing the issue concerning multi-card setups I never used it with scope but for other purposes where a pci slot was needed (recent servers drop pci support, or at least support for 5V cards). later I understood why exactly it would not work. but now I'm curious again if the aforementioned board could be the extender of my choice. though I have a magma box (ok, a used one) I still had to buy a pci-e host card, which is nowhere to be found as a used item, and a new one costs more than the board (well, you have to add a case and a psu, but still it is cheaper...). I'd like to see somebody else being the guinea-pig before I get rid of the magma and buy the other extender. by the way, additional host cards are really cheap, so one could use the box with several machines without paying a fortune...

-greetings, markus-

[kallyintern]

Hi Kylie,

What about this heavnly goodness - http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/full-packa ... -case.html

It claims to get the trick done.

This is also very ineteresting for the pci-e to cpi converter 50$ - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... apter.html

food for thought anyway, Also I found an instruction somewhere I cant find it again that shows a nut and bolt extend the hold on a full sized PCI card into the PCI-e converter.
it showed a picture of it actually holding in place. Cant find it again for some reason.

What box are you talking about can have multiple host cards? I think there would be an I/O resource error no?

[kylie]

What about this heavnly goodness - http://www.virtuavia.eu/shop/full-packa ... -case.html

this is just one example. I found an ebay seller who ships it with a rackmountable case for less...

This is also very ineteresting for the pci-e to cpi converter 50$ - http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... apter.html

in that thread someone mentions it is suspected to work with low profile cards only. this was the reason why we ruled out the adapter before, imho.

What box are you talking about can have multiple host cards? I think there would be an I/O resource error no?

no, I think you've got this wrong. what I wanted to say is: sharing the case between different machines (of course only one at a time) is much cheaper than with magma, since an additional host card (be it pci-e x1 or express card) is very cheap (EUR 30).

-greetings, markus-

[kallyintern]

Hi Kylie,



Please show me the link where you found the rackmountable version of virtual via.
thanks


And I definately seen pics of people going out of there way to make full sized cards work and it works from what i can see.

[kylie]

Please show me the link where you found the rackmountable version of virtual via.

see here. they also sell this case on ebay, for some bucks more, but with a pci-e host card already bundled.

And I definately seen pics of people going out of there way to make full sized cards work and it works from what i can see.

imho that works only if you either remove the slot cover from the card and fix the card elsewhere OR make cuts into your case to use the supplied slot cover. with a scope card you might run into the problem of not having all I/O ports available.
fitting a full heigth card into the adapter will look like this. with a slim case you might even have to leave the side panel open...

a pulsar XTC might be integratable, but I'd still stay away from that solution.

-greetings, markus-

[kallyintern]

Hi Kylie,


Thanks for the good info from Germany:), I cant find sites that aren't in English.
The specs are explained in greater detail on this site than any other simular product's I've seen.

Very Very nice box and design especially at that price*

Kylie, do you know if this rack mount box works for Multiple Scope cards connected through STDM?

I'm kind of going back and forth on weather to try the PCI to PCI-e converter adapter, I might not want to use
the analog outputs. Because as Stardust explained to me once you have 2 Scope cards linked together it sort
of aggregates them together as one so you can do all kinds of interesting virtual routing, I could route the ASIO
driver output of say SCOPE Card #2 to an input somewhere on the virtual main connecting block.
Isn't this correct?

I just want to play synths out of scope running DI input into another soundcard as an input . It works a hell of a lot better than XTC mode this way and just MIDI sync everything and you got it acting better than in XTC mode. Cause it sounds allot better from what i can hear. I think XTC mode would be best for just laying out ideas and writing but when it comes time for mixdown. Save those MIDI files and route them back into your synth and your saved patch.

[kylie]

Thanks for the good info from Germany:), I cant find sites that aren't in English.
The specs are explained in greater detail on this site than any other simular product's I've seen.

well, this is for the german market, for sure. they don't seem to expect english natives browsing their pages

Kylie, do you know if this rack mount box works for Multiple Scope cards connected through STDM?

no. I'm curious, too. I have the small old box that won't power more than one scope card at a time. bought it from bill here on PZ who tested it and found out it would not work, but probably only for the power reason.

I could route the ASIO driver output of say SCOPE Card #2 to an input somewhere on the virtual main connecting block. Isn't this correct?

well, you can route almost anything to anywhere. I can't say exactly if the asio drivers are even card-bound or if they are instead assigned to the whole stdm-bunch (I think so).

-greetings, markus-

[kallyintern]

Yeah I'm sure Stardust was 100% sure when I was told STDM sort of aggregates the scope cards together.

Still not sure If i want to risk F'ing up my Scope card for that PCI-e to PCI converter to work.

If I bought that German PCI expander Box, I wounder if I could use a voltage adapter with it?

If anybody here on the forum lives in Germany they should call that company up and see if they know it will work with scope
Im pretty sure UAD cards have fairly simular needs in terms of power. They just say UAD cause Scope cards arent what they used to be maybe they noticed the new Sonic Core External Card 10X more power than most Scope cards and thought nobody wants this for Creamware cards. I forgot to check if Sonic Still offers PCI versions of Scope.

[Albatorus]

you need a flat cable like that