Downloaded Discovery 1.2 demo. CPU usage is fixed.

Well, it's kinda hard to admit, sounds more solid than my NL2 hardware. I should have wait till Discovery 1.2 release

Great job, guys! I use Discovery to play my old NL2 sequences directly from a multitrack, and it lays perfectly.

Sounds very good... New patches are really SWEEEET! This one is beginning to be a must have as far as I'm concerned...

rrtdj wrote:

Well, it's kinda hard to admit, sounds more solid than my NL2 hardware. I should have wait till Discovery 1.2 release

What's the world coming to

Yeah after another round of optimization or two I might actually drop some cash and buy Discovery.

the thing definetly sounds extra fat, but its still a little to harsh on the ol cpu for me to use it regularly...

I'm glad to see that the developer is working hard on this synth.

Maybe a few quality settings would be in order. Although then people would probably judge the synth by its lowest quality setting.

Future features are planned , (midi sync, other sysex
import formats support, etc), but there will be no low/draft
quality switch(es) for Discovery.

Is not targetted for low CPU platforms sorry.

I'm glad you didnt arguru... it wouldnt have been as quality if you would have

Great sound on that. Just tried it for the first time. I am all synthed out for now, but I have a feeling this might be in my list if I ever get GAS again.

Jeez, this thing still sux my CPU. Up to 45% on some voices, and thats not even playing chords

(1Ghz Athlon 320Ram Win98SE)

Arguru,
I'm not trying to be picky, I'd just like to know what you define as "Low CPU platforms"?

I can get up to 50% usage with some of the presets with just a few notes played on an XP1900+ just using Chainer as host.

Any comments?
Thanks for any info

Other format Sysex support.

Arguru, do you mean that you'll be supporting entirely different synths? Or will they all be Nord family synths (Nord Lead 3, Nord Modular). Or would you rather just not say yet?

Gargoyle wrote:

I can get up to 50% usage with some of the presets with just a few notes played on an XP1900+ just using Chainer as host.

Check Appendix C of the manual.

If your CPU supports SSE be sure to install that version instead MMX.

Hi Raul, thanks for your reply.
I did check the manual before posting and again after you replied, but there seems to be no mention of system requirements?
Thanks

I think the manual reference is all about cutting down the number of voices.

Playing some major C chords on my P4 1.8GHz machine (built-in program 29), I get 65% CPU usage with 12 voices, 45% with 8 voices, 35% with 6 voices, 25% with 4 voices. Needless to say, the sound isn't quite the same when I drop voices.

That's a lotta CPU. But it sounds great. Guess I'll just be bouncing the synth to wav a lot more often than I'm used to.

If I purchase Discovery, is there copy protection? If so, what method? I'm always a bit paranoid that I'll have a bunch of songs that rely on a synth and it'll stop working when I buy my next computer.

I have also a very old, lame machine...an Athlon 2000+...and I get over 50% peaks. Perhaps I should throw my machine away. So I will buy a new PC and of course discovery, too! No problem.

Discovery got even better now with 1.2. Very good presets. Sounds excellent. What I really like alot is layer morphing with the modulationwheel and/or velocitiy. That is even better controlable than the morphing on oddity. Amazing possibilities. Its probably not new to owners of NL2. I heard about it but never thought it would be so interesting.
I bought discovery after some hours of fun testing, used it alot and the fast update gives a good feeling about the support.

rok, is there copy protection on it?

I did a little ditty with four instances, and it didn't crash or freeze. Got up to about 30-40% but stayed stable. This thing is awesome for layered percussion patterns, weird electronic patterns without drums and things... Try just the sound effects,instead of drums...Whoa!

mistertoast wrote:

If I purchase Discovery, is there copy protection? If so, what method? I'm always a bit paranoid that I'll have a bunch of songs that rely on a synth and it'll stop working when I buy my next computer.

No problem

>>No problem

Hmm. What does that mean, exactly?

So has anyone that has a NL2 actuqlly compared the same patch on it and Discovery? If so, care to post some cmoparison mp3s?

Kind of amazing that no one has mentioned anything about this awesome support, DiscoDSP has released fixes for every problem & request we've brought up on this forum that I can remember, & at a pace that's pretty incredible (3 releases in less than 2 weeks, all w/ pretty significant upgrades). I installed the optimized for PIII version & limited the voices to 4, it's working great on my little 950mhz Celeron.

Cheeky, I borrowed an NL2 specifically for the purpose of A/B'ing the two, I'll post up the results when I've got some free time.

I presume installing the "optimized for pIII version" would also be suitable for athlon xp? as they support sse extensions, but not sseII....

If your processor (athlon, pentium, whatever) supports MMX/SSE or
SSE2 instructions (only P4's for the moment), give it a try. SSE is way faster than MMX in the same CPU, and SSE2 is even faster.

Some Athlons (inc. some XP machines) seems that doesnt have SSE instruction set, but others do. The worst thing it can happen if you install a platform specific optimized version and you CPU doesnt support them, the code just throws "classical" exception crash.

Btw: I run 9 instances of the plugin (check demosong at site) using a single p3 1 ghz (SSE version). Max CPU peak is 70%.

and most important of all: Discovery *IS NOT* a Nord Lead 2 emulator, is just based on it's synthesis scheme.

Cool, just ordered
Very nice sounding synth btw
I tested 1.0 and loved it so any improvement in 1.2 is welcome...
btw, my cpu definitely DOES support sse (athlonxp2600+), sonic foundry products says "sse available, yes", "sse2, no"...so i presume this will be fine...
I am curious why you say some athlon xp do not support sse? That's a standard feature of the current core(and barton)...only pre athlon xp(thunderbird) didn't support sse, and of course the original athlon

Hmm. I still don't know what the copy protection method (if any) is. What do you get when you buy? A key? Is there any nasty PACE protection?

No, the registered (full) version doesnt have any protection scheme.

OK. Excellent! I'll be discussing this with my better half and aim for next payday.

I tried version 1.2 today - WOW! The presets are awesome..I cranked up my speakers and let it rip, sounded great.

Awesome sound, NL2 import, great support, this thing is mine next payday!


cheeky

Am I the only one experiencing problems with 1.2? For one when I install the SSE2 version, I cannot open a track that used Discovery 1.1, I just get weird static noise and the CPU usage cranks up to the roof, resulting in me having to reboot. This is in Fruityloops 3.56.

I installed the MMX/SSE versions, they work, but my preset doesn't work anymore (I captured a screenshot of it in 1.1 and tuned the knobs exactly). Also another thing, none of the presets that came with 1.1 work with 1.2. The 2 external preset banks.

I didn't check out the new preset because of all those problems I had, I think I'll go back to 1.1 because I cannot reproduce the patch that I made up in 1.2.

P.S. I have a 3ghz P4.

Yes.. Same for me too, also using the MMX/SSE version. There's a definite improvement in the CPU usage, but it will not import sysex from the Nord Lead 2. The previous version worked just fine. Looks like importing banks (whether sysex or fxb etc) is broken on this version.

Yes, the banks wont work....
I've imported NL2 into DDSP and and it seem like I can hear the banks that were there before the import.
Also, on some patches, some notes wont play (for example on the, other then that, wonderful patch "Mars"). this renders this VSTi totaly unusable.
I realy hope that this is NOT a DEMO problem, cause if it is, it's a BIGGER shame... (and, just for the record, i've tryed both MMX and SSE versions - Im having a AMD 1900+ w 768MB ram)

Discovery 1.2 program format is not compatible with 1.1. Those banks are not longer usable. But nl2/sysex import works fine.

Arguru.. It doesn't. I can provide some Nord sysex banks that work fine with the previous version, but not 1.2 if you wish?

Ok, got the problem. will be fixed on next revision.

Quote:

P.S. I have a 3ghz P4

oooooooo You are the first person i have seen using one of these...are you using rambus?? OT, but what is the performance like...what about denormals? Have you compared to any athlons???

I finaly got around to trying the demo of dicovery 1.2

VERY nice indeed, I wont be buying it just yet (to me) the cpu seems like it needs to be sorted out somewhat, some patches sure are high and maybe they could of organized those better (this is not high compared to pulsar devs OMG) .

why doesn't the installer detect cpu types ?

I wish they had not has washed many of the pre-sets in delay, or at least if they did had some kind of feedback delay in there, or even left the delays alone a bit. (I need to spend more time)

also why to devs insist on putting logo's smack bang in the middle of the ui's ? not only that, but 1 fatal click launches that DAMN browser.

I will wait for this one to mature a bit more.

fwiw.

topaz wrote:

maybe they could of organized those better (this is not high compared to pulsar devs OMG) .

Not quite following you, Topaz, the Pulsar devs let you organize presets by either name or type, that's one of their best features. If you look at most Nord Lead banks, the presets are usually grouped near sounds of similar types.

ahh sorry, I actualy mean maybe they could of grouped higher cpu patches. nothing to do with pulsar I was just saying pulsar devs use lots of dsp.

im not knocking the product, just some suggestions that would make (me) maybe buy it.

Uncle E wrote:

topaz wrote: maybe they could of organized those better (this is not high compared to pulsar devs OMG) . Not quite following you, Topaz, the Pulsar devs let you organize presets by either name or type, that's one of their best features. If you look at most Nord Lead banks, the presets are usually grouped near sounds of similar types.

topaz wrote:

also why to devs insist on putting logo's smack bang in the middle of the ui's ? not only that, but 1 fatal click launches that DAMN browser.

The browser thing is there to get the fastest access in case you want to buy the plugin

constructive..

maybe an about menu out of the way of main controls, with a click here to order would be nicer.

I, as many others dont have NET at my studio.

Raul@discoDSP.com wrote:

topaz wrote: also why to devs insist on putting logo's smack bang in the middle of the ui's ? not only that, but 1 fatal click launches that DAMN browser. The browser thing is there to get the fastest access in case you want to buy the plugin

And I already bought it so at least move the button out of the center of the synth... please! Maybe a feature addition there??

dhrose wrote:

And I already bought it so at least move the button out of the center of the synth... please! Maybe a feature addition there??

We will think about removing the browser thinguie and leaving it in the right-click menu for next registered version.

I don't quite understand why presets would be incompatible from 1 version to another? I mean they're just knob settings are they not? But if you load an older preset into 1.2, you get all sorts of problems, for one it doesn't even recognize the knob settings, secondly your HOST freezes intermitently while trying to playback notes with this preset.

I would be quite outraged if I had massive tracks using 1.1 only to find out that I can't play them in 1.2. I strongly urge that you guys hackup some sort of compatibility with older presets, because anybody that's used < 1.2 for production will be in quite a shock to find out that their presets are useless.

Another thing I would urge is built in preset banks that you can save to, ala Synth 1. That's what makes Synth 1 so comfortable for the user, a slick customizable UI with quick access to saving presets.

For the user that asked about my CPU. I can't say I've noticed much denormalization, but I do usually tend to max out the CPU in my tracks I am not using Rambus, 2 sticks of Corsairs XMS PC3200 CL2 ram.

Good thing 1.1 was only out a week before 1.2 was released. It's a good point, though, I would hate to think that this might be a problem again in the future.