GPU Delay - A delay plugin running on a graphics card

[moonlite]

well i wouldnt be suprised, but mpact2 is not a "graphics card" , a popular misconception, its a multimedia card with built in support for audio processing.

obviously there is raging interest, just look at this thread.

actually, the mpact2 seems to be just the name of a processor that was put on several different boards. even some mainboards had it.

[moonlite]

well i wouldnt be suprised, but mpact2 is not a "graphics card" , a popular misconception, its a multimedia card with built in support for audio processing...

True, but i've got a feeling that it's the graphic processing side of the card that gave it it's DSP power, afterall it's nearly ten years old now and I can't imagine the audio capability being all that impressive, anyway, ten years on and the graphics procesors we're usin now are a heck of a lot more powerfull (Chromatic research, who made the mpact2 were bought out by ATI) and I for one wouldn't mind being able to utilize them for audio, and UA really need to do something about upping their processing power soon

what really creeps me out is that uad are that ready to just piss in the eye of the consumer (i mean, are we surrounded with cases like this without knowing it? that's really creepy imho.) and keep the prices up for such ancient technology. do they even HAVE a plan to upgrade the hardware they sell, or are they just going to let people buy those cards for the next 10 years without any shame?

i mean, if their product development would be even half as fast as the one on the gpu side, uad cards would have TENS or even HUANDREDS of times more power than they have now, right? i know that the market is virtually nonexistant compared to the gpu market. that's why i said HALF. that's still not excuse enough imho.

[moonlite]

well i wouldnt be suprised, but mpact2 is not a "graphics card" , a popular misconception, its a multimedia card with built in support for audio processing.

obviously there is raging interest, just look at this thread.

actually, the mpact2 seems to be just the name of a processor that was put on several different boards. even some mainboards had it.

seems that the name appears almost always in conjunction with dvd abilities on some card/device .. it seems that the mpact2 processor is just a simple dvd decoder processor?

THAT technology should be absolutely dirt-cheap nowdays!

[oblagon]

what really creeps me out is that uad are that ready to just piss in the eye of the consumer (i mean, are we surrounded with cases like this without knowing it? that's really creepy imho.) and keep the prices up for such ancient technology. do they even HAVE a plan to upgrade the hardware they sell, or are they just going to let people buy those cards for the next 10 years without any shame?

Their plan was to upgrade pci to pci express. I don't think that beefing up the dsp on those cards is possible.

[moonlite]

@aleksey and nils

i don't understand why some people are so concerned about that the plugins wouldn't work on all cards etc .. i myself see no problem at all about buying a one specific high-end gfx-card if it was the only one that would run a multitude of great plugins without troubling the cpu too much. support for one card would be enough, and it doesn't even seem that we have to restrict ourselves only to one specific model, so what's the problem?

i mean, people buy uad cards. what else can they do with those?

[moonlite]

what really creeps me out is that uad are that ready to just piss in the eye of the consumer (i mean, are we surrounded with cases like this without knowing it? that's really creepy imho.) and keep the prices up for such ancient technology. do they even HAVE a plan to upgrade the hardware they sell, or are they just going to let people buy those cards for the next 10 years without any shame?

Their plan was to upgrade pci to pci express.:hihi: I don't think that beefing up the dsp on those cards is possible.

i mean that they should upgrade their whole technology .. use modern dsp processors and even re-design the cards if necessary.

of course old customers wouldn't bee that happy, but it's still better than to use 10-year-old technology and sell it for the price of high-tech .. AND there /are/ ways to compensate some to the old customers, too ..

[akisd28]

...if you can find it (the graphics card, which looks identical to the UAD-1)and install the drivers apparently you can run the plu-ins on it

has this actually been confirmed??

You could do that up to a specific version of the driver; not any more.

so you've actually converted an old mpact2 card into a UAD card?

No. AFAIK, other people had.

[todd_r]

Farlight have just released a new system (cc-1) that wipes the floor with pro-tools powerwise, and they are offering the technology to other manufacturers to develop on, they should whack their plugs onto one of these buggers

http://www.fairlightau.com/default_content.html

[Aleksey Vaneev]

i don't understand why some people are so concerned about that the plugins wouldn't work on all cards etc ..

I'm not as much concerned about this. It is just a fact that older hardware stops working after 5-7 years of general progress in the field.

My concerns are:

1. A bit problematic integration with CPU-side host audio application (plug-in has to copy data to/from audio program, and that produces latency in real-time environment).
2. Problematic audio processing code development. I won't argue if this is possible or not, on GPU, but complex plug-ins require standardized 'building blocks' procedures that can be applied over the audio data in sequence, including complex sequences (in case of compressor, for example, which initially takes one input, produces timing (compression) signal, which is then combined with the input - this is two standard blocks one taking one input, and the other taking two inputs). And this all should work in various channel grouping configurations, including surround sound. I've achieved all this with the latest Voxengo development, and I'm happy, but I'm not sure I can achieve all this coding for GPU or DSP card, and so I'm not as happy, while coding 'simple' plug-ins is not what I have on my mind.
3. Economics of using GPU. As I've replied earlier, I do not see a reason to unload CPU you paid money for. This was OK 5 years back from now when CPU power was just enough to run sequencer without glitches. But now CPU became a really powerful device.

Of course, I do not talk about audio effects themselves - they can, of course, make ANY hardware's existence legitimate. But do not be so defensive, because we all know these effects COULD run on CPU.

Another 'business' side of things that makes me sad is that DSP card developers are NOT interested in increasing power of their cards, because otherwise nobody will be buying more than 1 card. So, I'm not sure why somebody defends such state of things. We live in changing (and bitch) world, and we see when somebody does not offer what they could for the money we pay.

[Uncle E]

what really creeps me out is that uad are that ready to just piss in the eye of the consumer (i mean, are we surrounded with cases like this without knowing it? that's really creepy imho.) and keep the prices up for such ancient technology. do they even HAVE a plan to upgrade the hardware they sell, or are they just going to let people buy those cards for the next 10 years without any shame?

Universal Audio is a software company first (originally called Kind of Loud) that happens to sell a hardware card to run their software on. It really isn't UA's MO to create new cards, they opt instead to develop more on the software side, just as ATI is focused on developing hardware over software. Besides, how do you know UA isn't already working on a replacement product?

[juha_p]

Out of the subject as couple of above posts too but, as a low budged powerful DSP card, wouldn't X-Fi offer needed hardware for this type developement already (CPU usage free processing)?
http://us.creative.com/products/categor ... tegory=208

W/ older SB cards + kX drivers, it's quite easy to program hardware effects/instruments - http://www.driverheaven.net/forumdisplay.php?f=72

Even w/ original Creative ASIO drivers + EAX + CMSS enabled, it's possible to have quite a lot of effects and spatial processing w/o need of CPU.


Juha

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Out of the subject as couple of above posts too but, as a low budged powerful DSP card, wouldn't X-Fi offer needed hardware for this type developement already (CPU usage free processing)?
http://us.creative.com/products/categor ... tegory=208

W/ older SB cards + kX drivers, it's quite easy to program hardware effects/instruments - http://www.driverheaven.net/forumdisplay.php?f=72

Even w/ original Creative ASIO drivers + EAX + CMSS enabled, it's possible to have quite a lot of effects and spatial processing w/o need of CPU.

Indeed, there are a lot of possibilities to outboard FX processing, but GPU processing is more interesting, because graphics cards are widely available.

[Spaceman Sounds]

Uad should really let us have the option of offloading some of the plugins to native cpu. I know they are developed using normal cpu, so why not let them be available to those with 4 cards?

I find it hard to believe that it would chew up a 2 x 2.5ghz conroe trying to run say 4 more 1176's or even 4 x 1073 neve's.

Would be nice to have it as an option.

[Nils Schneider]

Sorry, but everyone that thinks it's easy to run a UAD plug, PoCo plug or GPU plug on an native CPU just by a simple switch: this is WRONG!

You also cannot play a CD on a vinyl player, the result may be the same, but the source is totally different. You have a completely other architecture, you even have to think different on how to come up with a solution for effect X. So a "CPU fallback" would mean that you have to think about and code an effect twice!

And for all those that mean that GPU processing isn't a good thing: Just don't use the plugins

[csl]

@aleksey and nils

i don't understand why some people are so concerned about that the plugins wouldn't work on all cards etc .. i myself see no problem at all about buying a one specific high-end gfx-card if it was the only one that would run a multitude of great plugins without troubling the cpu too much. support for one card would be enough, and it doesn't even seem that we have to restrict ourselves only to one specific model, so what's the problem?

i mean, people buy uad cards. what else can they do with those?

People buy UAD-1 cards because UA, as a music tech company, have secured thousands of units especially for this use, relying upon it as a major source of income on a long-term basis. If we designate a particular consumer graphics card as the only card to use, we're in danger of limiting the shelf life of the product, as we all know how fast the graphics card market moves. Even now after a couple of years of PCIe, it's difficult to find a high end AGP card, nevermind one specific model. Who knows what the industry will do to PCIe a couple of years down the line.

Unless developers are willing to rewrite every other year to keep up with consumer products, tying us up to specific cards doesn't make sense in the longer run. But then folks can say that about DSP cards in general. As long as there's a robust solution that adheres to whatever shader standard (I don't know, I haven't a clue about gfx stuff) we should be able to buy cards across the series without too much problems, with future models being backwards compatible. This may tie us to either ATI or nV, but that's better than guaranteeing use on one specific card for a short amount of time.