V-Machine

[AzureCrystal]

I would pay the $150 for an upgrade...

+3 +4 +5.......+N

The CPU upgrade will be around 2.3 times the current speed of the V-Machine, we had to wait for a new CPU to be available that can conform to our specifications of Wattage (heat output) used. It will also allow us to have upto 2gig or RAM on board. I will post some test figures as soon as i have them.(real world running VST plugins).

It will be in upgrade to any existing V-Machine (old or new)

Cost around $150-175 (USD)

we will do some final testing towards the end of July with a plan to release it in Sep-Oct.

That is all the information which I can honnestly give you.

[grapite]

I wont pay anything for something that should have been there in the first place and neither should any one else! did you ever hear the phrase, throwing good money after bad, this thing is vastly under powered to run any decent plugins, you know it, and we know it!

I can't believe you will ask people to spend more money on this! That's only half of the problem, the software was not fully developed right from the start and almost ridiculous to use at best.

The funny part is,for what this will inevitably cost after an upgrade, you can buy a fast laptop or even a used Receptor that will still blow this thing away and are extremely easier to operate and load with plugins.

The thing is, I'm really pissed at you people for bringing an unfinished product to the market place, but I'm pissed at myself as well for listening to other people, and not completely doing my homework by checking this thing out before I wasted my money. Can't wait for your big upgrade!

[jim smiley]

I wont pay anything for something that should have been there in the first place and neither should any one else! did you ever hear the phrase, throwing good money after bad, this thing is vastly under powered to run any decent plugins, you know it, and we know it!

I can't believe you will ask people to spend more money on this! That's only half of the problem, the software was not fully developed right from the start and almost ridiculous to use at best.

The funny part is,for what this will inevitably cost after an upgrade, you can buy a fast laptop or even a used Receptor that will still blow this thing away and are extremely easier to operate and load with plugins.

The thing is, I'm really pissed at you people for bringing an unfinished product to the market place, but I'm pissed at myself as well for listening to other people, and not completely doing my homework by checking this thing out before I wasted my money. Can't wait for your big upgrade!

Mine's running particularly nicely; and I'm rather happy with it. Want to send me yours? I wouldn't mind having two.

Yeh, granted the thing is unfinished, and a prick of a thing to set-up; there's no good piano vst's as yet; and sat in my closet for a few months; but after persevering with it, I'm really happy. I'm running the best sounds I have ever used live, for far cheaper than any other piece of gear. I got excited when it first came out; (and the hype on the website didn't help things,) that I would be able to throw out all my other keyboards. It's not a workstation, rather, it augments an existing rig by allowing a couple of choice plugins to be used to make up for the crappy hammond patches, or wurli patches, or whatever's lacking on your main board. Yes, I felt ripped off at the start. But I saw the specs before I bought it, and should have been wary of the processor. And i should have checked what plugins were working on it. However; for example; SampleLord running the Precision Sound Wurli, a free tremolo vst, and the B4II, hands down beats any hardware keyboard on the market, works perfectly, and for the size and reliability, nothing comes close.

[billw]

Mine's running particularly nicely; and I'm rather happy with it. Want to send me yours? I wouldn't mind having two.

Yeh, granted the thing is unfinished, and a prick of a thing to set-up; there's no good piano vst's as yet; and sat in my closet for a few months; but after persevering with it, I'm really happy. I'm running the best sounds I have ever used live, for far cheaper than any other piece of gear. I got excited when it first came out; (and the hype on the website didn't help things,) that I would be able to throw out all my other keyboards. It's not a workstation, rather, it augments an existing rig by allowing a couple of choice plugins to be used to make up for the crappy hammond patches, or wurli patches, or whatever's lacking on your main board. Yes, I felt ripped off at the start. But I saw the specs before I bought it, and should have been wary of the processor. And i should have checked what plugins were working on it. However; for example; SampleLord running the Precision Sound Wurli, a free tremolo vst, and the B4II, hands down beats any hardware keyboard on the market, works perfectly, and for the size and reliability, nothing comes close.

Our experiences are similar. The V-Machine sounds excellent and is a great supplement to some of the sounds that don't cut it in my Fantom G (like B3, synths, etc). I have loaded several plugins and they work really well. The only thing I'm really unhappy about is the -10dB outputs. I've resorted to using my Ebtech Line Level Shifter to boost the outputs before plugging it into the back of my Fantom.

[grapite]

That's fine for you, and I'm glad you get use out of it that way, not for me and the majority of others who feel we have been taken. I didn't buy this to run sample lord with sound fonts, bought it to run high end multiple vsti instruments which it does not, and b4II with some reverb almost make this thing choke by itself! vb3 is a much better choice for being lighter on the processor, but it is a personal preference.

To run this with weighted vsti's (ones with sample files) it seems you will have to always run an external drive, kind of defeats the purpose. My old 1.6 gig laptop with audio midi interface, plus Cantabile, was still cheaper and runs circles around the v-machine all day, plus I can run multiple vsti's at the same time for nice combi's, can't do that with the v-machine.

The bottom line is, I wanted this to work as bad as everyone else did, it just doesn't, they really should have waited until the software was complete enough to actually be used by someone other than a programmer, and the processor should have been tested more with tougher vsti's like kontakt for example. Like I said, can't wait for the big upgrade!

Regards

[UltraJv]

That's fine for you, and I'm glad you get use out of it that way, not for me and the majority of others who feel we have been taken. I didn't buy this to run sample lord with sound fonts, bought it to run high end multiple vsti instruments which it does not, and b4II with some reverb almost make this thing choke by itself! vb3 is a much better choice for being lighter on the processor, but it is a personal preference.

To run this with weighted vsti's (ones with sample files) it seems you will have to always run an external drive, kind of defeats the purpose. My old 1.6 gig laptop with audio midi interface, plus Cantabile, was still cheaper and runs circles around the v-machine all day, plus I can run multiple vsti's at the same time for nice combi's, can't do that with the v-machine.

The bottom line is, I wanted this to work as bad as everyone else did, it just doesn't, they really should have waited until the software was complete enough to actually be used by someone other than a programmer, and the processor should have been tested more with tougher vsti's like kontakt for example. Like I said, can't wait for the big upgrade!

Regards

Some users say the same of Receptor - Sell it or bin it. move on. Dont upgrade, lesson learnt.

[grapite]

Some users say the same of Receptor - Sell it or bin it. move on. Dont upgrade, lesson learnt.



We're talking about the v-machine here, when you have something constructive to say feel free to chime in, otherwise please keep your statements about me or what I should do to yourself.

[jim smiley]

b4II with some reverb almost make this thing choke by itself!
Regards

I definately agree with you on a number of issues. SM Pro Audio really stuffed up by by having a new, niche market all to themselves, but putting out a fairly average product, when a really great one could have been achieved. We all can picture a "perfect" VSTi player; we know what it should be able to do. And the days of Roland, Korg, Yamaha etc's monopoly will be numbered very soon unless they jump on the VST bandwagon - vst players like the v machine (with deficiencies ironed out) will be the main choice in a couple of years; and hopefully the era of the $4000 workstation that doesn't quite make it in certain departments will be over.

In Sm Pro Audio's case; they are a tiny company that make useful, inexpensive accessories and studio gear. And the V-machine should have also been marketed as such; because it is actually quite good value for money when thought of as such - In the world of keyboards, we're getting royally screwed by some of the crap that's out there, and the v-machine is far from the worst culprit. I'd take it over a Roland Fantom S, or an M-audio controller anyday.

In terms of B4II choking; sounds like something weird's going on - Are you using some crazy convulution reverb with it? It runs seamlessly at the lowest buffer setting, with a fairly small cpu load for me. But yes, granted, I'm not trying to run combi's on it.
Cheers

[EvilDragon]

VB3 is better than B4(-II) by a large margin, and most people will tell you that. Still, I agree with the personal preference thing.

You can pry open your V-Machine and put a larger hard drive inside, so you don't need to hook external drives. Granted that SSDs are expensive still, but when they become cheaper, it won't be a problem to put a 256 or 512 GB SSD inside the V-Machine. The only thing that's gonna slow it down is the crappy old IDE interface! I will never understand why they didn't go SATA. Never.

And also, it seems to me that a better choice for you, graphite, would be V-Rack. So sell your V-Machine and wait for that one

[grapite]

Hi Jim,
Never liked the reverb that was in the b4II, just tried to run gsi spring type 4, with ok results, but the unit seemed to choke a bit, so had to go back to the b4II reverb with pretty good results. I think I will stick with the vb3 though, doesn't make the unit work so hard.

Regards

[grapite]

VB3 is better than B4(-II) by a large margin, and most people will tell you that. Still, I agree with the personal preference thing.

You can pry open your V-Machine and put a larger hard drive inside, so you don't need to hook external drives. Granted that SSDs are expensive still, but when they become cheaper, it won't be a problem to put a 256 or 512 GB SSD inside the V-Machine. The only thing that's gonna slow it down is the crappy old IDE interface! I will never understand why they didn't go SATA. Never.

And also, it seems to me that a better choice for you, graphite, would be V-Rack. So sell your V-Machine and wait for that one

I think you may be right, the power of the rack unit unit may be the answer, hopefully the software will be good to go as well! I'm not quite ready to through in the towel yet.

Regards

[Tony Ostinato]

as far as im aware of, and absolutely feel free to correct me if i'm wrong, all products are underpowered and unfinished, aren't they?

[MatthewSkinner]

I will never understand why they didn't go SATA. Never.

The answer to that is very simple as it does not matter one little bit.

Most SSD sold in shops and even more so low priced flash can not sustain more than 100mb per second, the key here is SUSTAINED transfers. You would get zero performance increase in using sata over the ata133 connection which is used simply because no common drives can sustain data rates above IDE bandwidth! Using IDE which can transfer at 133mb/s with drives which are much slower than 133mb does not effect performance.

Compact flash is one of the cheapest and most commonly available flash storage formats, you can re-wire the pins and connect compact flash directly to IDE ports.
More on this at the bottom of this page.
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... start=1710

1. Cheaper flash drives use ide.
2. 44pin ide carries the power so only 1 cable is needed. Sata needs two cables.
3. Sata would give zero performance increases in real world situations.
4. Even a USB memory stick is fast enough. I am yet to find a plugin which will not run off a $6 usb memory stick.

You can download HD tach to see how fast your drives and USB stick are...

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/in ... est=HdTach

It will draw a graph to show you how fast your sata or usb drives really are in real life.

[delafuerte]

In conclusion Matthew....we still are here waiting for this CPU upgrade, FINALLY september has come!

Many users like me consider this machine highly underpowered and there is a general needing of a soft update (the last was six month ago!!!)

And this software is years far away from something that we could call "thatsok".

I'm really tired also becouse the good news is coming just from other soft house (truepianos, SonicProjects....).

So I'm gonna take a really good decision I think...I wait until the end of october then, if nothing happens, I'll send my machine and will buy a used receptor...and will forget SMPRO for the rest of my life

[MatthewSkinner]

I am not able to mention much on this topic especially release dates as we are dealing with a new cpu which has only just become available on the market. These sorts of things are hard to predict and release dates are out of our control when we have to wait for a CPU to be released before we can test.

Once we have done some real world testing with the new cpu actually inside a v-machine exactly as the released kit will be, then we will publish some news on what can be expected running real world plugins. After this it will take some time to then mass produce the upgrade kit, distribute it and train our distributors on how to install them.

A new software release is going to be made soon, as it is under going final internal testing stages at the moment and will be released the moment that we feel it is bug free and a better experience to use then the current software. Because of the massive changes that have been made to the basic opperation of the software a manual and supporting documents need to be completely re-written as well.

A big thank you to the end users who have stood up for the v-machine in the last few posts, as the unit does work very well for a lot of plugins and is a useful device when used as it was intended to be used. Some people will require more power and that is why the V-Rack is being developed to suit a different type of user and market.

V-Machine is best for single plugin use, and is aimed at low cost and a very small size. It has extra plugin slots not to run multiple plugins at the same time, but to load multiple plugins so that loading times can be reduced.

V-rack is a larger and more costly and powerful unit than the V-Machine and is designed to run multiple plugins at the same time. It is silly to compare a V-machine to a laptop or a competing product when they are designed and aimed at different markets. The hidden concept and opperation of a V-Machine is very different to a laptop as everytime you turn on a v-machine the opperating system is dumped and freshly installed and all available plugins are also re-installed during power up. You can instantly reverse any changes that are made by bad or buggy plugins which slow down or effect stability unlike a latop which may require yearly or more formats and re-installs to keep it running smoothly. The V-Machine can have its entire set of plugins removed and new ones installed in as simple a process as removing a usb stick and plugging in a new one.

Eventually it may be possible if we do the development to go out and buy a usb soundcard and plug it into the v-machine to give you +4db XLR outputs for stage use, or one with a digital output for studio use. Options and possibilities are endless to tailor it to your exact needs.

The idea is low cost to buy a unit to get started, and then you can upgrade the basic unit to be what your after.

Hopefully that gives you something to be as excited as I am about the product as the V-Machine works great and the future releases about to be made just make it even better.