Hardware DSP vs pure software plugins?

[maleaco]

Where would one buy one of these devices for the best price?

[mkdr]

Building digital outboard synths is bad for many reasons. 1) They are bad for environment: they use materials unnecessarily 2)....

1) How many synths do you think are made compared to cars being made and planes being used to take you on nice holidays? How many old computers use plastics only to end up in landfills after a very short time? My Creamware DSP cards have served me well for nearly 12 years and are still going, probably longer than most people's fridges and washing machines.....

Haha.. so true. I've binned so many computers(and related hw) over the years and i still use my 1995 Nord Lead and 1991 TG77 synths.. If i've had those as software i would've needed even more processing power, more computers and more hazardous materials they contain! Case closed on the environmental aspects!!


+ there still isn't anything in software that could rival the for example the ancient Nord Lead.

[Syncretia]

they're not just computers in a box - DSPs are dedicated to one task - your CPU is trying to be a word processor, games machine and porn viewer as well as an audio machine.

Yeah, as I said, outboard synths used to "be able to do specialised stuff that your computer was too slow to do". Outboard synths have things like a GPU which can be dedicated to one task rather than do many different tasks. It's similar to how you need to buy a fast video card to play the latest games. In a sense it's more efficient. This used to be a really big issue about 10 years ago. Now, most computers are more than powerful enough for this stuff. A quad core CPU can handle just about anything these days. Ask yourself this: are you constantly finding that your tracks are using too much CPU? Have you tried dithering some of your tracks down to audio so that the CPU doesn't have to work too hard? Have you got a decent CPU?

Anyway, it's probably helpful to think of why outboard digital synths exist. I don't know about the US, but in Japan, Roland has massive stores that sell nothing but keyboards. When the digital revolution occurred, they didn't simply say "Oh, ok, we'll port all our keyboards in to one software synth, close all our stores and watch people pirate what used to be much treasured physical objects". They knew that they had to replace what was there with something else. And, at the same time musicians had not really caught on to the idea of using a computer to make music. So, we got a slew of manufacturers doing the same thing. Even now, new hardware synths are being built. The main reason why it keeps on happening now is that companies make more money from hardware synths than software ones. It's that simple.

I'm not saying that these synths don't sound good. Perhaps some of them are actually superior to software synths. However, it is quite disgusting that the manufacturers force people in to buying physical hardware that people shouldn't need. With the exception of controllers and analog equipment, we should be moving to a hardware-less future. Even analog is pretty close to being redundant now with VA becoming so good.

[Mr Arkadin]

I'm not saying that these synths don't sound good. Perhaps some of them are actually superior to software synths. However, it is quite disgusting that the manufacturers force people in to buying physical hardware that people shouldn't need. With the exception of controllers and analog equipment, we should be moving to a hardware-less future. Even analog is pretty close to being redundant now with VA becoming so good.

Wow - you have a lop-sided view of the world. Do the manufacturers of hardware have a gun to your head forcing you to buy their kit? No. So how is that 'disgusting'. If you don't want their hardware don't buy it. How do you know that people don't need hardware? Are you the government telling me how I should run my life? Why should we be moving to a hardware-less future?

Oh because it's good for the environment? What a laugh. Shame all that software has to run on a computer using three fans, components that are outdated in three years by the software developers who love the planet so much they change the OS every few years to make sure you have to change your hardware to keep up. If you want disgusting that's where the shame lies. Oh, and those computers still need electricity to run on.

I have analogue synths that are over thirty years old - how's that for helping the environment? Are you still using a thirty year old computer? And no, VA is not as good as analogue. Do you actually own any analogue?

Tell me, do you own a car? If so, have you owned the same one for over thirty years?

The best selling synth of all time (M1) managed in the order of 250,000 units - this is when no software solutions existed. Do you think synth manufacturers are selling anything like that many these days? Oh and a lot of those M1's are still being happily used (or recycled would be another way to think of it).

Wow, the synth industry as the evil world-polluter, who'da thunk it? Forget cars, planes, power stations, nuclear tests, mercury dumping in the sea, China's industries etc. It was staring us in the face all the time, the axis of evil was Roland, Moog, Korg, Yamaha etc. Burn down their factories (well dismantle them slowly, because burning would be bad for the envirnoment, m'kay).

[lfm]

However, it is quite disgusting that the manufacturers force people in to buying physical hardware that people shouldn't need. With the exception of controllers and analog equipment, we should be moving to a hardware-less future. Even analog is pretty close to being redundant now with VA becoming so good.

I think hardware synths exist due to the demand for musicians performing live. They are built robust and can take a lot of abuse before breaking.

Computers are not that reliable - yet. You have no time to reboot a computer during a live session because it freezes.

So all hardware are evil - I don't think so. It's musical instruments.

And nowadays since piracy is widely spread musicians/artists perform more live to make a living doing what they love the most. So demand for hardware instruments to perform live are increasing.

[Burillo]

And DSP systems are more than just about synths, they can be whole environments including mixung desks and effects and routing. And no, they're not just computers in a box - DSPs are dedicated to one task - your CPU is trying to be a word processor, games machine and porn viewer as well as an audio machine.

if i was given a penny every time i heard this...

funny thing is this argument is false on so many levels. Our CPU is a general purpose processing unit. "General purpose" doesn't mean "nothing in particular", it means "everything and the kitchen sink". It can literally do everything. All software is math. It doesn't matter if this math produces a word processor or an audio plugin. It's still math.

Do you know why your computer cannot run games without a GPU? Truth is - it can. It perfectly can! It just will be slow as hell, because a GPU is so much more powerful than CPU in certain specialized tasks, but CPU absolutely can run games. It's the other way around, actually - GPU can't do everything a CPU can do, because it's a specialized unit geared towards massive parallelism and graphics-specific tasks. Also, recently with technologies like CUDA/OpenCL GPU's can be used as very fast and (mostly) general purpose processing units, but CPU is still universal while a GPU is geared towards parallelism. It doesn't mean GPU can do things CPU can't, it just means that GPU does them faster.

And same thing for DSP cards. As has been said earlier, this used to be justified long time ago when CPU's weren't so powerful and running an OS put an unbearable strain on the system already, but this is no longer the case. Hell, i can run a project with tens of channels with tens of FX on each of them and still browse the net and maybe watch a movie. That means CPU is general purpose enough to do everything i throw at it, and it is fast enough to do it without hickups.

That being said, there can be reasons to buy hardware DSP and synths. If you like the sound and you can't replicate it with any other software - why not?

[Mr Arkadin]

Do you know why your computer cannot run games without a GPU? Truth is - it can. It perfectly can! It just will be slow as hell, because a GPU is so much more powerful than CPU in certain specialized tasks, but CPU absolutely can run games. It's the other way around, actually - GPU can't do everything a CPU can do, because it's a specialized unit geared towards massive parallelism and graphics-specific tasks. Also, recently with technologies like CUDA/OpenCL GPU's can be used as very fast and (mostly) general purpose processing units, but CPU is still universal while a GPU is geared towards parallelism. It doesn't mean GPU can do things CPU can't, it just means that GPU does them faster.

Doesn't that strengthen the case for DSP? You just said a dedicated GPU will make the sytem run faster than a CPU on its own. You don't get rid of the GPU because in theory the CPU can do it all do you? Likewise I don't get rid of my DSP (in fact I only recently bought more) just because in theory the CPU can do what my XITE-1 can do. I think currebt CPUs would run very slowly trying to run the Scope/XITE environment and all it plug-ins.

My DSP can't do what a CPU does sure - but I'm not bothered that my XITE-1 can't run Windows.

And same thing for DSP cards. [...] this used to be justified long time ago when CPU's weren't so powerful and running an OS put an unbearable strain on the system already, but this is no longer the case.

If I had a penny for every time someone said this...

For me it's nothing to do with CPU overhead - it's about flexibility and sound foremost. If native can ever do what my XITE-1 box can do I will jump at it. However to say that CPU can do what DSP does, in theory yes it can, no argument from me there, but I have yet to hear a Minimoog emultion as good as Minimax in native. In theory it should be possible, but it just hasn't been done in my opinion.

[Burillo]

Doesn't that strengthen the case for DSP? You just said a dedicated GPU will make the sytem run faster than a CPU on its own. You don't get rid of the GPU because in theory the CPU can do it all do you? Likewise I don't get rid of my DSP (in fact I only recently bought more) just because in theory the CPU can do what my XITE-1 can do. I think currebt CPUs would run very slowly trying to run the Scope/XITE environment and all it plug-ins.

My DSP can't do what a CPU does sure - but I'm not bothered that my XITE-1 can't run Windows.

Not really. Take a look at the specs of your DSP card. What's the CPU there? Probably some kind of RISC/ARM/8086-derived thingie with up to 1GHz, maybe dual core. What's an i7? A quad-core CPU with 2GHz per core, coupled with HyperThreading and all these instruction sets like SSEx and AVXx. Do you *really* think a decent CPU like i7 won't be able to run all your Scope/XITE stuff?

Also, keep in mind that the GPU example in this case is not entirely valid (not to mention GPU's are 50+ core beasts, which isn't the case with DSP cards). Graphics can be parallelized to a great extent (which is why they have assload of cores), DSP for the most part can't, so DSP cards are a lot closer to general purpose CPU's - and some even *are* general purpose CPU's, just with specialized OS and software on them.

The DSP only helps when you have a lot of processing going on. Other than that, native processing can do the same.

If I had a penny for every time someone said this...

For me it's nothing to do with CPU overhead - it's about flexibility and sound foremost. If native can ever do what my XITE-1 box can do I will jump at it. However to say that CPU can do what DSP does, in theory yes it can, no argument from me there, but I have yet to hear a Minimoog emultion as good as Minimax in native. In theory it should be possible, but it just hasn't been done in my opinion.

Ah, but that's not the problem with CPU being general-purpose either - it's just the quality of algorithms, which comes down to the developer talent and expertise, really. All this crap about "UAD can handle more processing load than ordinary CPU and thus algorithms can be made better" is bullshit. They just have more money to attract decent developers and DSP coders to work on their products.

So, as i said earlier - if you like the sound of it, why not, no argument from me. Just keep in mind that it's not the DSP that counts, and the same can and will be achieved in native. Maybe in a few years, maybe tomorrow, maybe it's already there and you just missed it.

As a glaring example - take commercial amp simulations of 6-7 years ago (both software and hardware), and today's free amp simulators. The freebies we have today blow the kings of yesteryear out of the water. Today we have free Variety of Sound plugins that can put to shame whatever was the hottest thing back in the day. Progress never stops.

[UltraJv]

Just to add to the fun, PCs already have a dedicated DSP chip onboard. The graphics card/GPU. There is some software around that already uses this for reverbs etc :


http://www.liquidsonics.com/software_reverberate_le.htm

http://www.acustica-audio.com/index.php ... Itemid=123

http://gpuimpulsereverb.de/?tag=cuda

[Mr Arkadin]

Not really. Take a look at the specs of your DSP card. What's the CPU there? Probably some kind of RISC/ARM/8086-derived thingie with up to 1GHz, maybe dual core. What's an i7? A quad-core CPU with 2GHz per core. Do you *really* think a decent CPU like i7 won't be able to run all your Scope/XITE stuff?

No CPU or dual cores here - all Sharc DSPs: 6x60MHz DSPs for backward compatibilty and 12x333Mhz DSPs for more power than before, hence it's not really comparable to a computer, which was what my original statement was about. I doubt many computers have such an odd spec and as can be seen, they're not even in the Ghz range, yet are amazingly powerful - due in part to the algorithm programming no doubt.

So, as i said earlier - if you like the sound of it, why not, no argument from me. Just keep in mind that it's not the DSP that counts, and the same can and will be achieved in native. Maybe in a few years, maybe tomorrow, maybe it's already there and you just missed it.

Trust me, I certainly don't think DSPs have 'a sound' .

I have definitely not 'missed it' arriving in a native platform. I think most of us would have heard about something like Scope in native in a news announcement somewhere. Hasn't happened yet (but as you say, maybe one day).

I don't give a Monkey's what makes the sound (as you say, it's all maths), but I do care about my workflow and at the moment that workflow happens to only exist on DSPs so I use them purely because that's where that platform exists. In 12 years I have yet to see a comparable native solution. Maybe the CPU power isn't there yet. Maybe the programmers aren't there. Maybe no-one in native-land thinks it would be worth it. Who knows? All I do know is that it isn't there.

I also use analogue and digital hardware, as well as native solutions just so you're aware I'm no DSP snob or something.

Oh and to Syncretia, I play guitars made of wood. They chopped down trees to make them.

[Burillo]

I wasn't implying you were a snob or anything (quite on the contrary, actually), it's just common misconception that DSP cards somehow magically make everything better. Oh, and they are "amazingly powerful" because those cores do little other than audio processing. If you run your CPU for audio only (e.g. code everything in assembly/low-level C and run it on a small footprint realtime OS), you'd be amazed how much power you can squeeze out of even modest hardware, let alone top of the line CPU's.

You like your workflow with DSP cards, you like the sound of the stuff in there - balls to you, i understand and respect that. I'm not saying DSP cards suck, i'm just saying that there's really no need for them and they provide no benefit aside from offloading some processing and providing different plugins that you might or might not like. If you remember, what had me started in this thread was the statement about how DSP cards are specialized audio processing units and thus can do a better job than a "CPU that tries to be a word processor and a porn viewer".

[Mr Arkadin]

Oh, and they are "amazingly powerful" because those cores do little other than audio processing. If you run your CPU for audio only (e.g. code everything in assembly/low-level C and run it on a small footprint realtime OS), you'd be amazed how much power you can squeeze out of even modest hardware, let alone top of the line CPU's.

So can we agree that although CPUs have the power, because the code written for them has to work within a general use OS (say Windows) rather than being a low level code that DSPs use that actually there is still good reason to use DSPs?

If I could boot a computer to use Scope and nothing else (well maybe also the porn viewer) then I would be a happy bunny.

[mkdr]

No CPU or dual cores here - all Sharc DSPs: 6x60MHz DSPs for backward compatibilty and 12x333Mhz DSPs for more power than before, hence it's not really comparable to a computer, which was what my original statement was about.

Haha! Lol
That's so much faster than current cpu chips. I7 trails far behind an Xite rig. Not that it matters though, because, like mentioned before, for example the synth algos on it are superb.



But sure, you can do everything with Omnisphere too.

[UltraJv]

Oh, and they are "amazingly powerful" because those cores do little other than audio processing. If you run your CPU for audio only (e.g. code everything in assembly/low-level C and run it on a small footprint realtime OS), you'd be amazed how much power you can squeeze out of even modest hardware, let alone top of the line CPU's.

So can we agree that although CPUs have the power, because the code written for them has to work within a general use OS (say Windows) rather than being a low level code that DSPs use that actually there is still good reason to use DSPs?

If I could boot a computer to use Scope and nothing else (well maybe also the porn viewer) then I would be a happy bunny.

Modern operating systems these days take up RAM more than CPU. If you look at whats being used, its less than 1% while idling - thats without any tweaking. You can of course make a highly tweaked OS but IMHO its just not worth it.

[lfm]

If you remember, what had me started in this thread was the statement about how DSP cards are specialized audio processing units and thus can do a better job than a "CPU that tries to be a word processor and a porn viewer".

But aren't there certain shortcuts developers use not to make plugins too cpu-heavy?

Not allowing too long delay loops, and not that many - as you could do with a hardwarebased DSP - distributing the load to other cpu. Thinking of reverbs could be made much higher quality with hardware DSP.

The obvious disadvantage with hardware DSP is maybe that it might be obsolete unless drivers are upgrades for each new OS-version and new technology for buses in computers etc.

PCI-based slots are not so common anymore, to mention one thing.