KVR Audio

reprznt · Post by **reprznt** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:11 pm

I have seen the Korg Oasys on ebay for 250-300$. is that a better value then getting the powercore element for $500? Also, will Oasys work with Windows XP? My concern would be purchasing the Oasys and it not working with a current OS. Any insight on DSP cards is appreciated

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:45 pm

The Korg will definitely not work in XP, in fact i don't think it went past Win98. A better DSP option would be a CreamWare SCOPE card. The Korg pretty much just does synths, whereas the UAD and Powercore pretty much do just effects, whilst the SCOPE has loads of both.

Mr A

PS. This probably should have been posted in the Hardware section.

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:49 pm

I have an Oasys working fine in Win ME, no problem. It will NOT work on Win2k or XP though.

As for better 'value', that's a perception of what you want/need out of a DSP card. I already have a UAD-1, a Pulsar II, and an Oasys. I would like a Powercore as well. They all offer their own strengths.

Devon

reprznt · Post by **reprznt** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:51 pm

I have an old windows 98 machine at home... 750mhz, 256mg ram

would that be suitable to use the oasys in?

I am looking to use one of my older cpu's as a dedicated synthesizer per se....

thanks

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:57 pm

Yup. Mine is a 1ghz Intel with 512 megs. Works perfectly. Minimum spec for it is like Pentium II 233 if I remember correctly.

Devon

Mr Arkadin · Post by **Mr Arkadin** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 9:58 pm

That should do nicely if you're happy keeping it Win98. Check out Zarg Music, which is John Bowen (one of the original developers of the Prophet 5 and Pro One synths from yesteryear) as he still does the occasional Oasys synth (he also does blinding synths for SCOPE too).

DevonB · Post by **DevonB** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:05 pm

I treat my WinME box like it's another keyboard now. It's going to do Oasys and nothing else.

Devon

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Tue Jul 27, 2004 10:45 pm

Its effects aren't on the level of Powercore, UAD-1, or even Pulsar/Scope but the Oasys has some brilliant sounding synths on it (it's still the best thing Korg's done in the past 20 years, IMO). For XP-compatibility, however, you'd really do better looking at an E-mu 1212M or a used Pulsar 1.

SecondSkin · Post by **SecondSkin** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:23 am

Wasn't their Z1 daughtercard option for the oasys? That would definitely be worth the price of admission...

Mark

Scotty · Post by **Scotty** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:45 am

The Oasys is will work in ME or 9S or mac OS up to 9.2.2. It will not work in XP or OS X and Korg will not releaes drivers for it. They lost their shirts on this card and only sold 2000 units. It was way ahead of its time and there is nothing out there currently that is as flexible. (ASIO, 12 ins and outs , synths and efx and a free synth.efx developement kit (Mac OS only)if you sign a NDA .

It does a lot more than just synths in fact the effects are amazing and the catalog is extensive. I own two cards. I have one in a PC and one in mac. I have my main day on XP with emu1212m and litepipe the Oasys cards into the digital mixer. It is a powerful card. Just two days ago, a bunch of new distorion and filters were released for free by Rupert Nixon called INcarnate and Tools. The Oasys interface is ot elegant in terms of how it commuicates with your daw but it is very flexible and uses streams from your asio DAW to send audio to it. Their are some amazing filter effects (O-Mods) which have to heard and the top of the line reverbs are also very good with more knobs to twist then you'll have time for.

One went for $210.00 U.S. The other day, a steal at that price. A 300 mhz or better machine will do the trick.

Really I think this is a great buy and if you have a second box on 98Se. To be honest I could be running 98Se on my main daw down but I wanted to get my head around Cubase SX so I installed the Oasys into another machine and stuck in an emu1212m.

Scott Harris

Scotty · Post by **Scotty** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 2:58 am

The UAD does the mastering and compression effects extremely well. The Oasys has some basic bread and butter efx which can't compare to the UAD but the latest filters and free addons push the card into new territory. I own a UAD as well. I like the O-Verb as much as the Real Verb on most applications. It sounds better than my DP/4 + .

The latest addons are very unique and I'd own one for the O-Mods filters by Dan Phillips just for that reason alone.

I did some sound design for Harm Visser who released a Physical Modelling library for the Oasys and he is now doing the same for the Tassman. I also spent a lot of time with Norsez prototyping his Oasys synths as well and released two Bundles of programs (about 800 sounds). I know the card well. To anyone who doesn't mind a somewhat kludgy interface and who does more than preset surf you will find this card to be quite special.
Scott Harris

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 4:02 am

SecondSkin wrote:Wasn't their Z1 daughtercard option for the oasys? That would definitely be worth the price of admission...

The Z1 & Z1 daughtercard (called MOSS, it's actually an expansion for the Triton & Trinity) are stripped down versions of what comes with Oasys. Oasys was originally the development platform from which all of Korg's current dsp sound generation has been developed, & quality was actually sacrificed on the Z1 due to it having had less dsp. We both know how good the Z1 so you have to imagine how amazing Oasys can sound.

Scott, thanks for those Norsez patches!

Scotty · Post by **Scotty** » Wed Jul 28, 2004 4:43 pm

Thanks Eric, I had fun dong the sounds, I was off with a broken leg incurred while playing soccer in a mens' non-competative league - cracked it in two places in my second game.

The oasys has over 200 efx ranging from delays, verbs, bit reduction , filters, delays , phasers, sub bass , amp models (a little weak) , wahs, vocoders, rotary speakers. You name it and it is there , the only category of effect which is not in the libary are spectral effects. I use it now mostly for synths -(that is because I have system -linked puters in the studio) - but use the effects heavily on the synth models. The synth models include physical modelled stings, wurly, subtrator based synths, a moog knockoff which is very good ( I have aan mg-1 to compare it with) and John Bowen helped to develop the Prophet emulation. There are sample based synths , hammond emulation, beat boxes (love those) etc. The synths typically are cpu hogs. Korg went for quality, some synths are are capable of only 6 notes polyphony and the card maxes out but you can reduce the polyphony in the mixer. The efx are much easier on the processor.

Because of the cards design you can run asio inputs and outputs, hosts synths and run effects at the same time. Truly a workhorse. I think once some great hit maker is interviewed by Keyboard and he/she says he/she uses the Oasys these things will be snatched up. Again, if you like to dig beneath the surface and don't mind running a legacy O.S. grab them. THe card may not be updated by Korg but Dan Phillips of Korg is a syntkit user and he has released some great stuff for the card as well as a handful of others.

Harm Visser released the worlds biggest collection of PM synths and he did it on the Oasys. These are priced in bundles and are quite affordable. He also did FM synths and analog as well.

I can't say enough about the card. When I see what emu is doing with their mixer interface and tie in to vst , korg was sooo very close. I can't imagine why they bailed when they were almost there. At any rate the card rocks as is, it integrates with your asio DAW as is, can be used standalone and there continues to be free stuff and commerical stuff released. Many of the lfos and tempo based synths will lock to midi clock and Korg made that work very well. I tested the card with a UAD-1 present in the same machine in 98Se and they were very happy together.

Scott Harris

PCI DSP Soundcards