u-he rePro in the works

[Numanoid]

Unlike PC/Mac, Commodore 64 starts immediatly when switched on, so I guess the MOS 6510 processor is way more powerful than i7

[nevernamed]

But Pro 1, then it will be monophonic, and still a CPU hog?

i might change my mind about using UHE synths if they can make CPU usage less than 5% on a single keypress on this synth.

and no, i can't buy a new state of the art intel i7 computer. im a homeless dude with a smartphone.

Think about this for a minute. Emulating complex phenomena like analogue and non-linearities is computationally expensive.

If you do circuit modelling, yes, maybe. On the other hand, Diva has seen a few updates, and obviously is not at all as CPU consuming as it was when it came out. Which tells me that there should be always ways to get the same result without frying your CPU. Which also is the whole point of this project as far as i understood it.

Personally, i only can hope that devs will always keep an eye on CPU consumption, and find compromises, because frankly, a plugin i can only use 5 instances until it fries my PC is kind of unusable for me. I don't believe you have to model any single fart coming out of an analog system either to have good sound quality.

That's not my point mate. There is a direct correlation between processing power and the resulting output (i.e. convincing emulation). The greater the processing power the more convincing the emulation.

Expecting convincing circuit simulation with 5% CPU utilisation is completely unrealistic for now was more to the point.

Even multithreaded Diva is still CPU intensive. It isn't uncommon for it to sit between 150% and almost 270% utilisation (across the cores) in my experience (that's a 12 core mac pro running at 3.4GHz). And that's not a complaint just some stats from my use case scenarios. For it to be so convincing it needs those CPU cycles. There is no getting away from that.

[bmrzycki]

i7 is more powerful does more FLOPs but not enough to do an algorithm to match Briscati. Think of it as a super bike verses an old tractor at pulling a giant plough.

The problem is a lot more nuanced than just saying one bit of hardware is faster or better than another. The real problem is the layers of software between the hardware and the algorithm. Most DSP vendors optimize their software to interface with the hardware and to solve a specific class of problems. They will typically provide libraries of routines the customer is likely to want: specific math routines suited to the problem they are trying to solve.

Contrast this with the software most i7s run: Linux/OSX/Windows. The amount of effort it takes a programming team to make the general purpose OS get out of the way can be greater than investing a similar programming effort on a DSP.

Compound this problem Intel maintains healthy margins and overall size of the company means you're not going to get a price break on a 10,000 cpu unit order. Those in the DSP/FPGA arena tend to be smaller and may view such a purchase as more significant and offer price breaks.

The current generation i7 is a very powerful processor. Unfortunately it's saddled with a terrible assembler language (x86). Ironically, the micro-architecture of most Intel parts actually decode into an intermediate language layer reminiscent of RISC. It's a shame we can't program directly to that IL.

Overall I'd say an i7 is faster clock-per-clock cycle than most DSPs except for the most esoteric of problem domains. That power is hard to get to directly though.

[nevernamed]

But rather due to the reason nevernamed just mentioned in his post. That whole "30 times faster than a i7" is simply marketing bogus.

It's not "simply marketing bogus" though. It's more complicated than that. Dedicated computing platforms make sense for audio applications. In that particular context it's not marketing at all. It's fact. It isn't a general purpose application no but that doesn't matter. We're talking about processing reverb only. Your i7 can't do it as well as the Bricasti. The Bricasti can't run your Excel spreadsheet though whereas your i7 can. But we're music guys. We don't care about spreadsheets surely?

[Numanoid]

It is a case of speciality VS versatility

[nevernamed]

i7 is more powerful does more FLOPs but not enough to do an algorithm to match Briscati. Think of it as a super bike verses an old tractor at pulling a giant plough.

The problem is a lot more nuanced than just saying one bit of hardware is faster or better than another. The real problem is the layers of software between the hardware and the algorithm. Most DSP vendors optimize their software to interface with the hardware and to solve a specific class of problems. They will typically provide libraries of routines the customer is likely to want: specific math routines suited to the problem they are trying to solve.

Contrast this with the software most i7s run: Linux/OSX/Windows. The amount of effort it takes a programming team to make the general purpose OS get out of the way can be greater than investing a similar programming effort on a DSP.

Compound this problem Intel maintains healthy margins and overall size of the company means you're not going to get a price break on a 10,000 cpu unit order. Those in the DSP/FPGA arena tend to be smaller and may view such a purchase as more significant and offer price breaks.

The current generation i7 is a very powerful processor. Unfortunately it's saddled with a terrible assembler language (x86). Ironically, the micro-architecture of most Intel parts actually decode into an intermediate language layer reminiscent of RISC. It's a shame we can't program directly to that IL.

Overall I'd say an i7 is faster clock-per-clock cycle than most DSPs except for the most esoteric of problem domains. That power is hard to get to directly though.

It isn't just a software or software optimisation problem though. FPGAs and ASICs are custom hardware too. In the case of the former the gates can be reprogrammed and thus the device repurposed to a new task. Different looking silicon all of a sudden. Maybe you're tired of processing reverb. Maybe you want to process something else now. With your i7 you're frozen in silicon after it leaves the factory. Can't change it. With FPGAs you can.

[.jon]

Long story short, these emulation vsts still suck balls, won't get much better in next ten years and in the end nobody even needs them when you can buy real analog synths again for cheap.

I hope Vst devs start focusing on all the interesting synthesis that can't be emulated with circuits, and forget dwelling in the past.

[Numanoid]

I hope Vst devs start focusing on all the interesting synthesis that can't be emulated with circuits, and forget dwelling in the past.

If only somebody would tell the hardware devs the same

[Crackbaby]

...
But we're music guys. We don't care about spreadsheets surely?

I love my spreadsheets as much as i love making music..

[bmrzycki]

It isn't just a software or software optimisation problem though. FPGAs and ASICs are custom hardware too. In the case of the former the gates can be reprogrammed and thus the device repurposed to a new task. Different looking silicon all of a sudden. Maybe you're tired of processing reverb. Maybe you want to process something else now. With your i7 you're frozen in silicon after it leaves the factory. Can't change it. With FPGAs you can.

I'd be very surprised if any company reprogram anFPGA real-time and in field-shipped units or even with "firmware" updates. They'd need to add hardware and software subsystems to reprogram the FPGA in the shipping unit which would add to the overall device cost and software maintenance overhead. I suppose it's possible but I'd wager the amount of R&D to get it right is better invested in a MkII product. So in that sense I don't see how an FPGA is any less frozen than an ASIC in a shipping product from the customer's point of view.

In the case of the Bricasti M7 they use Analog Devices dual core DSPs which are frozen silicon processors just like the CPU in your phone/tablet/PC. Here's an example of one of their higher end Blackfin models: http://www.analog.com/en/products/proce ... bf606.html
It's likely similar to the one (of six) Bricasti uses in each M7. No FPGA there and it runs at 800MHz. The difference is specialization and the software layer to interface with it.

[BDeep]

Long story short, these emulation vsts still suck balls, won't get much better in next ten years and in the end nobody even needs them when you can buy real analog synths again for cheap.

This I don't agree with. I think software becomes more convincing every year. And the flexibility of software within a project (recall, multiple instances) makes that there are certain advantages over hardware. Not that hardware wouldn't have advantages btw, but the "you might just as well buy HW" argument doesn't really cut it. Not for me anyway.

I hope Vst devs start focusing on all the interesting synthesis that can't be emulated with circuits, and forget dwelling in the past.

This I fully agree with. Or in the very least, use all that research that went into emulating analog gear to create something new and unique, with the quality associated with analog.
I love the TAL synths for instance, but in fairness, that's partly due to nostalgia.

[djanthonyw]

Long story short, these emulation vsts still suck balls, won't get much better in next ten years and in the end nobody even needs them when you can buy real analog synths again for cheap.

I hope Vst devs start focusing on all the interesting synthesis that can't be emulated with circuits, and forget dwelling in the past.

[chk071]

But rather due to the reason nevernamed just mentioned in his post. That whole "30 times faster than a i7" is simply marketing bogus.

It's not "simply marketing bogus" though. It's more complicated than that. Dedicated computing platforms make sense for audio applications. In that particular context it's not marketing at all. It's fact. It isn't a general purpose application no but that doesn't matter. We're talking about processing reverb only. Your i7 can't do it as well as the Bricasti. The Bricasti can't run your Excel spreadsheet though whereas your i7 can. But we're music guys. We don't care about spreadsheets surely?

Claiming the DSP used is 30x as fast as a i7 is marketing BS, nothing more, nothing less. If it even comes from the company, no offense if it didn't.

[nevernamed]

It isn't just a software or software optimisation problem though. FPGAs and ASICs are custom hardware too. In the case of the former the gates can be reprogrammed and thus the device repurposed to a new task. Different looking silicon all of a sudden. Maybe you're tired of processing reverb. Maybe you want to process something else now. With your i7 you're frozen in silicon after it leaves the factory. Can't change it. With FPGAs you can.

I'd be very surprised if any company reprogram anFPGA real-time and in field-shipped units or even with "firmware" updates. They'd need to add hardware and software subsystems to reprogram the FPGA in the shipping unit which would add to the overall device cost and software maintenance overhead. I suppose it's possible but I'd wager the amount of R&D to get it right is better invested in a MkII product. So in that sense I don't see how an FPGA is any less frozen than an ASIC in a shipping product from the customer's point of view.

In the case of the Bricasti M7 they use Analog Devices dual core DSPs which are frozen silicon processors just like the CPU in your phone/tablet/PC. Here's an example of one of their higher end Blackfin models: http://www.analog.com/en/products/proce ... bf606.html
It's likely similar to the one (of six) Bricasti uses in each M7. No FPGA there and it runs at 800MHz. The difference is specialization and the software layer to interface with it.

Of course they do mate. What are you talking about? That's the whole point of the FPGA. And yes they are supplied with the tools to program/reprogram them. This is routine. Companies routinely reprogram this stuff in the field.

If they are frozen in silicon they are ASICs not FPGAs. Different story there. From a customer standpoint there is a massive difference. You're not the customer though. Bricasti is the customer or UAD or whoever is putting these things together. I've heard that Kurzweil is moving to this way of doing things from their ASIC based pc3 platform just so they can field-reprogram these units.

[Numanoid]

uups double p