The big news is the € 2698 ($4200) Scope XITE-1 DSP hardware system. It’s based on Analog Devices SHARC DSP chips, offering 10x more processing power than their previous high-end Scope Professional card. The new hardware is housed in a 19 inch 1U rack case that interfaces to your Mac or Windows box via a PCI-Express (desktop) or ExpressCard (notebook) interface.

The front of the surprisingly compact XITE-1 unit includes two mic inputs with switchable phantom power, a pair of Hi-Z instrument inputs and a 1/4-inch headphone jack. The back panel offers two channels of balanced XLR analog I/O, AES/EBU, 2 x ADAT I/O, Wordclock I/O, and MIDI In/Out/Thru.

The XITE-1 software pack contains 13 virtual instruments including emulations of the Roland Juno 106, Sequential Prophet 5 and Moog Minimoog along with over 50 effects, three samplers and a suite of mastering tools.

Current Scope users will be thrilled to hear that the new Sonic Core Platform 5 software finally supports Windows Vista and Mac OS X in addition to Windows XP. It will be available in May as a €198 ($310) upgrade, although most Scope 4.5 users will qualify for a free update. Details are still scarce, but screenshots show a few new devices and an appealing black and white color scheme.

So why should you consider a DSP hardware platform in 2008? The main advantage of the Scope system is that it offloads softsynth and digital effects processing onto dedicated hardware. This gives extremely low latency and glitch-free playback, even when running demanding softsynths and audio effects. Blocks of DSP horsepower are allocated to each instrument or effect, meaning that you won’t unexpectedly run out of CPU cycles on your host PC. Of course, it’s still possible to run your favorite VST plugins on the same PC in parallel and mix everything in Scope.

Another good reason to give the Scope platform a second look is the vast library of Scope modules, including a versatile modular synth and dozens of other great instruments such as John Bowen’s fantastically deep Solaris soft synth and many other world-class plugs.

The Scope XITE-1 box and Sonic Core Platform 5 software are scheduled for release in May 2008. It looks like it’s going to be a wild ride!

Sonic Core Scope: The Next Generation

Luckily, this cloud has a silver lining. The company’s assets have been acquired by two companies with considerable CreamWare experience: SonicCore and InDSP.

SonicCore is a German company run by former Scope developers Holger Drenkelfort and Juergen Kindermann who will continue to develop, support and market Scope DSP boards under the CreamWare name. Drenkelfort made the following statement on the PlanetZ forum this morning: “As we have been deeply involved from the beginning in the development of both SCOPE hard- and software, it’s a very special pleasure for us to provide ongoing support for these great products. Furthermore, we will continue the manufacturing and selling of SCOPE products and devices, as we believe that’s the least this platform deserves. You can be sure there will be some nice offerings to come in the future.”

It appears that rights to the hardware synthesizer technology have been acquired by InDSP, the India-based design company that developed the ASB gear. This arrangement seems ideal, since InDSP is helmed by former CreamWare exec Frank Hund. There’s no word on whether the current ASB lineup will remain in production, but I strongly suspect InDSP will be behind some shiny new hardware at the upcoming Frankfurt Musikmesse.

All in all, this should enable CreamWare technology to live on and flourish.

If you haven’t spent every last penny you own on the latest playourwiibox, your strength hasn’t been taken away from coma-inducing leftovers and you’re in the mood for some jaw-dropping music tech bargains, well just read on dear CDMers because we have the best sales to help you start your new year of music-making off right.

Note: most items listed are either clearance or limited time only deals. CDM makes no promises about the availability of said bargains.

Wusik.com
THE ULTIMATE WUSIKSTATION VSTi GROUP BUY! – $50

Voxengo
Holiday Sale – 15-25% off selected products!

Synapse Audio
Holiday Sale – 50% off Orion Platinum & Synth Pack

Audiomidi.com
Quantum Leap Hardcore Bass – $145
Waldorf Edition – $79
z3ta+ – $100
Vapor – $46
Wizooverb Bundle – $130
Komplete 4 – $995
Minimonsta/Guru Combo – 350

Musiciansfriend:
Kinetic – $30

Sweetwater:
Guitar Combos – $70

Computers And Music
Kantos – $175
Finale Guitar – $65
Amplitube 2 – $150
Ampeg SVX – $235
Amplitube Live – $49

Platinum Records:
Vestax CDX-16 – $200

Scitscat:
Sonik Synth 2 – $219
Trigger Finger – 180

JRR Shop:
Bass Station VSTi – $50
Steinberg Warp VST – $50
Gigapulse – $200
Minimonsta – $125
Gigastudio 3 Solo – $79
Tracktion 2 – $99
Live 5/Trigger Finger Combo – $400
Moog Modular – $180
Arturia Vintage Collection – $600
Beatburner – $50
Oddity – $90
Creamware Noah Bundle – $999
FXpansion BFD Sonar Upgrade W/ Free 8-Bit Kit – $266

If you’ve got a deal that fell through the cracks, post it bellow so that we can catch it. Just remember to make your order before you do. Otherwise we may just buy it out from underneath you…

ATA

I think Creamware might be missing the boat with these — after all, the ASB series is wonderful because each box provides a tactile control surface to tweak sounds the moment inspiration strikes. And, quite honestly, second hand Creamware Scope DSP boards are now so inexpensive that I’d prefer to run the PC-based version of these instruments instead. Still, they could be useful for live performance. There’s no “official” confirmation of these products on the Creamware ASB site yet.

Creamware Klangboxes

There comes a point in every electronic musician’s life when they run out of computing power. It usually happens while adding the last track to an earth-shattering magnum opus. Most of us respond by dreaming of shiny new multi-core machines, but there is a clever alternative: Add an affordable second-hand Digital Signal Processing (DSP) card to share the workload.

There are several top-notch DSP audio cards on the market including the TC Electronic Powercore series, the Universal Audio UAD-1e and the Creamware Scope series. Each card offers from one to 14 dedicated DSP chips to generate real-time effects and virtual instruments without taxing your computer’s processor. The only problem is the price – expect to pay at least $1000 for a reasonable combination of hardware and software plug-ins.

Luckily, there are some great second-hand bargains out there.

Used Creamware Scope cards currently offer the best bang for the buck (or euro, if that’s your persuasion). They were first introduced as the Pulsar series in the late 1990s. The hardware has remained stable for a few years, which means there is a good supply of used cards available for as little as $100. The current line-up consists of Scope Home (3 SHARC DSP chips and audio I/O), Scope Project (6 SHARC DSP chips with audio I/O) and Scope Professional (14 SHARC DSP chips, audio I/O and a really large plug-in library).

Up to three Scope cards can be installed in a single computer. They can be linked using a proprietary Z-Link cable [update: it's actually an STDM cable] to create a single seamless DSP system that doesn’t tax your machine’s PCI bus. This makes it possible to purchase any combination of up to three Scope cards to expand your system from an affordable 3 DSP starter package into something frighteningly powerful.

Used Scope cards are inexpensive if you know where to look. You’ll find the occasional bargain on eBay, but by far the best spot seems to be the impressive Planet Z forums. This is the Creamware user community. The ‘Scope Purchasing’ sub-forum is home to some great deals. If you’re patient, you should be able to pick up a used Scope Project (previously known as the Pulsar 2) for as little as $300, and I recently picked up a Scope Home (formerly sold as the Luna II, Elektra Modular and Powersampler) for a mere $100.

My Creamware system consists of three Scope Home cards with a total of nine SHARC DSP chips (yes, that’s it in the gloriously amateurish photo). It’s easily capable of running a handful of softsynths and effects. I paid less than $400 for the hardware and upgraded to the latest software – Scope 4.5 – for an additional 98 euros (the upgrade is now 198 euros, with your choice of a free extra plug-in). This software gives me 57 different effects that range from reverbs to vocoders along with 12 synthesizers, a sampler and six different mixers. Each card comes with a minimum of 2 analog I/Os plus MIDI. Add-on breakout boxes are available that support up to 36 analog or digital I/Os per card.

Now for the bad news: The current version is Windows-only. The system supports Windows Multimedia drivers (Audio + MIDI) as well as ASIO drivers with fast ‘in hardware’ support. Scope devices don’t operate like traditional VST or DXi plug-ins: they can only run on Scope hardware and are patched into your sequencing package through a sometimes-confusing ASIO / MIDI patchbay. That said, some Scope effects and instruments can be used in a special XTC ‘host’ mode that makes them appear as VST devices within your favourite VST-compatible sequencing package.

Creamware went through a rough patch in 2005 and reorganized to focus on a new line-up of virtual analog synthesizers based on their popular Scope algorithms. It will be interesting to see whether the Scope cards will be updated to work with Microsoft Windows Vista when it is released in early 2007.

In any case, a Scope card or two can add significant possibilities to a maxed-out music production system. Just be sure to purchase a software upgrade to thank the Creamware team for helping you to complete your magnum opus.

SCOPE platform overview [Creamware]

Shown: Mystery synthesist from Synthfool

Creamware puts software in a standalone box, again: Creamware is back with another cute box emulating a vintage synth; this time it’s the “Prodyssey.” See the mini-site they’ve built for the ASB site; it should have the new model soon. Tom Whitwell of Music thing uses the new boxes as a jumping-off point for explaining why he prefers hardware. It’s a great read, and a very sensible take on the Creamware devices. Here’s my only gripe: if you want to add one of these to your setup, they’re a great deal. But unlike Creamware’s open-ended DSP hardware of the past, the ASB devices start to get really expensive if you need a Minimoog and an organ and another synth. I’ll stick with high-quality plug-ins and a good controller keyboard, thanks! Sure, these boxes sound great, look nice, and give you some great tweakable controls, but if you need flexibility and affordability, software still wins.

KORE, a box to control software: Okay, I’ve said far too much about a non-shipping product, but KORE is interesting in that it sums up and tries to address most of the problems with playing software instruments. It gives you an easy way of switching devices and configuring them in an interface you can use in any host, on any platform, so you could move your performance setup from a home PC running SONAR to a laptop Mac running Ableton Live. And it does give software users that hardware feeling of dialing up a sound on a screen and controlling it with knobs, which still can’t be beat. Now all bets are off until the thing actually ships next month. I hope I’m better at handicapping the KORE synth than I am at picking Kentucky Derby winners. (Yeah, I’m from Kentucky, so I’m still more excited for the world’s greatest horse raise at the beginning of May than I am about KORE.) In the meantime, see analysis and more analysis.

Remote SL, a keyboard to control software: If you’re running Live, Cubase/Nuendo, Logic, or Reason, you owe it to yourself to check out Remote SL. In fact, many hardware synths don’t offer this amount of real-time control and visual feedback on parameters as you get with the Remote’s Automap feature. The only problem I can see is that I’m about to hit keyboard overload. I wish there were an equivalent of Automap that worked with everything. Reason 3 did something sort of like that, but then you were limited to software and still somewhat limited in hardware choices. Which brings us to:

Software’s major disadvantage: The problems with software aren’t totally inherent to the medium. The problem is that, while we have some basic formats for plug-in compatibility (AU, VST) and for combining software (ReWire), controlling software with hardware is still awfully primitive. The problem is, all the solutions are piecemeal: one app with some cool features (Reason 3), one keyboard (Remote SL), one company’s platform (Native’s KORE). Even assigning MIDI controls to software isn’t as easy as it should be. I will say, though, at least manufacturers are finally trying to address the problem. We’re a lot further along than we were this time last year. And the appeal of software remains: it’s relatively cheap, it gives you nearly unlimited choice and incredibly deep sound creation power, and it is very flexible. It’ll be interesting to see how these new solutions work in practice. Stay tuned.

And why there will always be a place for hardware: Software is obviously here to stay, but hardware synths? Here’s a one-word answer, by example: Moog. The new Moog mono synth would easily feel at home in a computer synth studio as in a hardware lover’s setup; it’s just that good, again. More on that in a separate piece.

They put Minimoog and Prophet synth emulations into hardware boxes under a grand. Now Creamware has added an emulation of the most legendary organ of all time to its “Authentic Sound Box” (ASB) line, and it’s a lot easier to lift than the original. Could these guys replace your laptop and software synths? -Ed.

Creamware continues its efforts to reinvent classic analog hardware
with the introduction of the B4000 ASB, a clone of the Hammond B-3
electromechanical organ. Like the other ASB’s this one eschews keys
in favor of a space-saving tabletop design but it does have the real
drawbars organ players crave.

Personally, I expected to see them take on the ARP 2600 next and we
certainly aren’t lacking in killer software B4 emulations (Native
Instruments’ B4II really nails it) but if this thing sounds as good
as it looks, it will allow you to leave the computer at home. And for
those still lugging an original B4 to gigs, your chiropractor will
thank you.

No word yet on ship date or price, but CDM will be all over Creamware
at NAMM for the details.

Creamware has also launched a new site for the ASBs at http://
www.asb.creamware.de/index.htm.

As the industry trends toward digital sound and plug-ins (or so we were told), we increasingly have . . . wha? More hardware emulating old analog classics? And now at prices under US$1000?

Believe it. Creamware has previewed two new hardware boxes, the Minimax ASB and Profit-5 ASB. They don't mention the Minimoog or Prophet-5
by name, but the boxes rip off knob layout and even the typefaces of
these classic analog synths. Creamware's plug-in versions of the same
have earned some kudos, but the company is now packing the sound into
compact, inexpensive hardware.

Availability: June (Minimax); August (Profit-5) projected
Cost: US$899 (Minimax); US$999 (Profit-5)
Compatibility: Remote control software appears to be Windows-only, but USB and MIDI interfaces should make them universal
Specs: 6 voices, 128 factory presets, 128 user presets, stereo analog audio I/O
(PDF info)

That's right — a Minimoog clone with USB under a grand. This is all-digital emulation, not real analog, but the price is right.

So what's next for Creamware — a lawsuit? Roland has already sued Behringer over cheap clones of its Boss effects pedals (see Music Thing story),
but Creamware appear to be erring on the careful side. Not to mention, this is no Minimoog Voyager — though it's also half the price. Your landlord would prefer you get the Creamware, thank you.

What's weird here is that, swapping one German manufacturer for another, this story
was almost exactly predicted by Music Thing's April Fool's joke.
Tom at Music Thing tells us "I had to read the date on the Harmony
Central story three times." Tom's imagined product wasn't far off, though Tom's Synthi clone and US$475 price tag won't be out any time soon. Next year, Tom, go more absurd. Or, er, watch out, Cakewalk; Toyota may well be hungry. (And Bob Moog better hope no one rips off his brilliant silence generator.)