DSP Card For RE's

[Mmj85]

I am aware of PH deciding to leave the idea of making hardware devices at the moment, but wouldn't it be HUGE if PH were to develope a DSP card or a duo, DSP card/audio interface devoted only for RE's. Let's be honest people; if you want quality you need to give up DSP that's just how it works and with so many great sounding devices now in reason, the DSP bar has never been so HI
Investing in this would be HUGE for Reason people like myself that has invested plenty on the platform. To be able to go to the shop and shop without worrying about high DSP usage on devices it's BIG for Business.! High DSP Devices are deal breakers in my opinion.
Maybe with interest we can convince PH to start development
I would easily pay $300+ for it in a heart beat!

What do you guys think?

[mcatalao]

I think those kind of cards are overrated, imho.
The great value of UAD is their plugins, not the cards. I don't give a dam if the plugin runs in the memory of my PC, or a DSP card (believe me i still have an UAD card laying around).

Also the price toll for these kind of stuff is so high, you'd be better off preparing to get the best CPU you can have at your next computer upgrade.

It would be more interesting to see Props investing in HDD streaming on IDT's and possibly some kind of over the lan communication process, ala VSL.

[riemac]

I like the idea of a DSP Card for Reason. I already have one of the fastes CPU's available and it is still not good anough for my big Trance projects.
I like to use a lot of Antidotes, KHS Ones and Zeros in my projects and they are very CPU demanding.
So I would immediately pay $300 - $500 for a DSP Card because there is no faster CPU available.
The second best solution would be that Propellerhead implement freeze track in place.

[Mmj85]

I think those kind of cards are overrated, imho.
The great value of UAD is their plugins, not the cards. I don't give a dam if the plugin runs in the memory of my PC, or a DSP card (believe me i still have an UAD card laying around).

Also the price toll for these kind of stuff is so high, you'd be better off preparing to get the best CPU you can have at your next computer upgrade.

It would be more interesting to see Props investing in HDD streaming on IDT's and possibly some kind of over the lan communication process, ala VSL.

I see what you mean. Perhaps PH can do a better job with the DSP card knowing how RE eat. I believe PH can bring quality into this.

Possible RE DSP card= $300+
Computer w/performance upgrades= $1,500+

You choose.

[Mmj85]

I like the idea of a DSP Card for Reason. I already have one of the fastes CPU's available and it is still not good anough for my big Trance projects.
I like to use a lot of Antidotes, KHS Ones and Zeros in my projects and they are very CPU demanding.
So I would immediately pay $300 - $500 for a DSP Card because there is no faster CPU available.
The second best solution would be that Propellerhead implement freeze track in place.

Bingo! Yes this is one of the reason why I would pay for an DSP card over a whole new computer. The freeze function would not completely solve the issue but it would adress it to a good direction

[mcatalao]

I like the idea of a DSP Card for Reason. I already have one of the fastes CPU's available and it is still not good anough for my big Trance projects.
I like to use a lot of Antidotes, KHS Ones and Zeros in my projects and they are very CPU demanding.
So I would immediately pay $300 - $500 for a DSP Card because there is no faster CPU available.
The second best solution would be that Propellerhead implement freeze track in place.

What cpu do you have?

Sent from my HUAWEI G750-U10 using Tapatalk

[ScuzzyEye]

because there is no faster CPU available.

So you have a 2.5 GHz, 18 core + 18 Hyperthread Xeon?
http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Int ... e-2_50-GHz

Yeah, that CPU costs over $7000, but there's always a faster CPU if you need one. Plus you can install four of them with 6 TB of DDR4 memory, if you need more. http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... X10QBI.cfm

[ScuzzyEye]

Possible RE DSP card= $300+
Computer w/performance upgrades= $1,500+

You choose.

Honestly, I'd rather have the general purpose machine that has a future upgrade path. DSP cards are quickly beaten by next year's CPUs.

[Exowildebeest]

Why not spend an extra 300 on a more high end processor?

You'd need to replace that high end processor in 3, 4 or 5 years anyway. All you can do is extend that period by going for a higher end processor. The exact same goes for a processor in an external device... It'll be outdated in a few years.

[mcatalao]

That's why i said it would be better preparing the next upgrade.

[mcatalao]

because there is no faster CPU available.

So you have a 2.5 GHz, 18 core + 18 Hyperthread Xeon?
http://ark.intel.com/products/84685/Int ... e-2_50-GHz

Yeah, that CPU costs over $7000, but there's always a faster CPU if you need one. Plus you can install four of them with 6 TB of DDR4 memory, if you need more. http://www.supermicro.com/products/moth ... X10QBI.cfm

You know i was exactly thinking about that processor. But 4*18 core, that would be nice! LOL I wonder how much would this box cost...

[ScuzzyEye]

You know i was exactly thinking about that processor. But 4*18 core, that would be nice! LOL I wonder how much would this box cost...

You're looking at $30k for the CPUs, $6k for the chassis and motherboard. One chassis configuration allows up to 48 2.5" SSDs. You might as well go with the 1.2 TB drives from Intel, at $1700 each, so a total of $81.6k for storage. I can't get the 64 GB DDR4 LRDIMMs right now, so it'll be limited to 3 TB total RAM, but at $300 a stick for 96 sticks, you end up with the low, low price of $28.8k. I'm assuming the ASPEED 2400 on-board video is good enough. (It has 4 16x PCIe slots if it's not.)

Total build, not counting OS (it'll run Windows 10): $146,400.

Oh, the storage I'd arrange in four RAID6 arrays of 12 drives each. That'd be 12-2 (for the redundancy) 10x 1.2 TB = 12 TB. So 48 TB total storage on SSD, appearing as four different drives.

[mcatalao]

HEHEHEHEHE!!!

If you ever get the hand on a beast like that, PLEASEEEEEE do run the Reason CPU test. PLEEEAASSEEEEEE!!!!

[Exowildebeest]

You know i was exactly thinking about that processor. But 4*18 core, that would be nice! LOL I wonder how much would this box cost...

You're looking at $30k for the CPUs, $6k for the chassis and motherboard. One chassis configuration allows up to 48 2.5" SSDs. You might as well go with the 1.2 TB drives from Intel, at $1700 each, so a total of $81.6k for storage. I can't get the 64 GB DDR4 LRDIMMs right now, so it'll be limited to 3 TB total RAM, but at $300 a stick for 96 sticks, you end up with the low, low price of $28.8k. I'm assuming the ASPEED 2400 on-board video is good enough. (It has 4 16x PCIe slots if it's not.)

Total build, not counting OS (it'll run Windows 10): $146,400.

Oh, the storage I'd arrange in four RAID6 arrays of 12 drives each. That'd be 12-2 (for the redundancy) 10x 1.2 TB = 12 TB. So 48 TB total storage on SSD, appearing as four different drives.

That's basically a supercomputer.

And then have it run Windows 10 and Reason instead of CERN particle collision simulations

[mcatalao]

Nah man... Those 72 cores would not process the data that Cern generates in a timely fashion.

Most supercomputers have thousands of CPUS. Cern's has 3000 cores, its based on Intels, but it's an old build. They might have scaled some of them to new ones.

The Chinese state defense supercomputer has 3.000.000 cores total!

[Exowildebeest]

Yeah doh I know that

Still, a $146,000 computer is a "prosumer" supercomputer. Or something. It definitely isn't a desktop pc You'd have to use it for almost "industrial scale" calculations. Maybe Reason itself would be the bottleneck on such a system, bugging out when you have a project with 10,000 Thors. I doubt that has ever been tested.

[mcatalao]

I'd say it would be a build for big high processing projects, most probably Big Data and Business Analytic's projects. The biggest machine i worked with was a 2x24 core with 0,5 TB ram distributed system. Not a cluster.

Believe me the thought of installing reason there crossed my mind a couple of times, but it didn't have a freaking audio card so what's the use???

[ScuzzyEye]

I'd say it would be a build for big high processing projects, most probably Big Data and Business Analytic's projects. The biggest machine i worked with was a 2x24 core with 0,5 TB ram distributed system. Not a cluster.

Believe me the thought of installing reason there crossed my mind a couple of times, but it didn't have a freaking audio card so what's the use???

An interesting measure, even available without an audio interface, would be to export the benchmark song, and time how long it takes. As computers get faster and faster, the more and more tracks have been added to that song. Yet the fastest computers can still make it to the end. So simply seeing how quickly the song can be exported (Reason will render faster than the total playback time, if the song doesn't take 100% of the CPU) would be a good test, and actually removes the audio drivers and buffer size from the equation.

[jonheal]

And here I sit, fat and happy with my smokin' Core2Duo and no plans for upgrading any time soon.

Cost me $250 (including "upgrades"), by the way. Refurbished business castoff.

[Tincture]

Heh heh I've enjoyed reading this thread but if there's ever a contest for 'nerdiest thread Eva!' this is definitely a contender

[Mmj85]

Heh heh I've enjoyed reading this thread but if there's ever a contest for 'nerdiest thread Eva!' this is definitely a contender

People call me "nerd" at times, I'll take that title I don't mind

[selig]

I am aware of PH deciding to leave the idea of making hardware devices…
What do you guys think?

You've already answered your own question with your opening sentence IMO!

[Tincture]

Heh heh I've enjoyed reading this thread but if there's ever a contest for 'nerdiest thread Eva!' this is definitely a contender

People call me "nerd" at times, I'll take that title I don't mind

yeah I'm a nerd! And as of tonight a nerd with a new job! Yay.

[normen]

a) DSP cards don't give you more power than current CPUs (unless they're ridiculously packed with DSP chips, i.e. expensive)
b) Using DSP chips only makes sense when you want to lower the latency, not the overall throughput
c) Using DSP chips to route audio from the computer into the DSP card and back into the computer only uselessly increases latency of plugins and strains the systems buses with audio channels

You can verify a) if you have a ProTools rack
You can verify b) if you have any DSP powered audio system like the UAD Apollo, ProTools or simple "onboard mixers" with FX
You can verify c) if you have any DSP "card" - the strain on the computer is very much visible.

Questions that might arise from these facts:

Why does Uaudio sell a DSP card then? - Because they are a perfect copy protection
Why does Uaudio market the card as if there was zero strain on the computer? - To mask that they do it basically only for the copy protection.
Why does ProTools use DSP racks? - Because there you stay in the DSP domain and get the benefit of low latency processing from input to output.

[Mmj85]

I am aware of PH deciding to leave the idea of making hardware devices…
What do you guys think?

You've already answered your own question with your opening sentence IMO!

Yea I can see that I did answer my own question there
I guess what I meant to say is that PH "at the moment" are not considering to make any hardware devices, but you know PH has surprised us before so the possibility is there IMO:-)