What do you folks think about Renoise and DSP Cards like Creamware Pulsar XTC, Mackie Powerplugins card and TC PowerCore?
I have a Creamware Luna II card with 8 in/8out breakout box, and altho I’ve only been using Renoise for a month or so, I can comment a little on it’s effectiveness.
As Bantai pointed out, it’s not really beneficial from a processing point of view. As a matter of fact I found that if I use the ASIO drivers in Renoise I get more crack and pops then I get using the directsound drivers. I even tested out the audio quality by outputting 8 channels of ASIO to my Creamware interface, mixing them there down to a stereo pair and recording that to Soundforge. Then I just used the directsound output and recorded that in Soundforge. I couldn’t tell the difference.
However, there are two major advantages I see to a set-up similar to mine:
1 - high quality audio output: if you want to mix down your tracks externally on an analog board, you could render your tracks to wav files, then using something like Cool Edit or Cubase, output them from your sound card on individual tracks (depending how many outputs you have etc) to an analog board and mix them on that. Many people say mixing digitally isn’t as “thick”. (I don’t have lots of knowledge on whether this is true or not, but would love to hear what others have to say about it) Additionally it’s quite nice to have very low noise outputs to your speakers.
2 - Handling of external synthesizers/audio sources: If you use Renoise to trigger external sound sources such as a synthesizer or sampler or whatever, you can use a high quality sound card w/ multiple inputs to process and mix them. With the Creamware cards, you can even control the effects that you might have on those external sources VIA midi. So you could have Renoise output MIDI data to tell the Creamware cards how to tweak the effects. And remember that all of these effects won’t slow your CPU down because they’re being done on the DSP chips on the card. Similarly you could output multiple ASIO streams to your creamware card and apply effects in there (tho I find it easier to use the effects in Renoise myself and have enough processing power that I don’t need to worry about it).
I’m sure there are some other advantages as well that I’m forgetting right now.
I think the big thing to consider is what other gear you have and what kind of software you’re going to use. If you’re just gonna use Renoise standalone, then a decent sound card with high quality D/A should be plenty. No need for DSP-on-card if you’re just going to be sending out an audio stream from Renoise.
Hope that helps,
Todd
Wish I could run many VST synths and still playback the song in Renoise with max quality. Does any of these cards support Vsampler VST?
I think there is something for Creamware cards that can run VSTs, but it’s an upgrade and I haven’t bothered to download it, as I use most of the plug-ins I need in my sequencer programs.
Check out their website for more infotmation:
Todd
I have Creamware Pulsar2 DSP card
If you just use Renoise, you don’t need such cards, but if you’re into more professional way of mixing/mastering your songs, applying top of the art effects, etc - DSP card is a must.
With renoise, i just program the tracks and then generate wavs, then i load them in midi/audio multitracking program, and route each track via the cards mixer, add effects, etc…
this way i get an excellent sound quality, i can add vst effects and DSP effects - this is more power 