Is waves so bad that people have to resort to this?

[Randy]

Pushing hardware with software is real lame. It's why I don't bother with digidesign products.

In this day where I can have a 3 GHz quad core for under 1K, why do I have to mess with PCI cards for DSP power?

Well, for one, it sounds better. And two, having DSP available with something like an HD|3 is still more powerful than your 3 GHz quad core whatever thingy.

Sounds better? Is the card's 2 + 2 giving me any less of a 4 than the CPU's? I don't get it.

DSP cards have chips that are tailored especially for processing data like sound and video. They can do it faster with fewer errors than a central processor. When a CPU gets overwhelmed it starts tossing out chunks of data the program deems non-essential. Even if you have a quad-core high-speed CPU in your computer, you still will get times when it can't handle the flow of data and your DAW will start making decisions on what chunks of data are non-essential.

[exalted wombat]

That's a novel concept :-) Can you support it?

[chris harris]

when the UAD card first came on the market, the haters all said, "I don't need to pay for no stinkin' DSP card. hell, just next week native systems will be powerful enough to render these DSP cards obsolete. I'll just wait until plug-ins as good as these are released natively and use those"

The truth is, those people are still waiting. Sure, there are much better native plugs now than there were when the UAD first came on the market. But, there are much better UAD plugs available now then when the UAD first came on the market, too.

The pro-native processing people aren't really "pro native processing"... they're pro-complaining and anti-spending money. While they've spent the last 5 years telling anyone who will read their posts that "faster native processing will make these cards obsolete" or, "I don't need some old-technology video card to run good plugins", I've spent the last 5 years happily using the UAD plugs to make great mixes. 5 years down the road, and all of the great benefit I've gotten from running the UAD-1, and the $600 investment in the card seems kind of inconsequential.

[exalted wombat]

I've spent the last 5 years happily using the UAD plugs to make great mixes. 5 years down the road, and all of the great benefit I've gotten from running the UAD-1, and the $600 investment in the card seems kind of inconsequential.

5 years ago, your UAD card doubtless had impressive processing power compared with the computer it was in. Are you using the same hardware today?

[chris harris]

I've spent the last 5 years happily using the UAD plugs to make great mixes. 5 years down the road, and all of the great benefit I've gotten from running the UAD-1, and the $600 investment in the card seems kind of inconsequential.

5 years ago, your UAD card doubtless had impressive processing power compared with the computer it was in. Are you using the same hardware today?

nope. today, I'm using a much faster g5. And, I'm still using the UAD plugins, while others are still hating.

I still have access to amazing plugins that the native people don't. sure, there are much better native plugs available now than there were when the UAD came out. But, see, that's the kicker.. I can use those advanced native plugs AND the plugs that only work on the UAD. And, the UAD stuff still sounds better than the best native stuff available on your super fast CPUs.

I can't understand any rational motivation for being "anti" DSP cards. Yet there are plenty out there who talk about their native processors like this were some political issue. Like I said, while these DSP haters have spent years claiming that native would catch up eventually, I've spent those years using the best processors that are available in plug-in form.

[exalted wombat]

I don't think anyone's particularly anti them (certainly not in the quasi-religious way some Mac-users are anti-PC at any rate:-). But I'd need a very good reason to be pro them enough to spend the money. You've seen both sides. Compare your 5-year-ago DSP plugins with today's native ones. Chalk and cheese, or comparable? Now, how have today's DSP plugins (assuming you've continued to spend money on keeping up with the latest-and-greatest) transformed your music over and above what you could do 5 years back? SOme blind comparisons would be interesting.

[Huntlabs]

Waves has lowered their WUP fees, those fees they extort from you if you want to stay current or want the "ability" to pay to become current or to sell or transfer the product you bought. There is now a cap on how much WUP will cost you but your still getting "WUP'd", if ya know what I mean. Ya can't fricking sell what you bought unless WUP is current.

The registration process, if you are careful, and nothing goes wrong, isn't too bad. Now if you have a problem and have to deal with customer service, god help you. It suddenly turns into a 2-4 day pain in the ass and sucks up untold hours of your time and you get to pay for the phone call too. And Waves, well they don't care about your time, they got your money.

Bitter - Yes. I own the Platinum bundle. It's sitting on an old iLok. Don't use it no more. The only waves I'm still using is the L2.

Damn it - I got riled up again thinking about this. Wasted more time on Waves... I gotta go calm down. Ugh, I'm out.

[Randy]

That's a novel concept Can you support it?

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. I didn't see your post. Here is a very basic page that describes how DSPs work. http://www.dsptutor.freeuk.com/intro.htm

If you do a search for "DSP processing" you should find plenty of technical papers outlining how DSP chips are set up with the basic algorithms "hard-wired" into the chip, allowing for faster transformations. Something a central processor is unlikely to do.

The link above doesn't get into the whole error correction business, that's just a common fact in computer programming. When you program something that deals with streams you have to make allowances for errors or else the program will seize up. If the processor is getting over taxed you have to overlook chunks of data to keep things going in realtime.

A visible example of this is when you view streaming video and it starts to look jumpy. The data isn't coming in fast enough, so the program makes decisions on how to jump frames to try and keep up.

I couldn't find a concise description of this online. If you really want to get on top of this kind of stuff, a good start is going through some programming tutorials that deal with streaming data.

[exalted wombat]

I understand that a computer can become overstretched. I understand an optimised system might not reach this point as soon. What I do not understand is why a computer of one type, working within its capabilities, will necessacarily drop data while a computer of another typw will. Which seemed to be what you were telling us?

[chris harris]

Now, how have today's DSP plugins (assuming you've continued to spend money on keeping up with the latest-and-greatest) transformed your music over and above what you could do 5 years back?

they haven't. and, it's not just my music. I use this stuff in a working studio for clients. I'd say that the URS plugs are the best native plugs I've heard. I tried them. I'm sure that if I didn't have the UAD plugs available, the URS stuff would be a godsend. But, with both to choose from, I much prefer the UAD stuff.

Today's UAD plugs have transformed my mixes over and above what UAD plugs were available then. But, native plugs really haven't. There are some great native plugs. But, they still aren't as useful to me as the UAD stuff.

I still use native plugs. The point that I'm making is that those who have been against them because they say that comparable plugs are right around the corner for native users, have been proven COMPLETELY WRONG over the years. It's taken YEARS since the introduction of the UAD card for anyone to come up with anything even close to them in a native format. And, for me, they still can't be replaced with a native alternative. You can use native plugs that you like. I can too. But, without the card, you cannot use the UAD plugs.

I get the best of both worlds. And, the reality is, if you're not using UAD because you can't afford it, then you probably can't afford most of the better native alternatives either.

And, like I said, the $600 investment, when seen in hindsight is quite worth it to me. I've gotten way more than $600 of value from using those plugs over the years. And, despite the fact that they run on an outdated DSP chip, they still deliver value to me everyday I use them.

So, why spend all that money on an old DSP chip? Well, because it's the only way that you can run what are some of the best plug-in processors in the world.

[b3groover]

DSP cards have chips that are tailored especially for processing data like sound and video. They can do it faster with fewer errors than a central processor. When a CPU gets overwhelmed it starts tossing out chunks of data the program deems non-essential. Even if you have a quad-core high-speed CPU in your computer, you still will get times when it can't handle the flow of data and your DAW will start making decisions on what chunks of data are non-essential.

I don't have a horse in this race, but this appears really fishy to me. A computer doesn't care what kind of data it is; data is data to a computer. Ones and zeros. How does a processor deem certain data "non-essential"? Wouldn't that require more processing to determine, which would then tie up more resources and lead to more "tossing out chunks of data" in an endless feedback loop?

The video analogy seems weak because yes, you can see dropped frames and skipped images in a video stream. But if your computer started doing something like that to the audio, you would certainly hear it. Pops, clicks, etc. Then you either turn off a plug-in or increase your latency. Problem solved. Your post seems to insinuate that it is tossing data without you knowing it. I don't think that's true at all.

Sure, DSP chips are designed a certain way in order to do certain calculations faster, but that's just so they can use a chip that is less powerful overall when compared to a CPU (less onboard cache, slower speed, etc.) to do certain intensive work.

[Randy]

I don't have a horse in this race, but this appears really fishy to me. A computer doesn't care what kind of data it is; data is data to a computer. Ones and zeros. How does a processor deem certain data "non-essential"? Wouldn't that require more processing to determine, which would then tie up more resources and lead to more "tossing out chunks of data" in an endless feedback loop?

The video analogy seems weak because yes, you can see dropped frames and skipped images in a video stream. But if your computer started doing something like that to the audio, you would certainly hear it. Pops, clicks, etc. Then you either turn off a plug-in or increase your latency. Problem solved. Your post seems to insinuate that it is tossing data without you knowing it. I don't think that's true at all.

Sure, DSP chips are designed a certain way in order to do certain calculations faster, but that's just so they can use a chip that is less powerful overall when compared to a CPU (less onboard cache, slower speed, etc.) to do certain intensive work.

I don't want to get in to the finer points of computer programming and start talking about stacks and heaps an so forth, so the following will be an oversimplification of sorts, but close to what happens. It isn't the processor that's making the decisions, it's the process. So if you have a process that is sending data to be crunched and another process that's receiving the crunched data, if there are other things going through the processor that slow down the flow of data from one process to the other, the sending process will skip over parts that weren't accepted in time. You will get clicks if there are very large gaps in the flow. Most of the time it's very small packets of data that are lost and the resulting effect will be a smearing of the sound. I'm not saying this happens every time you use a native plugin. Not at all. In fact, if you have a computer running so there's plenty of headroom, there should be no difference between a native or a DSP plugin. I was just simply saying a DSP chip can take a load off the processor and guard things from getting dicey.

The error thing is true with writing CDs. There can be errors in writing and you don't clicks or pops, it just sounds different. Mastering houses have high-end CD burners that burn at very low error rates for this reason.

[exalted wombat]

[quote
The error thing is true with writing CDs. There can be errors in writing and you don't clicks or pops, it just sounds different. Mastering houses have high-end CD burners that burn at very low error rates for this reason.[/quote]

But this doesn't happen. CD's have error-correction that ensures it WON'T sound different until there are too many errors for the ec to cope with.

Isn't it the same with computers? The buffering CAN let you down. I thought you were arguing that it inevitably WOULD. At least that's how I read: "Even if you have a quad-core high-speed CPU in your computer, you still will get times when it can't handle the flow of data and your DAW will start making decisions on what chunks of data are non-essential."

That sounds like marketing-talk from a DSP card manufacturer :-) For more of the same go to the Diskeeper site to hear some lies about what WILL (not might) happen if you don't use their premium defrag utility.

[chris harris]

CD's have error-correction that ensures it WON'T sound different until there are too many errors for the ec to cope with.

not true. the metadata on audio cds is error protected. the audio data is not. this is why DDP is a better delivery format than audio cd as far as manufacturing goes.