It’s easily capable of running a handful of softsynths and effects. 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). 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. You’ll find the occasional bargain on eBay, but by far the best spot seems to be the impressive Planet Z forums. Used Scope cards are inexpensive if you know where to look. 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. They can be linked using a proprietary Z-Link cable to create a single seamless DSP system that doesn’t tax your machine’s PCI bus. Up to three Scope cards can be installed in a single computer.
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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). 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. They were first introduced as the Pulsar series in the late 1990s. Used Creamware Scope cards currently offer the best bang for the buck (or euro, if that’s your persuasion). Luckily, there are some great second-hand bargains out there.
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The only problem is the price – expect to pay at least $1000 for a reasonable combination of hardware and software plug-ins. Each card offers from one to 14 dedicated DSP chips to generate real-time effects and virtual instruments without taxing your computer’s processor. 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. 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. It usually happens while adding the last track to an earth-shattering magnum opus.
There comes a point in every electronic musician’s life when they run out of computing power.
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Here, he tells us how to get some DSP muscle in our music systems for a lot less money. James is a master of finding value in vintage gear, even recently pre-owned equipment. We’re pleased to welcome James Grahame to CDM James is the editor of the fantastic Retro Thing blog as well as the owner of the music electronics company Reflex Audio.
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