SOUNDCARDS with DSP chips

[sibbaz]

As new member I must compliment your collection of forums as it has proved extremely useful in recent situations.

With the advent of MAC OS X I'm looking into switching from a MAC based system to a PC setup. Considering the fairly powerful processors available on PC's these days, my interest in buying an audiocard with DSP chips seems excessive but, DSP power is the only thing which I'm always running out of.

Pro Tools systems are definitely above my budget limitations.
Creamware's Pulsar series appears interesting but my experience is limited to "standard" audiocards and VST plugins.
Which other options do I have? (TC Powercore?)

I'm especially not happy with the quality of reverbs in the VST domain. Are Direct X / TDM / Pulsar reverbs a step up or are they just different formats. (SonicTimeworx ???)

Can anyone share their experiences.

[sibbaz]

Strangely this topic does not seem to interest anybody.

Soundcards with onboard processing power should, in my humble opinion of course, solve most users' defeciency of number crunching power. Especially in the the digital realm where software carries the heavy burden of EQing, Compressing/Limiting, and Send/Insert FX.

I'd think that Studio owners who cannot yet afford ProTools systems would look into possible
substitutes? Isn't it so?

Any comment on using these type of soundcards would be very helpful.

ciao (feel like i'm talking to myself.... http://www.audioforums.com/forums/biggrin.gif )

[1eyedbitch]

i worked with pulsar2 (6DSP) and the fact is that i used the DSP power for 2 things:
1. to operate the creamware interface
2. for delay on aux1.

if you ask me why didn't i use it more, well... the creamware software is nice, but most of the plug-in's can't compete with the DX and VST plug-in's around. and the soft-synths can't compete with the nord-lead that we had in the studio.
so for a simple delay the could be sent to few chanels at once, the DSP was useful, but not more.
(one good thing i have to say for creamware, their interface is amazing, it's very flexible and easy to use).

the advantage of pro-tools as DSP system is not only the fact that it doesn't depend on the computer's processing power, it's most of all the quality of the plug-in's and soft-synths.
so i guess you could go for pulsar, it's a nice sound-card with flexibility and processing power, but on the other hand, if you're using a pc you can buy a stronger computer that will be able to deal with all of the processing itself, without the need for a DSP power.

[sibbaz]

thanku 1eyedbitch...
so you think I'd be better off with a 2.4 Ghz
processor and a DIGI 001, running Pro Tools?

which plugins aside from TDM will I be able to run in Pro Tools? and do you anything about ProTools'
support for dual processors?