A lot of people may not have heard of Creamware. They make products that tend to be out of the mainstream, and although they have been around for a long time, they are just reentering the U.S. market. So don’t let the fact that Creamware is not a household name lead you to believe that they are a newcomer to the audio market. In fact Creamware has been making DSP cards for longer than anybody (except possibly for Digidesign). Their Pulsar and Scope cards have been around for a while and have a strong and almost cult-like following, especially in Europe. So rather than them coming to the marketplace the marketplace has come to them with the growing popularity of DSP cards built around the popular VST format.

If you are familiar with DSP cards you are probably aware of the other cards in this new market, the TC Works POWERCORE and the Universal Audio Powered-Plug-Ins card. If you need an introduction to DSP cards in general you can take a look at my previous article by clicking here.

But the XTC card is unique amongst a unique brand of products. It features 8 synths, a sampler, and 30 effects, enough to build a complete virtual studio around. It also is unique in that it is very upgradeable. You can upgrade your XTC card to a Pulsar card with both analog and digital inputs and outputs by purchasing and installing a daughterboard. You can also stack XTC cards to add more processing power. In addition Creamware has recently announced a version of the XTC card with 15 Sharc DSP chips (as opposed to 6 in the standard version). And lastly, Creamware has opened up their platform more than any other companies. What that means is that anyone can write plug-ins for the XTC card, so that could mean plenty of third party plug-ins out there, as well as some free ones available for download (if the success of the Pulsar is any indication).

So, as you can see, the XTC card is more than just a few excellent plug-ins, it is really a DSP system. But before we get into all of that, lets just start out slow.

Installation

Installation was pretty straight ahead. Being a Mac user working on a PC platform (the XTC is currently only available for PC) I felt like I came at it with a neophyte’s point of view. Pretty much just run setup and go. The only hitch was making sure to point Windows at the drivers for the card as it did not find them on its own (this is in the manual). Also, the card is identified as a "Pulsar". If you were not aware that this was the sistercard (we have mother and daughters, can’t we have sisters too?) of the XTC this may prove confusing and is not covered in the documentation.

Once installed, like all of the DSP cards, using it is as easy as pie. When launching the application (I tested it with Steinberg’s Nuendo) a splash screen briefly displays as the XTC is initialized. Then I could use any of the plug-ins or synths as I would use any other VST or VSTi (VST instrument).

The Synths

Maybe because I am a soft synth sort of guy, this was the part of the XTC that most interested me. As I mentioned the XTC card comes with eight soft synths. Most seemed to be emulations of popular analog synths, notably the Juno-106 (called the U KNOW 007) and the MiniMoog (the Miniscope). The BlueSynth may be an emulation of the Syrinx but I do not know enough about it to be sure. Also included are an analog style drum-synth and the EZSynth. Each synth features a very good GUI, lots of knobs to tweak and lots of presets to get your started and to show you what each synth can do.

And how do they sound?

Very, very good. Having just acquired my first true analog synth I felt I could at last compare to something like the real thing. And the XTC fared well against my new found snobbery. I can say that these are the best sounding analog emulations I have found in any soft synth, and I believe that I have heard them all. The only exception is that I may prefer the sound of Waldorf’s Attack for analog drum machine emulation to the sound of the XTC’s EDS8i but this may just be a matter of taste.

The Sampler

Also included with the XTC is the Volksampler, a software sampler. Judging from its name and how Creamware has positioned it, you might think that Volksampler is a stripped-down sample player, but it is anything but. The Volksampler includes a multitude of windows for tweaking and controlling your samples or sample libraries. Also included with the XTC is an excellent library of sample banks to get you started. It also supports AKAI format as well as Sound Font 2 and .WAV and AIFF. This gives you plenty to work with and should appease all but the most sophisticated of samplers.

The Effects

In addition to the synths and sampler, the XTC card also comes standard with 30 DSP effects. These are mostly your standard set of plug-in tools - Compressors, Choruses, Reverbs, etc. Most are very usable, if unremarkable. The XTC MasterReverb works well and sounds good but still retains a certain metallic quality found in most plug-in reverbs. Overall I would say the effects compare very favorably to the built-in plug-ins that come with most audio applications, but not so favorably with the more focused cards such as the reverb in the TC Work POWERCORE or the compressor in the UAD Powered Plug-ins card.

Performance

I have never been to Germany but I can only imagine what my response to driving on the AutoBahn would be. "I can drive how fast? As fast as I want? Ok let’s see what this baby can do." And such was also my response to using the Pulsar XTC. I loaded up track after track of soft synths and after loading the first one the CPU monitor in Nuendo did not move a bit. I got tired of cutting and pasting before I ran out of processing power. So suffice it to say that the XTC card gives you a lot of headroom for soft synth, sampler, and processing power.

Overview

Like Creamware itself, the XTC is a unique product. More than just adding some specialized effects, the XTC can be the basis of an entire DSP-based studio. Unlike other products it offers great expansion capabilities to offer more DSP, more outputs, or even interfaces. The offer of new plug-ins and synths from third-party vendors opens up a whole new world of sound manipulation. While not for everybody, the XTC card can be a powerful tool to create music.

Have more questions about this product? Please write me at:
brent@audioMIDI.com

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