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First of all, what are they?
The quality that each of these
cards share is that they contain DSP chips. In case
you aren’t familiar with the term DSP stands
for Digital Signal Processing. Although this may
sound like it only applies to effects, DSP also
includes things like mixing as well as the routing
of audio within your computer to name but two major
functions that DSP is responsible for. Any time
your digital signal is changed at all a DSP function
is performed. Most audio interfaces do not include
DSP chips, instead they rely on the CPU (central
processing unit) in your computer to do this work.
And while your CPU does an excellent job with this,
it has many other tasks to attend to, such as possibly
running your sequencer, updating the graphics display,
checking for any interrupts from other hardware
devices, etc. It’s a busy, little chip. Now
if you want to expand a CPU’s capabilities
beyond its current limitations you’ll need
to buy a faster one, which many times can be more
difficult and or expensive than simply just buying
a new computer. Then there is the subject of Multi-Processing
which you hear more and more about these days, and
while the hardware is finally here to support multiprocessing,
both the Operating Systems and software must be
adapted or rewritten to support it as well.. There
are some applications such as Cubase, Logic Audio,
Nuendo and even the newest version of Digital Performer
which already support multiprocessing, but most
are still not taking full advantage of all this
technology has to offer just yet.
PLUG-INS
Now on the subject of plug-ins,
the quality and quantity of these DSP based wonders
has grown to the point where people depend on them
more. It’s a fact that almost every person
who has used audio plug-ins has hit a brick wall
at some point where they want or need to be able
to add more plug-ins but can’t because their
CPU is so overloaded. So This is where DSP cards
come in as truly viable option to help solve this
problem as they allow you to greatly increase your
processing power since the chips on these cards
are specially designed for running the type of number
crunching required for audiophile recording. High
accuracy and high speed are what they do best, which
is perfect for power hungry plug ins such as reverbs
which require a lot of horsepower in order to really
sound as good as their hardware based cousins. So
now most of this heavy duty DSP processing can be
offloaded to a DSP card, freeing your up your CPU.
The Bad News
Ok, this is all swell, but
what is the downside?
The Bad News (there is always
bad news):
THESE DSP CARDS WON"T
RUN ANY OF THE PLUG INS YOU CURRENTLY OWN
This is where the confusion
comes in. None of these card can run any current
VST, MAS, RTAS, or TDM plug-ins period (or any other
format for that matter). But what they CAN do that
is new is to operate within most VST host applications
such as Cubase, Logic Audio, Nuendo, Peak or Spark
and functions as just another standard VST plug-in.
By the way this is in stark contrast to RTAS plug-ins
which can currently only run in one program, namely
ProTools.
So maybe you are asking yourself, "well,
what good are they if they don’t run any of
my plug-ins?". Well, the vendors of these products
are working hard to answer this question. TC|Works
for example includes three plugins with their card
and are planning on releasing most of their other
popular plug-ins so that they will also work using
the TC Powercore. Currently included with the Powercore
are the Master X plug-in, which is based after the
Finalizer, Megareverb, which uses the Core 2 algo
from the M5000, and a Chorus/flange based around
the TC 1210 and SCF pedal.
The Universal Audio UAD-1
card includes software emulations of the legendary
LA2A and 1176 compressor/limiter hardware, as well
as the Kind Of Loud RealVerb Pro, all of which have
received lots of good word of mouth following their
world debut at AES in Amsterdam last month. Creamware
includes a whole slew of plug-ins, including software
synths and samplers with their XTC card. And Antares,
maker of the extremely popular Auto-Tune plug in
has announced plans to release a version of it as
well as their Mic Modeler plug-in for both the UA
and TC|Works cards.
Another strong point to support
these cards is that both all of the manufacturers
have opened up their formats to other developers;
so as these cards take hold, even more plug-ins
are sure to become available relatively soon.
THE BOTTOM LINE
The main thing to remember
is that even though your favorite plug in may not
be available right now, with one of these affordable
DSP cards you’ll now be able to offload much
of the standard compression/reverb/limiting/gating
chores and save your precious and keep your CPU
power available for your favorite compressor or
reverb.
At the end of the day when
you start comparing these new DSP cards to their
hardware counterparts you’ll find they are
in fact a very good deal all the way around.
And remember, as this is a
relatively new way of working there is bound to
be some confusion. But once you understand what
these new cards can do, I feel confident you’ll
quickly see how they will be playing a very important
role in the ever growing DSP needs of today’s
computer based studio.
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