the virtual studio

GroupDIY Audio Forum

Help Support GroupDIY Audio Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Cleverly done. The most significant thing for me was the PCie interface and that fact that PC CPUs have overtaken DSP processing power.

Cheers

ian
 
Well, they don't really prove much in their show. I mean, to really measure CPU load, you would have to press the play button and get some audio through those plugs. DSP process saturate because pro tools reserve some treatment time when you select a dsp plug-in.

But yeah, CPU processing has overtaken DSP chips. I'm mixing animation and fiction with only native processing in nuendo for years now. It means up to 150 tracks with several real-time convolution reverbs, limiters, compressors. In 5.1 format. I bought my actual PC 4 years ago and it was worth 1k€, including disks, PSU, graphic card... Clearly cheaper than HDX cards.

As for latency, when tracking music i just have to lower the buffer and i'm down to few ms latency. I'm not using that much processing when tracking. I use a RME fireface 800 which gives me 28 I/O. For the price it costs, it saves me lot of money, to buy mics or preamps (or diy some).

And on modelisation side, it would be very tempting for a lot of people who want to set a new studio, with a big investment but out of price range for lots of home studios. I mean,  2k$ for 8 preamps. 1k$ for each mic... If you want to set up a complete drum kit, that's going to be expensive. So long i don't have U47 or C414... but my room's not good enough for those mics and I get pretty good results without them.
And for really BIG studios, having the real device is more shiny than the plug-in stuff.

I guess the idea is quite cool, but there's a lot of marketing blahblah involved.

just my 2 cents,

Thomas
 
totoxraymond said:
Well, they don't really prove much in their show.

totoxraymond said:
I guess the idea is quite cool, but there's a lot of marketing blahblah involved.

The Steven Slate phenomenon is 30% marketing hype, 30% god-like worshiping, and 40% good stuff.
 
The concept is not new. Karl (Charlie) Steinberg and Wolfgang Schwarz (QRS) had formulated the concept in the early 1990's.
It became a reality in 1996 when Steinberg introduced the VST concept. OTOH Schwarz's ambitious project (designing a dedicated chip that would replace the computer) flopped.
Slate have not significantly changed the concept.
The nice thing is they have recognized the weaknesses of USB and designed their own solution. Now, with the announced merging of Thunderbolt and USB3.1, is it really the way to go?
The rest is not groundbreaking, mic and preamp modelling is old news. I must say the package is nice and affordable. The most important question is stability. Today all DAW's are capable; the issue is stability. I guess Slate's VRS, as long as it's not polluted by plug-ins of dubious origin, should be quite stable. That can be said of many DAW's, though.
 
I'll have to watch the video again (sitting here at 4am editing dialog... :-(

The little I saw (I really have a hard time watching him) didn't tell me much but I saw on Gearslutz that he's envisioning this as a self-contained system. As usual his product is perfect and can and should be used by anyone and everyone everywhere. I think he'll miss out on the mid- to high-end though, simply because who's going to take the risk of going turnkey and proprietary and then not get engineers who know the stuff? In the US the software used is Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic and Ableton, and really, for professional use it's mostly PT in larger studios.

I have a hard time seeing anyone wanting to roll the dice on his gear and then have to search for he odd engineer that knows it and is good enough to hire.

Maybe I'm missing something though.
 
mattiasNYC said:
I think he'll miss out on the mid- to high-end
I'm convinced he's not targetting high-end studios; I believe he is chasing a customer base that's wary of the unstability issues that plague most DAW's, and he can reassure by offering them a supposedly self-contained system. But it's still a box that connects to a PC.
 
abbey road d enfer said:
I'm convinced he's not targetting high-end studios; I believe he is chasing a customer base that's wary of the unstability issues that plague most DAW's, and he can reassure by offering them a supposedly self-contained system. But it's still a box that connects to a PC.

Yep. The guys whose only experience with an 1176 is the ua plug (at best) yet think there's no differrence between the hardware and software emulation. The very same who think they should open a professional studio now that they got a mackie universal control and an Apollo.  So pretty much 70% of gearslutz.
Something about Slate's sleezy brand of douchery just...
  Well a decent amount of my work these days is recording and editing various seminars and convention speakers.  He sounds like a blend between 'the key to success' speakers and the 'spirituality enlightened' 'gurus' I've had to edit.
I didnt believe 99% of the ga ga that came out of their mouths either.

 
Rocinante said:
Yep. The guys whose only experience with an 1176 is the ua plug (at best) yet think there's no differrence between the hardware and software emulation. The very same who think they should open a professional studio now that they got a mackie universal control and an Apollo.  So pretty much 70% of gearslutz.
Please, no dirty words in this group.  ;)


Something about Slate's sleezy brand of douchery just... 
Unfortunately, that's what it takes to make a product commercially successful. I would not be that harsh, I think some of Slate's products are decent, e.g. the Eiosis de-esser.


  Well a decent amount of my work these days is recording and editing various seminars and convention speakers.  He sounds like a blend between 'the key to success' speakers and the 'spirituality enlightened' 'gurus' I've had to edit.
How lucky you are... ;D
 
p.t. barnum  said there is a sucker born every minute,

He is like the p.t. barnum of pro audio....

I noticed a few things, that as usual I am going WTF? for example his new SDC which has a condenser and dynamic switch?
Or things like  saying jitter free digital. Even the digital folks who know what's up will tell you jitter free is impossible, but controlled  low jitter can be be achieved.

 
Back
Top