MIXTREAM INFO

[mramosch]

I\'d like to have some information about the
Mixtreme Card. Maybe anybody out there...???

1.Dave mentioned that up to 4 Cards can be
used together in one PC.
Are they sharing there DSP-Power?
What I mean is - can I open multi-instances
of the TC-Reverb over all 4 Cards or do I
have to purchase a new license for TC for
every single Mixtreme-Card ?

2.The 16 Outputs from GS to Mixtreme -
are they Stereo or Mono ?

Thanx in advance for your replies...

Manfred

[This message has been edited by mramosch (edited 07-11-1999).]

[holger]

Yes, you can add more cards of mixtreme. But be shure that thy can be connected togheter with an internal interface like pulsar and all cards can share an interrupt. Otherwise the communication between the cards will cut PCI bus performance or problems in sharing the DSP´s will appear.

[mramosch]

What do you mean by INTERNAL INTERFACE CONNEXION ???
Can\'t I connect Cards without any PULSAR ?
What\'s the technical stuff behind this...

Any ideas about my other questions above?

See you

Manfred

[holger]

hi mramosch

sorry, you misunderstood my piguin english...

Pulsar: The Pulsar/Scope DSP card system (each card has 4 shark DSP´s which is an equivalent to 5-6 Motorolas! and therefore is as powerful as 5 mixtreames...) has internal connection ports called S-TDM, which connects more cards directly. Therefore a array of cards can share DSP power and synchronize data streams WITHOUT using the PCI Bus! So PCI Bandwith is not reduced by the cards and you have the full bandwith for audiostreams, e.g. 128 Gigasampler voices, ASIO channels...

I don´t know how a array of mixtreams is connected. But If they use tke PCI Bus for communication I am shure problems will appear on bigger systems!

[mramosch]

OK Holger...

I think we have to wait for 1.6 and Mixtreme
and check it out ourselves...

Thanks \'till then

Manfred

[Bailey]

The Motorola 56301DSP chip used in mixtreme and the Digidesign Pro Tools 24 MIX system runs at 80 mhz. The cut sheet for the 21060-21060 SHARC says it runs at 40mhz and sustained 80 MFLOPS, although Creamware says they run at 60
mhz. Unless the instruction set for the SHARC is considerably more extensive than the 56301\'s. Can Mr. Holger explain?

[holger]

hi baley,

this is an interresting comparison between shark and 56301. I´ll foward this to creamware for detailed information. On the Analog Devices they talk about 120 MFlops@40MHz performance for the 21060. But the comparison between the chips is complicated because of the different structure. Clock Rate and Instructions per second simply says nothing about the real life performance!

But two thigs my experience say:

1. Shark´s calculate with 32 Bit floating point and therefore have no internal risk of clipping. They simply sound better than the 24 bit linear motorolas

2. The number of plugins and effects running on a pulsar seems to be higher compared to a mix card, but there are no identical plugins available for a fair comparison.

3. The processing level of pulsar is much higher then mixtreame, because 4 DSP´s are on 1 board and you can combine more boards via STDM Bus. Therefore 1 single mixtreame card is cheaper, BUT: you need TDIF->ADAT converters additional and the spdif option also. For a complete Mixdown on Card the processing power is not enough.


[This message has been edited by holger (edited 07-17-1999).]

[IVAN]

Im using Mixtreme with Gigasampler now and its great . Im routing the output of my Audio PCI in to one of the inputs on the Mixtreme and it works great. In Cubase I just record the input using the Mixtreme ASIO drivers and im having no problems.Im sure Giga 1.6 and The new Mixtreme 1.05 will work nicely as a team. In cubase I can get the Latency down too about 26ms without clicks.

[mramosch]

Hi Ivan

Just a question...

Are you already routing the GS into the Mixtreme?
If \'yes\' - are the 16 Channels from GS to MIXTREME
Stereo or Mono?

Thanx

Manfred

[Bespoke]

What is the current price for the Mixtreme?

Also, if I get a Mixtreme, will I be able to play music from my CD-Rom drive and from the Internet from it, or will I have to get a second SB-type card for that purpose.

With the Mixtreme, is there a separate rack module where you have the inputs for all of the channels? Or are all the inputs on the PCI card? It would have a take up a few slots in order to have all the inputs.

[IVAN]

Hey Manfred,
Im not running the GS through drivers im simply routing the output from my audio pci into the input of one of the mixtreme channels. GS doesnt recognize the Mixtreme soundcard as of yet until the upgrade.But yes its in stereo and the quality of Mixtreme is awesome. The tech support is the best out of any company I have ever dealt with. Its funny also because when I bought the Mixtreme I really was\'nt sure what I was getting but when I hooked it up man I was totallyblown away.

[GG]

Hi,

The price of the mixtreme (standard version) is about 700 USD.

A second sound card is recommended since mixtreme does not play back regular windows sounds or any ordinary multimedia content since its analog interfaces has no sample rate option under 44.1K. Also, there is no CD-ROM analog input on the card.

mixtreme has 16 channels of I/O in form of standard TDIF digital connectors. If you need analog I/Os you have to purchase a TDIF-analog converter module. Soundscape offers two different products, both with 20 bit resolution: SS8IO-3 is a cheaper one (~700 USD) with unbalanced cinch connectors and SS8IO-1 is a really high-end piece with balanced +4dB (price around 2000 USD). These interfaces offer 8 channel analog I/O so if you want 16 analog connector you have to purchase two pieces of them.