Soundscape Announces mixpander DSP Card
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Mixpander Mixer
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The mixpander PCI card
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October 27, 2000Soundscape Digital Technology is delighted to announce the most eagerly
anticipated hardware addition to the Soundscape product range since the
award winning 32 track R.Ed DAW.
The Soundscape mixpander(TM) PCI card provides a massive amount of
additional DSP processing power for Soundscape R.Ed and SSHDR1-Plus Digital
Audio Workstations. It connects to the 512 channel Expansion Bus Port on
the rear panel of Soundscape DAWs and integrates with the Soundscape Mixer
transparently, taking advantage of all the real-time DSP effects plug-ins
already purchased and authorised for the DAW. The V3.0 Dynamic Mix
Automation feature in the SSEditor software extends automatically to
mixpander and external control of mixing and effects is provided through
Soundscape's Console Manager.
mixpander is designed to add serious amounts of additional DSP processing
to cope with any size of mixing task and has the power and bussing
structure that can be compared to that of top flight digital consoles, plus
a rack of outboard effects processor units. mixpander has full 24 bit,
96kHz operation for complete compatibility with R.Ed, and this makes R.Ed
the only system available that is able to run DSP based real-time plug-ins
like the TC Reverb and TC Dynamizer plus other effects from Apogee, Aphex,
Arboretum Systems, Wave Mechanics and Sonic Timeworks all at 96kHz.
The board includes state of the art digital devices and advanced
architecture to provide unequalled flexibility and processing efficiency.
Quite simply put, mixpander is the most powerful and flexible audio mixing
and processing solution available, period !
mixpander/9 contains 9 of the latest Motorola 563xx DSPs on both sides of a
full length PCI card. The total processing capability is up to 2.6 GIPS
(Giga Instructions per Second). This is more than 11 times the processing
capability that's already included inside the R.Ed unit and 15 times the
processing power of an SSHDR1-Plus. Suffice to say, it's enough processing
power to cope with even the largest mixing and effects processing jobs.
mixpander/5 contains 5 Motorola 563xx DSPs for up to 1.4 GIPS of processing
power and is 5 times more powerful than R.Ed or 8 times more powerful than
SSHDR1-Plus.
To give an idea of what a mixpander/9 is capable of, one card can run 10 x
heavyweight TC Reverbs, plus a 32 channel, 32 bus, 5.1 surround mixer, with
4 master channels for simultaneous 5.1, LCRS, Dolby surround and stereo
outputs. You can add 4 bands of fully parametric EQ, Dynamics processing
and 8 sends on every channel, a Dolby Surround Encoder, 2 x stereo Aphex
Aural Exciters and an Aphex Big Bottom Pro, 24 stereo delay based effects
(chorus, flangers, delays etc.) and a top notch multi-band processor like
the TC Dynamizer on a stereo sub-mix.
Put another way, one mixpander/9 can run 10 TC Reverbs, 60 dynamics
processors (gate/expander/compressor/limiter), 300 bands of fully
parametric EQ, 6 TC Dynamizers and 30 Delays simultaneously at 24 bit,
44.1kHz. Whichever way you want to use it, there's an awesome amount of DSP
power available.
There are a total of 640 audio connections between the DSPs plus 32
channels of additional audio streaming from the PCI bus of the PC. Add the
16 busses per DSP chip and the fact that no busses are required for routing
between in-line effects or other DSP elements in each channel strip (eg.
EQs, sends, faders, meters etc.), and you end up with a staggering number
of possible connections that completely blows away the competition!
There's fully automatic routing between DSPs as standard, but there's a
manual override for users who want to delve into the complex routing and
effects flexibility.
Seven of the DSPs have their own external 384kB of super fast effects
memory and two are equipped with even larger amounts (1.5MB) of super fast
SRAM for running multiple 'memory hungry' effects (eg. Reverbs,
Chorus/Flangers, Delays etc.). This advanced architechure has been designed
to allow the DSPs to achieve maximum processing efficiency. Compare this
performance to that from any other system and nothing even comes close.
Sharing of memory resources, common in the less sophisticated architectures
of other systems, places a restriction on each DSP, resulting in much lower
overall performance.
mixpander has up to 32 channels of Super Low Latency (SLL) MME (wave),
ASIO-2 and GSIF (native multi-channel Gigasampler/Gigastudio) drivers,
which are full duplex, multi-client and respond down to 1.5mS for the
lowest latency available for any PCI card. This means that mixpander can
accommodate any host based software synthesizers (eg. Seer Systems
SurReal/Reality, Native Instruments Generator, Bitheadz Unity1,
Propellerheads Rebirth etc.), software samplers like Nemesys
Gigasampler/Gigastudio, plus output from any audio sequencer package at the
same time. The SLL technology allows the synths and samplers to respond as
fast as hardware units, even when recording or playing 32 tracks or more
from the Soundscape DAW. These PC audio channels are routed directly into
the real-time mixer running on the mixpander DSPs and are combined with
tracks from R.Ed or SSHDR1-Plus, so providing the ultimate integration of
DSP based mixing and audio recording, with native PC based audio
processing, software synthesis, sampling and MIDI sequencing.
mixpander/9 - List Price US$2500 (GBP2100 inc. VAT)
mixpander/5 - List Price US$1800 (GBP1500 inc. VAT)
International pricing may vary according to exchange rates, local sales tax
and import duties etc.
mixpander is expected to ship in initial quantities in November 2000, with
full mass production expected in January 2001 and will be available
worldwide from Soundscape international distributors and dealers. For more information, visit their web site at www.soundscape-digital.com. |
