DSP Card?

[Churst]

Hi all, been a while since I logged in here!

What do people think about the TC PowerCore Express DSP cards?

Is there anything else in that price range that would offer me more or similar functionality, with the equivalent bundled effects? SSL Duende PCIe? Focusright Liquid Mix?

Thanks in advance!

[Dave Boulden]

You should add the UAD-2 to that list.

I currently have 2 Powercores, UAD-1 and UAD-2 plus a LiquidMix. Which to get will depend upon which specific areas you want to cover with plugins.

IMHO, the highlights of each are:

Powercore - all the System 6000 plugins, esp. VSS3 and NonLin2
UAD-2 - Cambridge EQ, LA-2A, LA-3A, Fairchild, Precision series, DimensionD, Plate140
LiquidMix - I tend to use more for adding "character" or "colour" to specific tracks.

I'm sure the Duende will have it's own particular strengths and I believe there's one or two owners on here who can comment on it.

[tehlord]

I've just bought a Poco Firewire and love it. The included plugs range from good to very good imo. The reverbs aren't life changing but are useful for a chort tail send channel. The Character plug is very handy, it's like a magic EQ plug. I also like the CL compressor that's included as it seems to do exactly what I eant it to do.

I've not used any other DSP cards but I did look for a while before purchasing and the TC ones seem to offer the best value for money along with the Liquidmix. I just didn't see the need for that many compression/EQ plugs.

[whitecat]

Originally, you'd get the Duende if you were after the "SSL sound" - aggressive but smooth - think pop music of the 80's... I think SSL hates it that that's often the way it's described but nonetheless there it is. That said, the plug-ins are genuine SSL algorithms from their digital consoles, ported to either a little firewire box or a PCIe card. It's the real-deal - not an 'emulation' per se.

The system, since it was introduced, has grown in usefulness, with the addition of the X-EQ, X-Verb, X-Comp, VocalStrip and DrumStrip plug-ins. These are all paid add-ons, although I believe you can now buy bundles at retail with some of them already included thus saving you cash. SSL also seems to do about two sales a year where most of them are half-price (or better!).

Personally, I LOVE my Duende. The SSL sound is now just part of the equation - I can get that, yes, but I also have an Algorithmix-designed EQ (X-EQ) which is insanely flexible with more curves than, well, ahem, fill in your own double entendre. X-Verb is nearly on par with the TC reverbs (which are the best DSP or plug-in reverbs out there) and a few other very useful tools for mixing.

Oh, the other little thing to know about the Duende too is that as of version 3 it's no longer purely a DSP box - the plug-ins WILL now also use up some CPU as well. The reason for this is scalability - whereas the first Duende boxes/cards were limited to 32 mono channels each, with the 'hybrid' approach you can now have up to 128 channels (via paid 'unlocks' to get either a 64 or 128 channel count). That's pretty insane and it does literally become a genuine SSL C-series console in your DAW with a few extras.

The G-series master buss compressor is a treasure, too. The Duende version of it is my favourite ITB version - beats Waves and beats the Glue and beats the UAD one (although I've only heard a few snippets of the latter) - hands down. To my ears anyway.

Right, the other options, which Dave mainly covered:

UAD - great for the vintage emulation stuff, it's best-of-breed in most cases.
TC Electronic Powercore - best reverbs out there. The System 6000 algos are awesome (and we're crossing our fingers for even better ones in the new year). It'll run Sonnox plug-ins as well which is a nice, if slightly expensive bonus (the Powercore versions of the Sonnox stuff cost more than the native versions, but will unload some tax from your CPU).
Focusrite Liquid Mix - only EQs and comps. Inexpensive though by comparison, and sounds as good as most any a plug-in out there, so not necessarily a bad investment if you're willing to forego the effects and the reverbs. Upgradeable via a drop-in DSP card to more channels too which is cool, you can't do that with the UAD or TC hardware without simply buying more hardware. The SSL as I mentioned is upgradeable via software/firmware unlocks.

If I had to have only one it would be the SSL. If I had to have two it would be SSL + TC. But as always YMMV!

NB - sorry everyone I haven't been around here a lot. Moved house, lost internet, got internet, but now both computers in our house are out of action so my access is limited until I either get my Macbook Pro back from Applecare service (4 weeks, they quoted, for a Superdrive!!! ) or my wife buys a new PC, which probably won't happen until after Christmas. Plus, it's just 'that time of year!'

[Churst]

Thanks for the responses. Definitely leaning more in the direction of the TC and SSL now. Although there are more questions!

The TC seems to come with a lot more pre-loaded plug-ins, which to me would be very useful (tight-ish budget). With the quality of those reverbs I'd probably be very happy. Plus I love the sound of TC's Finaliser, which I believe is modelled (in part) in MasterX3. I also noticed that the TC has a few Guitar modelling bits available for it, which is of quite high interest to me.

I know what you mean about that "SSL sound". The SSL could be fantastic in time after a few additional purchases and downloads. And the scalability ! I wouldn't be too bothered with the CPU usage. My Intel Quad should be able to deal with a bit of additional processing...

How good are the Channel Strip and Stereo Buss Compressor in this deal?

If I were to buy an additional TC unit at a later date, would that "unlock" more instances?

I'm having quite the debate, in a talking to yourself kind of way! Maybe I'll just buy both... Then just expand my collections of effects in time!

[whitecat]

I'm hammering this post out on a blackberry so specific answers to questions will have to wait but I just wanted to give you a heads up that TC is doing a 50% off selected (read: most) powercore plugins sale till the end of the month. One small catch is that you need to actually own a registered powercore before you can buy additional licenses, so if the offer appeals you'd better get a move on!