Merging Technologies

Hello everybody,

I'm pleased to announce that I'm now officially a Pyramix user after purchasing a second hand system a few weeks ago.

I've got a Dual Myk card with v5.1sp3 installed, and am coming from a background in SADiE.

I've noticed a couple of things on this forum that caught my eye and I'd like to ask about them:

The Plextor PX800 drives are reported as not compatible, but it mentions that Merging are hoping the problem would be fixed with Plextor's next firmware release, has there been any news on this? Or even any reports on whether the same problems exist on the PX810, 820 and 9xx as are mentioned on the 800? I'd like to use both SADiE and Pyramix and I prefer Plextor drives with SADiE so was wondering if there is any news on this?

I also notice that apparently version 5.1 isn't compatible with XP SP3. I like to keep Windows up to date for security as this computer is connected to the internet to do ftp of audio etc. When it says its not compatible, does that just mean that its not been tested by Merging so they can't verify or support it, or does it means there are specific problems I should be looking out for? I've used it for a few weeks on XP SP3 and not had any problems yet.


Anyway, it looks like a great product and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into it and learning how to use it properly.

Cheers!

Congratulations! I myself was a former Sadie user, as good as it was/is I don't regret my decision to move to Pyramix.

As far as I know XP SP3 is not certified for use with Pyramix ver 6, it could be that this is down to Masscore issues and wouldn't effect ver 5.1, but you need to talk to Merging to confirm this one before you update, possibly you may also want to consider the ver 6 upgrade, IMHO it's a significant step forward and I suspect that it is likely to become compatible with SP3 in the near future.

As from what I last heard, Plextor have withdrawn from the DVD writer market, I suspect that there isn't a huge push to get them working with Pyramix, personally there is little point as there are several pretty good drives out there from the likes of Pioneer, Phillips, etc. With the ability to write DDP files the error checking capability of the Plextor software isn't so necessary and I can report that since I stopped using my Plexwriter (and before that my Yamaha 400) I've noticed no increase in failures or serious problems. With the demise of Plextor burners you are going to be forced to make the move sooner or later, perhaps now is the time?

Regards


Roland

Hi Roland,

Thanks for your reply,

I'm not sure about version 6 yet, I'm at the lower end of the market and want to see how much money the Pyramix is going to bring in before I decide whether to spend the money or not! I have been thinking about selling the Mykerinos card and putting the money towards a v6 Native licence though, as I'm not sure if a DSP system is any better for me as most of my projects are 24 tracks or less classical editing, with some fairly non-taxing mixing.

I've already put XP SP3 on with v5.1SP3 and it seems to be working fine, I was just wondering if there are any issues I need to watch out for.

Interesting news about the Plextors, I'd not heard that. Thats a shame I quite liked plextools, I wonder if any other drive manufacturers do anything similar. Having said that I was chatting to a sound archive person a few months ago who was saying that none of the software based ones that use a computer drive are that accurate anyway and for archiving they use a special (very expensive) machine that is just used for error checking. His advice for my situation though was, like you say, to use DDP on good quality CD or DVD media.

Cheers!