Has anyone used Altiverb in surround with PMX

[rjs104]

Hello all,

Just wondering if anyone has used Altiverb with Pyramix (Masscore) and if so what their experiences were?

Cheers,

Richard.

[Graemme]

Hi Richard,

I've used Altiverb in PMX Masscore with some success. Often it's at 88K2 or 96K sampling rate and a *lot* of system resources get used up. So, I've taken to using it on a second PC and treating Altiverb as if it was an outboard piece of hardware. This way I avoid the painfully time-consuming re-loading process that occurs whenver the mixer is rebuilt in Pyramix.

If you'll be using it mostly at 48K, then it may well 'fit' on your PMX PC, although that will depend on thr type and number of other VST plug-ins that you'll be using. Be sure and set your return strips to the correct bus that feeds them (for latency compensation purposes).

Best Regards,

Graemme

[Paulo M]

Hi Graemme,

when using Altiverb on an external PC, what´s your setup? I mean, what host do you use on the external PC, how do you send your signals back and forth in terms of audio interfacing, cope with latencies etc? I often think about having another PC just for plugins as a kind of multi effects hardware but didn´t figure out yet the signal flow between Pyramix and the second unit.

[Jonathon Stevens]

Hi Richard,

I use Altiverb 6xl all the time with my Masscore system, very often on 5.1 projects, it sounds and works great. As Graemme mentioned it does require a decent amount of resources, that being said i've run it with 48 track mix session containing roughly 20 instances of Epure, and a few instances of Solera, Alchemist and/or Syrah, without too much trouble.

I'm on a Quadcore machine with 4GB Ram, windows xp... a good machine 2 years ago, but perhaps not the top of the line at the moment.

As Graemme mentioned tho, the whole re-loading thing Altverb does can be a little slow, especially if you're rebuilding your mixer frequently. It's just as slow with protools except you only need to do it once, when you launch the application.

[Graemme]

Hi Paulo,

I use either Sequoia or WaveLab running on a Lynx AES-16. I'm using it for mastering (so not that often) and I can live with latencies. The Pyramix aux system is great in that it properly places sends where I want them in the surround field.

I've also used Vincent Burel's FFX-16 app as a host but that was/is limited to stereo usage. The AES-16 is going away soon; I'm fed up with the flakey drivers and firmware.

Best,

Graemme

Hi Graemme,

when using Altiverb on an external PC, what´s your setup? I mean, what host do you use on the external PC, how do you send your signals back and forth in terms of audio interfacing, cope with latencies etc? I often think about having another PC just for plugins as a kind of multi effects hardware but didn´t figure out yet the signal flow between Pyramix and the second unit.

[Paulo M]

Hi Graemme,

thanks for sharing.Interesting setup. So basically is just like a hardware unit, it gets audio by physical I/O and all. Apart from the plugins, do you use it as external recorder to get the final output of your mastering chain? I mean, in a way that for instance if you are mastering for CD stereo, you can record straight at 44.1/16 bit from whatever sample rate from the source and avoid the usual sampling/bit depth conversion process.(providing you´re using analogue interfacing).

I have two Pyramix here one in each room, but only use one at a time. Instead of dumping one and gather all cards whitin one machine, I guess that I will do something like you. I have an MB5/Dual card on one machine and an X50/MADI with Sphynx 2 on other, so I guess that I can have an interesting combination of signal flow