CreamWare Presents Pulsar II for PC and Mac

 

Pulsar II Board with PowerSampler Board
Siegburg, Germany, June 27, 2000 -- At Musikmesse 2000 in Frankfurt, CreamWare presented the newest incarnation of the successful Pulsar DSP system.

Pulsar II was developed with the objective of making a good thing even better. The system is based on a new, more powerful DSP board and it comes with the completely revised software version 2.0 for Windows and Mac.

The new Pulsar II PCI card features a generous six Analog Devices SHARC DSPs. Compared to its predecessor, this is a 50% plus in DSP power. This permits the simultaneous use of more synths, more effects and more mixer functions, or higher polyphony for the sound generators. Pulsar II now features a second independent S/TDM bus for seamless integration with other DSP cards from the SCOPE family. The bus capacity was accommodated to fit the increased power of Pulsar II.
Pulsar II Board with 2 Pulsar II SRB Boards
In terms of connectivity, Pulsar II is very flexible. The inputs and outputs are situated on a daughterboard, which can easily be connected to the DSP card. This allows the user to choose from various interface units. In its basic configuration, the system features 20 I/Os (stereo analog, stereo S/PDIF and 2 x ADAT). Thanks to the 24 bit/96 kHz AD/DA converters, a professional sound quality is guaranteed. Alternatively, a 24-I/O daughterboard with three ADAT interfaces can be used. Additional I/O-boards are scheduled for future release. In version 2.0, the software has acquired a new look. The ergonomic design was borrowed from the high-end SCOPE system. A new surface handling mechanism was developed especially for use on slower computer systems. Ffeatures such as partially-transparent windows can be switched off, greatly speeding up overall operation.
PulsarII SRB Board
Pulsar II also includes additional new devices. The effects lineup has been outfitted with shelving EQs, new compressors and new limiters. Pulsar II users who register their product via the Internet within a specific period of time will also get the new Modular Synthesizer V2 as a free registration bonus. This includes not only a large collection of new modules (e.g. step sequencer, drum and morphing oscillators and various effects, including a vocal-format filter), but also a new menu structure and a completely revised design – all of which combine to make creating new modular synths even more productive and enjoyable than before In addition to the drivers for ASIO, EASI, MME, DirectSound, tripleDAT, OMS and Sound Manager, version 2.0 also includes an ASIO 2.0 driver. The Pulsar II board is equipped with the newly-developed Ultra Low Latency Interface (ULLI), which also features hardware-based ASIO support. The ASIO driver latency can be adjusted to a minimum of 2 ms, enabling the configuration to be fully optimized for the host computer.

Pulsar II is fully compatible to its predecessor. A Pulsar II can also be used for expansion of existing Pulsar systems. The Pulsar II user can immediately benefit from the large library of around one hundred optional software modules, which were developed by CreamWare, by third party developers such as SPL and Sonic Timeworks, and by SCOPE users. Version 2.0 is also available to users of existing Pulsar systems as a free update (PC) and full version (Mac). Pulsar II was released in May 2000 with software for Windows and Mac.

A new Pulsar version of software for CreamWare's Pulsar DSP system is now available for Windows and Macintosh. Version 2.01 can be used with Pulsar and Pulsar II systems on both Windows and Macintosh computers. The new version includes Macintosh support for the STS-3000 and STS-4000 sampler plug-ins. Now, Mac users as well as PC users can add professional sampling capabilities and compatibility with a huge sample library to the features of their Pulsar system. Pulsar 2.01 also includes a series of new Modular2 synthesizer patches and a completely revised manual. The latency of the GigaSampler driver has been reduced to the bare minimum. Furthermore, using the new S-Mux modules, owners of Pulsar II hardware can now transfer 24 bit/96 kHz audio via the ADAT interface. In addition to various other minor enhancements, version 2.01 incorporates bug fixes which further optimize system performance and overall stability. In this regard, special attention was given to the Mac version. Problems which could arise during installation and in certain usage situations have been fixed. Pulsar software version 2.01 is available as a free update. It can be downloaded from the CreamWare homepage.

Source: CreamWare
Web: www.creamware.com