Sonar X2 / Studio One 2.5 / Slate VTM ...... some general observations
Hi all
Upfront - I use both Sonar X2 [ not 2a as yet ] and Studio One 2.5 in our small studio - probably about 50/50 .
Both excellent programs - each with their own stenghts / weaknesses.
If anyone try's to tell you one of these " owns " the other, you can rest assured they have no idea what they are talking about and are probably a fanboi for one of the other.
Both our main DAW's are identical - X2 on one and S1 2.5 on the other
- Core i7
- Windows 8 X64
- 4.2gig Hex Core [ 6 real + 6 logical ]
- 16 gig ram
- RME FireFace UC
- SSD drives etc......
- Both DAW's with all settings set to 32 Bit / 88.2k / 48 Samples
- resulting real world latency just under 4.0ms
Basically, both DAW's - the X2 rig and the 2.5 rig - run beautifully. The " bakers " at both CW and Presonus clearly know what they are doing.
Anyway ....... 3 days ago we bought 2 x Slate VTM.
Firslty - Slate VTM is *very* nice. It is very subtle and even when pushed very hard it saturates the mid's and low-end-hi's very smoothly and tightens the overall mix very nicely.
In short - very highly recommended - you need an iLok2 - but thats no biggie - best part is you dont need to buy a UAD "dongle " to get pro-quality-tape-emulation ;) ........ [ sorry .. couldnt resist ].
I did however find a cpu load issue which quite surprised me ..... its cerainly no show-stopper for either DAW, but worth noting and reporting for the sake of constructive feedback.
With the S1 2.5 DAW we did a Slate VTM load and stability test:-
- in short, we loaded 96 individual and different stero audio loop tracks and inserted 1 Slate Setero VTM on each Track
- this resulted in a DAW CPU load of just under %80
- even at this load, the system was fully stable and we were able to keep recording with no issue's
- all good
With the X2 DAW we did the same Slate VTM load and stability test:-
- in short, once we got to around the 60 Track load [ as per above ] the system started to get *very* erratic / glitchy / "crashy" - it just kept locking up etc.... even though the DAW CPU Load was only sitting around the ~% 52
- it was not possible to do any more recording
- dissappointing,
but definetly not in any way a show stopper.
[ As a side-note-referecne point - as you know, the Slate VTM and the UAD ATR-102 are direct competitors. Comparitavely speaking though, if you wanted to run 60 x ATR-102's you will need at least 3 x UAD Octo Cards @ $1500 each - thats $4500 plus a @2000 Magma Box. To get to the 96 instances, you will need at least 4 x UAD Octo cards which is $6000 again, plus a $2000 Magma Box ] In short - for both X2 and S1 2.5 - all is
very very good in DAW land. The above test is very artifical and for many very " un " real-world
My only [ hopefuly constructive ] feedback is that at quite-high-cpu-loads, the X2 Audio Engine probably could do with some further tweaking / refinement.
And in fairness, it is quite possbile that X2
a may well already address this [ high-cpu-load ] issue - in whcih case the above is all irrelevant !!!
All the best to everyone here and thanks to CW for all their ongoing and continuing work with the " X " series.
Tim
post edited by timboe - 2012/12/23 01:25:16