Orville to H8000FW upgrade

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- January 21, 2008 at 1:45 am #105272
  
  shandor
  Member
  
  Hello,
  
  First of all, let me thank you for your amazing work and the quality of your effects unit. I think it has the soul. Seriously
  
  My questions are about upgrade path Orville -> H8000FW. It's not really clear on the web-site, so I'm making this post.
  
  1. What the main advantage of upgrading? I fall in the unlucky 3rd catergory of users for whom the upgrade is the priciest (3000$). Or I could just find another Orville used, or even get Eclipse new?
  
  2. How exactly working your firewire streaming? I mean, I do understand the concept, I just don't understand the practical side. The effects unit is meant to work with my audio interface. Right now I'm using Lynx AES16SRC all digital PCI interface. AES1-8 are feeding my Prism Dream Convertors for ADA, and AES9-16 are used for digital inserts like 2st for Orville, 1st for a couple of Focusrite Liquid Channels etc. Everything is put then in Cubase 4 with Lynx ASIO driver and integrated using Steinberg's incredible feature of external plug-ins (i can provide more details if you need it) that allows me to use Orville as regular sends or inserts in my cubase interface. SO:
  
      2a. Do I need to use any virtual audio cable application to hook it up to my lynx card (actually, loosing those ins/out)? As far as I now, Cubase still doesn't support agregate devices allowing the use of multiple interfaces via ASIO (I think it's more ASIO problem than Steinberg's). Clocking issues?
  
      2b. How practically works your FW driver? What about quality? Is there clocking/jitter issues comparing to robust AES?
  
      2c. Is Midi being fed over firewire too or do I still need to use physical midi plugs for control and clock?
  
      2d. Where can I find more information about logistics, shipping costs, forms to apply etc…? In the "Store" section of web-site, the link seems to be broken and I couldn't get more information about all that.
  
      2e. 8 channels means, for exemple, that I can use it as 4 stereo effects processor or 1 DSP can run only 1 program? I mean, can I load and route 2 stereo effects for DSP A and 2 stereo effects for DSP B?
  
  Well, I think it's the main questions I have about practical use of H8000FW and upgrade considerations. I'm sure it'll be usefull for any user of Orville as the clocking raises and everybody's in need of more dsp power and real-time channels processing.
  
  Thank you in advance,
  
  Shandor (France)
- January 21, 2008 at 10:43 am #116786
  
  IDeangelis
  Member
  
  Hi Shandor
  
  there are a number of very good reasons why an upgrade from Orville to H8000FW is a must, even though you may not end up using the FW connection.
  
  -Orville is no longer in production. It won't get any more development and improvements.
  
  -H8000 is much more powerful so you'll be able to run all the Orville presets at 96KHz. Many of them couldn't on Orville.
  
  -such bigger power allows for larger algorithms and even to run a single monster one, loaded on a single bigger DSP. Monolithic Mode automatically switches the 2 dsps in a bigger one for extemely large presets. These would take the power of 2 or 3 Orvilles, even though there are other things 3 or 3 Orvilles wouldn't do anyway in this regard.
  
  -each dsp allows for 8 inputs/outputs; so you get multichannel presets, including 5.1 surround, multiple stereo machines (2/3/4 stereo parallel effects in a preset), octal mono FX channels.
  
  -you get about 1900 presets, a lot of system enhancements, superior WC, many new modules not available on Orville…some new amazing EQ are worth the switch.
  
  -you get 12 AES/EBU I/O (8 on DB-25 and 4 on XLRs), 8 channels on ADAT, 16 ch on FW400, S/Pdif and analog.
  
  -it's a much better unit, simply. And for 1/2 price you'll get a brand new unit as practically everything in your old Orville will be replaced.
  
  Your questions:
  
  The FW streaming would work well with DAW software that supports multiple FW drivers (Logic/ProTools) if you are also using a FW audio interface. You'd typically send audio to the H8000FW from channel Aux Sends and then back to the computer, for fx processing. FW connection should have a dedicated BUS for every FW device connected to a computer. As an example of bad habit, the Mac G5 and PRO computers offer many F400 and 800 ports but they all share the same bus (how wrong that is!). So, installing PCI firewire cards is mandatory to have the right performance. In addition to that FW performance on G5s and first MacPro generation is lower than it shoulkd be. The new just released MacPro has this issue fixed.
  
  AES/EBU still remains THE professional audio standard and it doesn't add work to the computer. But having a FW connection can help those who don't have many channels available and the H8000FW can also work as an audio interface…great for recording with a laptop, for instance.
  
  Midi will eventually work on the FW connection.
  
  I'll try to have more info on the upgrade posted.
  
  8 channels means that each DSP has 8 I/Os so you could have 8 stereo fx, spread across the 2 DSPs. The unit though only uses 8I/O from/to the external world, so these FX can be submixed internally or you can have them from a single DSP or from 2 DSPs, running 2 presets, each one with 2 stereo FX in each. So, yes you can load 2 stereo FX in each dsp.
  
  hope this helps
  
  I
- January 21, 2008 at 1:49 pm #116790
  
  shandor
  Member
  
  Hello,
  
  Thank you for your quick and exhausting reply. I really can see now the benefits to upgrade. When I have more info about practical logistics, I will proceed with it.
  
  If I may, also just for practical reasons, it would be great to have some kind of general control plug-ins in VST format even without audio streaming with some quick midi learn feature to be able to easy up the setup and setup changes. With so many presets, modules and parameters, even in Orville it's really not easy to access all that to unleash the power of your amazing effects. VST plug-ins could, for exemple, remember the project state for the song, like total recall feature. Even if it's a paid option, I think many many people would really hook up on that to shorten the learning curve of programming and also, to get rid of that roudimentary serial port and connection. With the time, it could even incorporate vsig editor in more intuitive way, like Reaktor of Native Instruments.
  
  Thanks again for your your amazing work!
  
  My best,
  
  Shandor
- January 21, 2008 at 3:21 pm #127846
  
  IDeangelis
  Member
  
  Shandor
  
  please contact support@eventide.com for more details about how to proceed with the upgrade.
  
  best
  
  I
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