Waves Audio Processing Accelerator

Brett - K A L I S I A

Brett - K A L I S I A

Dreaded Moderator
Feb 26, 2004
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www.towerstudio.net
For those interested :

http://www.waves.com/content.asp?id=1622

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What is Netshell APA?
APA stands for Waves Audio Processing Accelerator.

What does it do?
Provides external DSP to run multiple Waves plug-ins easily.

Why do I need this?
Waves is known for producing powerful quality plug-ins, and it’s true that the most powerful and advanced Waves plug-ins require more CPU from your system. Waves APA will provide your system with external DSP and enable you to pour on IR-1 convolution reverbs (which is unable to fit on an Accel Card) Linear Phase EQ's, L3's, Renaissance Channels, and many more CPU-hungry Waves plug-ins.

So if I have a Waves bundle can I choose how to use the plug-ins i.e. Host, TDM, APA?
Yes, one of the main advantages of the Waves APA is that we do not limit the user to run the plug-ins on only one resource or another. The user can choose to run the plug-in on the Host CPU, TDM hardware or APA directly from the host application's plug-ins menu.

What plug-ins will run and how efficient is the APA?
At first release IR Convolution Reverb, L3, Lin EQ, Lin MB, C4, Renaissance Reverb, Renaissance Channel, SoundShifter, Morphoder, TransX, and Q-Clone.

Soon after the release there will be others. Not all Waves plug-ins need to support APA. There is a misconception in the Industry were if you use any plug-in on an external DSP it delivers efficiency to your system. This is wrong. Some plug-ins that are not DSP "HOGS" are better run on your host saving the CPU from delivering the process to and from the external DSP. Only CPU-hungry plug-ins benefit from external DSP.
As for efficiency - for example at 48k on a single APA 32 you will be able to run 6x IR Convolution Reverbs, 6x L3 's, 11x Lin EQ's, 7x Lin MB 's, 14x C4's, 11x Renaissance Reverbs each, or a combination of the above DSP power.
An APA44 you will run 20% more efficient then on an APA 32, on average.

How do I connect the APA?
The APA connects via a single Ethernet connection, supplied with the unit. For Multiple units (up to 8 per host) connect all units to a Ethernet Switch.

Latency and Latency Management?
The latency is 8ms round trip. This is reported to the host and can be handled by automatic delay compensation.

Can I use more then one?
Yes, each PC or MAC can have up to 8 APA units connected via an Ethernet Switch.

What does it cost?
Netshell APA 32 - $1600 Retail. Netshell APA 44 - $2400 Retail.
Clients will receive the IRL and Q-CLONE plug-ins for free (valued at $1600 retail).

Can a multiple machine studio share APA resources?
Yes, as long as each host has Waves plug-ins installed you can have a stack of APA's in the central room and dedicate APA resources per room via a V-LAN switch system (maximum 8 APA's per host).

Who are the users Waves is targeting with this product?
1. Any user that has Waves Plug-ins, what ever system they are using.
2. Any user that wishes to have 6x or more convolution reverbs, Q-Clone or other Waves plug-ins.
* They instantly receive Netshell authorization and the IRL & Q-Clone plug-ins worth $1600!

Does it work with PC and MAC?
Yes

Does it work with Audio Units, RTAS, TDM, and VST?
Yes, it will work with most any system that runs Waves plug-ins (DirectX and MAS support coming soon).

Do I need to move my authorization to the APA?
No, the existing authorization remains as is on your HD or iLok.

Is this like other PCI, Firewire, USB DSP Cards?
No, there are distinct differences -
*APA does not have "hard wired" plug-ins connected to it. Waves provides the user with freedom as to their decision of where and when to use their plug-ins.
*APA connects via a standard Ethernet cable (supplied).
*The user is able to stack, expand their system from 1-8 with a mix and match of APA units (APA32, APA44).
*APA runs Waves plug-ins the most advanced audio processors in the world.

What is the difference between APA 32 and APA 44?
APA32 is a 19" rack mount unit, 1U High.
APA44's DSP is aprox 20% more intensive then the APA32. It's a half rack mount unit, mobile, quiet operation, 1U High.
Waves has a rack adaptor that will rack mount 2 APA 44's in a single 19" rack space.

How do I use more then 1 and what is the limit, can I mix APA 32 and APA 44?
A single system can consist of 8 APA units. These can be APA32 and APA44 combined (all connection are Ethernet via a Switch).
 
Brett - K A L I S I A said:
What does it cost?
Netshell APA 32 - $1600 Retail. Netshell APA 44 - $2400 Retail.
Clients will receive the IRL and Q-CLONE plug-ins for free (valued at $1600 retail).
Click to expand...

Uhm too much expensive, I mean 1600$ just for the card and one plug in is too much
It's better the card you have in your pc Brett (UAD etc etc)

Maurizio
 
Sorry to sound like a broken record here, and I'm not trying to step on anyone's toes, but with SAW you can run 3 times the plugs with none of the hassle. External DSP is totally pointless when you run a DAW that was written in Machine Code.
 
James Murphy said:
yeah, god forbid a company would want to protect it's products from piracy. or is there something i don't know about pace?
Click to expand...

Pace Picante sauce is made in San Antonio, Texas...

PACE anti-piracy is the enemy of pirates everywhere because it's really hard to crack. Also, if you have one cracked PACE product and you install a PACE product you legitimately own, sometimes it will negate your cracked product's fake license. Not that I would know this from experience or anything... ;)

I stopped pirating years ago because it's ultimately preferable to stay on the upgrade path, get all the new, great software. Our favorite plugins are all made by relatively small companies, and piracy hurts them dramatically. Besides, once you own a product, it's usually very affordable to keep it up to date.
 
James,

Pace is a poor excuse for piracy protection. Even if you buy all your software legitimately it still causes problems with many users. Especially if you change one piece of hardware like add a stick of RAM. You might find your studio down for 48 hours or more.

Google it: Many users have abandoned Pace related software because of this.

I've used plenty of cracked software over the years but not lately and NEVER in my DAW's. I've spent 9K in the last month alone on software. NONE OF THE SOFTWARE USES PACE. I refuse to use it. It's worse than spyware or a virus.

The funny part is; PACE **only** hurts legitimate buyers since you can download a torrent of Waves Diamond Bundle in about 45 minutes that has PACE disabled. Many legitimate WAVE owners use the cracked software to avoid dealing with PACE.

Here are a couple of useful links:
http://www.pfarrell.com/prc/pace.html
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=304896&mpage=1&key=pace&#304896
 
MKS said:
James,

Pace is a poor excuse for piracy protection. Even if you buy all your software legitimately it still causes problems with many users. Especially if you change one piece of hardware like add a stick of RAM. You might find your studio down for 48 hours or more.

Google it: Many users have abandoned Pace related software because of this.

I've used plenty of cracked software over the years but not lately and NEVER in my DAW's. I've spent 9K in the last month alone on software. NONE OF THE SOFTWARE USES PACE. I refuse to use it. It's worse than spyware or a virus.

The funny part is; PACE **only** hurts legitimate buyers since you can download a torrent of Waves Diamond Bundle in about 45 minutes that has PACE disabled. Many legitimate WAVE owners use the cracked software to avoid dealing with PACE.

Here are a couple of useful links:
http://www.pfarrell.com/prc/pace.html
http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.asp?m=304896&mpage=1&key=pace&#304896
Click to expand...
definitely interesting. personally i use a few PACE protected plug-ins and have never had a problem.. and i've changed RAM and about everything else on my system.... not doubting that others may have had problems though. anyway, waves plugs are a staple of my mixing and a chance to have a DSP farm that will get me that much closer to PT HD power on my DP rig is interesting indeed. i have a PT HD rig now too and the DP rig is going in the b room.. but i still am intrigued by this product as i use the smaller rig all the time still... and when traveling.
 
James Murphy said:
definitely interesting. personally i use a few PACE protected plug-ins and have never had a problem.. and i've changed RAM and about everything else on my system.... not doubting that others may have had problems though. anyway, waves plugs are a staple of my mixing and a chance to have a DSP farm that will get me that much closer to PT HD power on my DP rig is interesting indeed. i have a PT HD rig now too and the DP rig is going in the b room.. but i still am intrigued by this product as i use the smaller rig all the time still... and when traveling.
Click to expand...

Bit of topic. A friend of mine has just done the same as you James, gone from a DP rig to PT HD and it gave his mac countless problems and ended up having to buy a brand new computer. Ironically he now uses DP as a front end and just uses the pro tools interface :Spin:
Did you have any problems installing PT HD on your system?
 
Interesting info, MKS. I was unaware of those problems. Ever since I've gone legit with my plug-ins, I've had no problem with PACE stuff, and I use Digital Performer and Pro Tools LE on my system.
 
It only seems to cause issues with a small percentage of people.

I have always been happy that the folks at Cakewalk avoid such anti-piracy tactics. As stated above, it is basically a waste of time. No matter what you do, someone will hack it and crack it and put it on the Internet faster than you can say "crate amps suck".
 
MKS said:
As stated above, it is basically a waste of time. No matter what you do, someone will hack it and crack it and put it on the Internet faster than you can say "crate amps suck".
Click to expand...

Well, not quite with the latest Syncrosoft's protection for Steinberg... :D
We could've read "War and Peace" numerous times while h2o finally cracked the thing, it took them months.
And they said that they aren't really sure whether they would again put in such an effort to crack some newer protection as tough or tougher than this one...

The downside to this is that it seems that almost half the code in Steinberg's latest products has been linked with protection checks, thus degrading the performance of the program itself... The question is - where's the boundary?
Every protection CAN be cracked and thus made irrelevant, but how much more trouble will the honest paying users have with the dongles and whatnot and how much more loss of performance with the deeply integrated protection schemes?

It's like the fuss with certain copy protections for audio CDs - degraded quality, the inability to properly make a backup copy (I don't wanna expose my well paid CDs to heat in my car stereo, y'know....), the incompatibility with some devices, blah blah...

The thing is - neither of the protections fulfilled its primary purpose...
 
Yeah, I was about to post the exact thing in relation to Steinberg that SickBoy just did. It's perfectly fine that a company would want to protect its products from pirates and the like, but a line has to be drawn somewhere down the track to stop them from harming the interests of their legitimate users.

All the copy protection used these days just *has* to give a hit to performance.
 
You can't really blame a company for trying to protect it's product against piracy. It's perfectly understandable... The problem is, noone seems to realize that almost ANY protection can be cracked, and the ones which can't be are usually so inconvenient that they put off people from buying the product in question in the first place. Piracy is so rampant (IMO) simply because people are reluctant to pay -sometimes really huge- amounts of money on software - software feels somewhat... hmm, well, it's SOFTware, it depends on your computer to run properly, and with all the compatibility issues and dirty play by some companies which want to cripple their competitors, it's sometimes actually risky to invest big money on a DAW or somthing like that. On the other hand, look at hardware components - EQs, preamps, compressors, all that stuff - it's basically timeless, if you buy quality equipment, you won't need to upgrade for a long time, and maybe -somewhere down the line- you might trade it in for more than it cost you. It's a very good investment. Now, suppose you've bought, I don't know, Cubase for instance. What are you going to do with it in two years? Computer technology advances so fast that there's a good chance you won't be able to use it at all then. Sure, they provide benefits for their customers, but you still have to pay for each upgrade.

I think it's clear why people use warez stuff. The slution for piracy doesn't lie in endless and futile development of protection systems, but rather in a different relations between software companies and their customers. Software should cost LESS - people feel uncomfortable spending 1000 bucks on a program. If it costs less, there'll be less incentive to use pirated stuff. Piracy WILL continue, no doubt about that, but I think many more people will use legit software if it costs less (including the upgrades). Also, I know from experience (including my own) that the attitude of a company towards its customers plays a BIG role. I'll readily admit that I DO use warez, but I've bought several pieces of software which I would have otherwise procured illegally SOLELY because of the companies' efforts to help and please their customers. On the other hand, I use some cracked stuff by certain "cough"microsoft"cough" developers out of spite, simply because they are greedy corporate fuckers who don't give a shit about those who got them where they are in the first place. I DON'T want compatibility issues caused by selfishness, I DON'T want products conflicting with everything else on the computer and I DON'T want sophisticated copy protection systems which fuck up your computer and make using some programs a pain in the ass. I don't work yet, so I haven't got enough money to buy expensive stuff, but when I will, I'll make DAMN sure that I buy EVERYTHING I need from companies who give a shit, and steer absolutely clear from everything which I've had bad experiences with because of greed-related flaws and inconveniences. [/rant]

my two cents.
 
Canis said:
You can't really blame a company for trying to protect it's product against piracy. It's perfectly understandable... The problem is, noone seems to realize that almost ANY protection can be cracked, and the ones which can't be are usually so inconvenient that they put off people from buying the product in question in the first place. Piracy is so rampant (IMO) simply because people are reluctant to pay -sometimes really huge- amounts of money on software - software feels somewhat... hmm, well, it's SOFTware, it depends on your computer to run properly, and with all the compatibility issues and dirty play by some companies which want to cripple their competitors, it's sometimes actually risky to invest big money on a DAW or somthing like that. On the other hand, look at hardware components - EQs, preamps, compressors, all that stuff - it's basically timeless, if you buy quality equipment, you won't need to upgrade for a long time, and maybe -somewhere down the line- you might trade it in for more than it cost you. It's a very good investment. Now, suppose you've bought, I don't know, Cubase for instance. What are you going to do with it in two years? Computer technology advances so fast that there's a good chance you won't be able to use it at all then. Sure, they provide benefits for their customers, but you still have to pay for each upgrade.

I think it's clear why people use warez stuff. The slution for piracy doesn't lie in endless and futile development of protection systems, but rather in a different relations between software companies and their customers. Software should cost LESS - people feel uncomfortable spending 1000 bucks on a program. If it costs less, there'll be less incentive to use pirated stuff. Piracy WILL continue, no doubt about that, but I think many more people will use legit software if it costs less (including the upgrades). Also, I know from experience (including my own) that the attitude of a company towards its customers plays a BIG role. I'll readily admit that I DO use warez, but I've bought several pieces of software which I would have otherwise procured illegally SOLELY because of the companies' efforts to help and please their customers. On the other hand, I use some cracked stuff by certain "cough"microsoft"cough" developers out of spite, simply because they are greedy corporate fuckers who don't give a shit about those who got them where they are in the first place. I DON'T want compatibility issues caused by selfishness, I DON'T want products conflicting with everything else on the computer and I DON'T want sophisticated copy protection systems which fuck up your computer and make using some programs a pain in the ass. I don't work yet, so I haven't got enough money to buy expensive stuff, but when I will, I'll make DAMN sure that I buy EVERYTHING I need from companies who give a shit, and steer absolutely clear from everything which I've had bad experiences with because of greed-related flaws and inconveniences. [/rant]

my two cents.
Click to expand...

.
 
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