For a limited time, if you buy an Apogee Ensemble or Element series Thunderbolt audio interface you will receive a discount code for a free six month subscription to the Eventide Ensemble Bundle!
Apogee interfaces are renowned in the industry for super clean conversion and the sound of Eventide’s hardware can be found littered all over numerous releases from the past 40 odd years so this is a match made in heaven for audio purists.
If you’ve ever wanted to try out the H910 harmonizer, Blackhole reverb, H3000 or any of the other iconic effects then now is your chance!
The offer runs from July 10th 2018 through January 10th 2019
Zoom have announced the release of their new LiveTrack L-20 mixer, promising many new extra features, building on their concept first introduced with the L-12.
Take a first look at the key new features of the LiveTrak L-20.
Create Six Custom Monitor Mixes
With six independent Monitor Outputs, each musician can have its own custom mix, now complete with effects and easily switchable from headphone output to balanced line output for stage monitors. In addition, L-20 provides a dedicated headphone output for FOH (front-of-house) to enable monitoring of each custom mix and master out from the console.
Two Effects Sends
L-20 offers two Effects section for total of 20 built-in EFX with adjustable parameters. For maximum flexibility, now you can easily assign one Effect section to the Monitor mixes while the other section is assigned to the Master output.
Wireless Mixing
To enhance its effective operation from a distance, L-20 offers wireless control* via its own app for iPad featuring Fader Levels and Modes, Scenes, EQ parameters and more. Now you can even manage your EFX and Scene Library right from your iPad. *Optional Zoom Bluetooth LE Adapter (BTA-1)is required.
Pre Orders Being Taken Now With Stock Arriving in September.
It’s been a while now since we sat down and took a good look at any of the mobile processor releases. It’s a market segment that has been crawling along slowly in recent years with minor incremental upgrades and having checked out the last couple of mobile flagship chips, it was obvious that with each generation we were seeing those refinements focused more on improved power handling rather than trying to extract every drop of performance.
Admittedly in the shape of last years 7700HQ they perhaps got closer to the equivalent desktop model than any generation previously managed to achieve in previous years. Whilst welcome, this was really more a symptom of stagnating desktop speeds, rather than any miraculous explosion in mobile power. Whilst the chip itself was a great performer, the fact that it got there by eaking a few percent generation, upon generation… well, by the time we got there, it was all ultimately a little underwhelming.
But now, thanks to AMD’s continued push in the current desktop CPU war, we’ve seen Coffee Lake emerge from the blue camp and now we’re going to get hands-on with the mobile equivalent.
The i7 8750H we have here today is a 6 core with hyperthreading, running with a base clock of 2.20GHz and a max single core turbo frequency of 4.10GHz and leads the way when it comes to mobile i7’s.
Just as a side note before we kick this off, there is another chip above this, in the form of the i9 8950HK which is also 6 cores + hyperthreading but with another 500MHz on the clock. I mention this as Apple has just announced it’s going into the flagship Macbook later in the year, we do have them due to land with us in PC laptops as well in a month or two, so I will be benchmarking that when it arrives with us too.
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Clocking Off
Already in the very first screenshot above, we’ve inadvertently tipped a nod to what’s going to be the crux of this write-up. The clock speeds are somewhat wide-ranging, to say the least. On paper, there is almost 2GHz worth of clock between the base and turbo clocks. Keeping in mind that it’s single core turbo only up to the 4.1GHz and suddenly you find yourself asking about what the rest of the cores will be doing at that point.
Quickly throwing CPUid on and running it returns us a result of 3890GHz, which if it had been all cores would have been rather impressive for a mobile chip. In this instance, however, I wasn’t doing anything other than sitting on the desktop when this snapshot was taken. The score you see is the highest core score and it’s hyper-thread was showing as matching it.
The rest of the cores, however, well, they were largely unused and sat around the baseline 2.0GHz – 2.6GHz level. What we really want to know of course is what sort of average speed we can expect from all the cores being kicked up to 100% load.
Any longer term followers of these pieces will already be well aware that my preference for testing involves doing an all core overclock or in more basic terms, I tend to favour locking all the cores to the single core max turbo speed.
Yes, it’s an overclock, but it’s one that the chips are kind of rated to. Admittedly, it’s not rated to quite the level we’re working at here, but hey… that’s why we favour some chunky aftermarket cooling in those systems to make everything alright.
Except, when dealing with laptops we can’t go strapping a large chunk of copper to it, in fact, a lot of the tweaks we would wish to make on a desktop system, simply don’t exist in laptop land. Often with laptops, it’s a case of a unit either working out of the box or with a few basic tweaks or otherwise due to drivers or hardware choices it’ll never really be suitable for the sort of real-time processing required for working with audio.
I grabbed a copy of AIDA64 and gave it a quick run, at least enough to force the CPU to load up all the cores and simulate a heavy workload and how those cores would respond to such a load.
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What we see here is all the cores being pushed, with the highest speed core running about 3000MHz in the screenshot. Monitoring it in real-time it was bouncing around 3000 – 3200MHz range. Similarly, at the lower end, we see a core sat around 2600MHz and this would bounce up to around 2800MHz at times.
So, where’s our 4.1GHz turbo? Well, that single core turbo only really achieves such lofty heights if the rest of the cores are sat around doing nothing. In the interest of load balancing and heat management should more than a couple of cores need to be turbo’d then all of them will shift to a safer average.
You see on desktops with chips that have a range of a 3.8Ghz to 4.3Ghz sitting mostly around the 4GHz level and is why I tend to notch them all up to 4.3GHz in that sort of situation. It ensures no sudden ramping up and down and ensures we get some nice stable but optimized performance out of a setup without taking any major risks.
With these laptops, we don’t get those sort of options, nor I suspect would heat permit us to be quite so aggressive with the settings. Whilst the headline here of 6 cores is fairly unprecedented within a consumer level laptop, and certainly, on a fairly mainstream chipset, it’s a little bit smoke and mirrors with how it’s presented if you don’t fully understand how the turbo presents itself.
The potential issues it presents to us are in the form of the ASIO buffer. With whole channels being assigned to each given thread, we ideally want the performance level across all cores to be as equal as possible. For audio systems the overall performance can often be limited by how powerful the weakest core is, this is something we need to keep in mind heading into this results roundup.
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With the DAWBench DSP test, we’re using the SGA1566 variant running under Reaper for this generation of testing and we see the 8750H performing around the level of an entry-level desktop i5 chip. In comparison to previous generations, this isn’t overly surprising as historically the mobile i7 CPU of any given generation tends to sit around the level of the leading i5 desktop solution in the performance stakes.
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Running the DAWBench Vi test we see similar results here too, with the chip coming in just behind the i5 8400 once again. It’s a reasonable showing and in reality, we’re probably looking at maybe a 25% gain over the last generation flagship mobile chip.
Given that we’ve seen 3 or 4 generations now where 10% gains year on year has been the standard then normally we’d be pretty happy about seeing a jump of 25% coming out of single refresh and indeed it’s certainly a far better value option than the model it replaced.
However, we saw a jump of 40% on the desktop last year and frankly all we’re doing here is shoehorning in another couple of cores, rather than bringing in a whole new platform. It looks like they’ve played it cautiously by not pushing the chip too much and the temperatures do seem a little on the safe side even under stress testing.
To be fair to them, this is pretty much what the average user wants from a laptop chip, giving us quick bursts to deal with any sudden intensive activity, but otherwise, aggressive power-saving to ensure a long battery life when on the move.
Which of course, is pretty much the opposite of what most of us power users want, as we tend to be looking for a high-performance desktop replacement solution. It’s clear there is a bit of headroom here which will no doubt be leveraged over the next couple of range refreshes, it’s just a little bit frustrating that we can’t extract a bit more of it right now ourselves.
With all that said I suspect that after seeing the CPU war kick expectations up a notch as it did last year, that I may have headed into this with slightly higher expectations than normal this time around.
Overall, the final result here is a solid release with above average generational gains that I’m sure will be more than appreciated by anyone who is in the market for a new model this year.
Steve Gordon is the latest artist to join the Blade family. His weapon of choice is the Blade Tetra Bass.
The Tetra has been Blades iconic bass since 1989 when it won Innovative Instrument of the Year in Italy. Whether your preference is for vintage growl, piano wire slap or thundering cutting mids, the Tetra Bass will deliver. The BVSC-3 on-board electronics gives you full tonal flexibility – no matter what your music style. The Tetra Bass took all the classic features of the past and added more of what you require: unrivaled play-ability, versatility, tone – and style.
Steve Gordon
Steve Gordon followed the traditional hard earned musician’s journey. He began his career as a bass player and song writer in his home town; forming and performing in several local bands. This eventually led him to London where he concentrated on playing for other artists such as: Desert Eagle Discs , Christine Levine, Julia Fordham and Just Jack.
In 1999 Steve began playing with Morcheeba and continues to write and play bass on Skye Edwards solo albums.
Steve with Skye Edwards onstage together with the Blade Tetra Bass in May 2018.
Gary Levinson is delighted that Steve has come on board; joining the growing number of musicians choosing Blade Guitars for their live and studio performances.
Nine Volt Pedals have already been on the scene for a while but having had their Surfing Bear Overdrive pedal on my board for the past few months, I thought it’d be worth a shout out as I can honestly say it sounds (and looks) fantastic!
Whilst it is based on that classic green pedal we all know very well, there are some subtle differences which in my opinion makes this pedal stand out! Stick it in front of a solid-state amp and it’ll sound great but where this pedal will truly excels is in front of a tube amp. When used to push your clean tone which is just on the brink of breakup, that’s when it really does shine!
As you’d expect the emphasis on the mid-range is apparent. Nothing out of the ordinary in terms of controls with the standard Volume, Tone and Drive knobs but what is noticeable is the tonal range you can get from these allowing you to go from a smooth boost to a satisfyingly warm crunch tone. The tonal variety makes this pedal extremely versatile and would certainly be a very nice addition to anyone’s pedal board.
Aside from it sounding great, it also boasts some pretty cool artwork too! Swedish artist, Jonas Claeson is responsible for the artwork across the entire range of Nine Volt Pedals and I must say I love what he’s done with them.
The Surfing Bear really is a sweet sounding overdrive pedal and comes in at a fraction of the price of the TS-808 reissue. If you’re in the market for a wonderful sounding “808” style overdrive pedal at a really affordable price, then this little gem could be just for you!
– Drive, Tone, and Volume controls
– True bypass
– 9V battery or standard 9VDC negative tip adaptor
– Current draw 15mA
– Input impedance 500K ohms
– Output impedance 10K ohms
– Designed in Japan by One Control
After a teaser campaign lasting a couple of weeks, the first day of Superbooth ensured that a number of eyes were already peering in IK Multimedia’s direction. After all, why would a company with a mostly software heritage be heading to the mother of all hardware synth shows in Berlin?
As you would expect, this time around it got physical as they unveiled the UNO mono synth.
IK Multimedia Uno Synth
Boasting an all-analogue signal path the UNO synth lays out plenty of options for generating and shaping your sounds including 2 VCOs, a noise generator and resonant multimode VCF and VCA.
The 2 independent VCOs feature Saw, Triangle, Pulse waveforms with continuously variable shape including PWM of the square wave plus a separate white noise generator. To help shape the sound it includes a 2-pole OTA-based analog resonant sweepable multimode filter with low pass, high pass and bandpass settings as well as a dual stage overdrive section and effects.
The synth holds 100 presets and includes an easy-to-play keyboard with selectable scales and an arpeggiator to make this an easy to handle performance synth, no matter what your skill level may be.
Round the back of the UNO synth.
The I/O round the back includes both a mono in and out as well as midi connectivity too. The unit can be USB or battery powered using 4 XAA batteries and the synth is a diminutive 25.6cm/10.1″ x 15cm/8.9″ x 4.9cm/1.93″ and only 400 grams.
The UNO should be arriving with us within the next couple of months and should be doing so for the bargain price point of around £200 when it does.
If you happen to own any of the Zoom pedals in the title then Guitar Lab 3.0 really is worth your time to download, get to know and put to good use. An excellent way to edit and create new patches for your unit and visually a treat to use.
If you do not own one of the aforementioned pedals just click the units below for all the information you need on each of the pedals.
For G5n, G3n, G3Xn and B3n users Zoom’s Guitar Lab software has been a one-stop shop for free, instant downloads of patches, effects and amp/cabinet emulators. With regular updates, creators have had access to a constant stream of new, exciting tools. The simple UI made even new creators comfortable experimenting.
Now, Guitar Lab 3.0, a break-through version of the classic software is making patch and effects management even easier.
Guitar Lab 3.0 includes new features such as:
A totally new Patch Editor which allows users to add, edit, rearrange, delete effects to create their own patches
Patch Clips enabling users to store, share and quickly build new patches from their favorite effect combinations.
Enhanced effect processing display in the Effect and Editor views to help users select the best effects to maximize their sound and optimize hardware CPU
An integrated News view to keep users informed of the latest patch updates with new content being downloaded from Zoom each time the user runs the app and clicks the News
An updated Effect View featuring detailed parameter descriptions for each effect, eliminating the need for users to download and reference the Effect List file
Looking back over the rather hectic first few months of 2018 in the PC industry, it’s clear that a lot has changed since the last CPU benchmark session late last year. In the space of 6 months, we’ve seen security concerns and the resulting software patches swing windows performance back and forth as they’ve arrived with us thick and fast. I’ve largely been trying to wait it out and see how the dust settles in the interim, but with the release of new hardware, it’s time to get back into it.
My last bench was based on a build of windows frozen in late 2016 and associated drivers have gone through a number of revisions during the time since, so with the launch of Ryzen 2 it’s very much the time for an all-new software bench to be set up.
Cubase has moved from 8.0 to 9.5 and Reaper too has advanced a number of builds to 5.79 at the point of testing being initiated. This time around we also see the introduction of the newer SGA build of the DSP test, replacing the older DAWBench DSP test and the latest build of the DAWBench Vi test too.
Before getting underway please note that the new results are in no way comparable to the older charts, other than looking at the rough performance curve differences between certain chips which do appear to be in line with prior results. They are certainly not directly value comparable with all the bench changes that have taken place and it’s always key to keep the playing field as level as possible when doing these comparisons.
This time around I’ve tried to run each chip at its turbo frequency across all cores once again. Modern chips will tend to be rated with both a stock clock and a turbo clock, although what isn’t always clear is that the max turbo rating is often only over 1 or 2 cores by default.
Historically it’s been relatively easy to run most CPUs with those cores being pushed and locked off at the turbo max. However, in the event of a platform being pushed too hard, then this isn’t always viable. For instance, I saw this in testing some of the higher end i9’s, where I would choose to all core at 4.1GHz, rather than leave it at stock and let it 2 core to 4.2GHz with a far lower average leaving me open to possible audio interruptions due to clocking.
It’s also the case here with the 2700X where the overclock would hang the machine if trying to push everything to the 4.2GHz rated turbo speed. Instead, I tried to clock it up both manually and using the AMD tool, both of which topped out around 4.1GHz. After speaking to my gaming team and realising this is fairly common (a number of other reviews have picked up on it as well) I ended up using the utility to set everything up with the slightly lower all core turbo at 4.1GHz and testing there.
The 2700X here slots in behind the 8700K which leads by just short of 20% extra overhead at the tightest buffer setting, and both chips look to scale upwards in a similar pattern as you increase the buffer setting. The 8700K seems to be the most suitable comparison here as the price point (at time of writing in the UK) is around £30 more or about 10% more than the cost of the 2700X at launch.
The story of the performance curve scaling looks to repeat when we come to examine the 2600X and by comparison the 8600K from Intel. However, this time around the results are reversed with the Intel chip lagging behind the AMD model by about 5% across the buffer settings whilst the AMD costs around £25 less which makes it roughly 12% cheaper at launch.
So a strong showing for the DSP test, where we’re mostly throwing a load of small VST plugs at the CPU. The other test we run here is the DAWBench Vi test, based on stacking up Kontakt instances which allows us to test the memory response through sample loading along the CPU as we see with the DSP test.
With the Gen1 Ryzens, we saw them perform worse here overall, we suspect down to the memory response and performance. AMD saw similar performance issues across various segments with certain core software ranging from gaming to video processing and the was a lot of noise and multiple attempts to improve this over the life cycle of the chip. One suggestion we saw pay off to some extent in other segments (once again, video and gaming made notable gains) was to move over to using faster memory speeds.
We didn’t see any improvement here for audio applications, although in this instance all testing (both Intel and AMD) has been carried out with 3200MHz RAM, in the interest of trying to maximize the performance where we can as well as keeping things level in that regard.
The headline figure this time around suggests a rough 10% improvement to the IPC (instruction per clock) scores, which of course is promising, although notably, this is where AMD was lagging behind Intel even after bringing Ryzen to the market. In the interim we’ve seen the Coffee Lake launch, which also improved Intel’s IPC scores meaning that whilst AMD has been catching up rapidly of late, Intel does seem to remain intent on clawing back the lead on each successive launch.
DawBench Vi – Q2 2018 (Click To Expand)
So looking it over this time, both the 2700X and 2600X look to fall behind their Intel comparable chips. The 2600X is roughly 20% lower than the 8600K this time although it’s moving up to the 2700X that proves more interesting, if only because it helps to outline what’s occurred between the two generation releases.
The older 1800X stood up well against the old 7700K edition at its launch, and indeed that extra 10% IPC boost we see this time may well have given it a solid lead over the Intel, if not for the Coffee Lake release in the interim in the shape of 8700K which pulls off a convincing lead at this price point currently. Indeed, not only does the 8700K show gains over the previous 7700K chip, but it also overtakes the more expensive although admittedly older, entry-level 6 core 7800X on the Intel’s own enthusiast platform.
The 2700X is comparable to the 7800X at a far keener price point, although as noted the 7800X more or at least exists as a bit of an oddity by this point, even within it’s own range, so whilst this might have been a more impressive comparison 12 months ago, now it feels like they may have landed it just a few months too late to make serious waves.
Speaking from an audio point of view, the chips are good, but not exactly groundbreaking. If you also work in another segment where the AMD’s are known to have strengths, then the good news here is that they offer reasonable bang per buck for audio and hold their ground well as far as giving you performance at those price points.
But once again, they don’t appear to be breaking any performance to cost records overall at least for the audio market. They’ve got solid gains, but then again so has Intel last time around and this is often how it goes with CPU’s when we have the firms battling it out for market share. Not that this is a bad thing, certainly it benefits the end user, whichever your choice of platform.
As a closing note, I saw in my early generation 1 testing a number of interfaces fail to enumerate on the AMD boards. I reported this to a few manufacturers and interestingly the device that first showed up problems on the X370 boards the first time around (in this instance a UAD Twin USB), is behaving superbly on the X470 platform.
Whilst this is a sample size of approximately “1” unit in a range, it does point towards a reconsidering of the USB subsystem this time around, which can only be a positive. Anyone who was perhaps considering this the Ryzen 1 platform, but found themselves out of luck with interface compatibility, might well fare far better this time around. Obviously, if the were problems known before then please do check with the manufacturers your considering for the latest compatibility notes in each instance.
Looking forward there is a rumoured 2800X flagship Ryzen which is already well discussed but as yet no release date on the horizon. The has been already been discussion, rumours and even some testing and validation leaks out in the wild that suggest that Intel might be sitting on an 8 core Coffee Lake. It would certainly make sense for them to be keeping such a chip in the wings waiting on them seeing the public reaction to these new AMD chips. Similarly, it might turn out that the 2800X will be held back as an answer for those rumoured Intel models should they suddenly appear on the market in the near future.
To wrap it up, essentially we’re in peak rumour season and I’ve no doubt we’ll continue to see a pattern of one-upmanship for the foreseeable future which continues to be a very positive thing indeed. If you need to buy a system today, then the charts should help guide you, although if you’re not in rush right now, I’m sure the will be some interesting hardware to also consider coming over the year ahead.
Arminator is a much loved free CS-80 emulation from Krakli Plugs. While not designed to be an out and out pure emulation it sure does a fantastic job of dishing out Vangelis style sounds aplenty.
After spending some time last weekend meticulously multi-sampling Arminator for use with the MPC Live, yesterday saw an update on their Facebook page informing the masses of the new and improved Arminator 2 with a whopping 5 banks of 128 patches!
Fresh additions include:
The ability to KeySplit anywhere on a key across 10 octaves
Chorus effect
Mono Poly on individual lines
Better scaling of some controls (Filter Freq etc)
Ability to sync the LFO to KeyPress
Keytracking on the LowPass Filter
Sine Oscillator on the Line Amp can now be a 1 or 2 sub octave
Line 2’s Envelope can be delayed by up to 500ms from keypress
I absolutely adore the sound of this plugin, and this is of course helped by the amazing patch design.
Unfortunately it is 32-bit only but this can easily be rectified by an app like JBridge if your DAW doesnt include a bridge of it’s own.
So you set your board up, and run through at sound check. Everything sounds great, and you know that when it comes to your solo in that certain track, your new killer pedal will let you soar like a bird above the band and melt the faces of all who listen, then , come the night, come the track, come the time for the solo, you kick the pedal in and wumph… it falls flat on its face….
While you’re in the band room drinking with boys, someone, some well meaning, interested spectator has been checking out your board, and decided to have a bit of a twiddle with your pedals, and your killer settings have gone…..
What’s the cure? Security guard, Doberman at the ready?
The LOKNOB replaces one of the knobs on your pedal and allows you to lock the setting into place, where it can’t be changed by a casual kick of the shoe or a curious roadie.
Check out the full range and see about having one less annoying little problem to deal with…..
