TC Powercore or not?
 

Hi,

after finishing my small home-studio, I've decided to buy new gear. So, I'm thinking about buying a TC Powercore Firewire. Is this an essential part of my studio or should I buy another effect processor?

Greetz.

why exacly do you need the fireworks unit?
do you want to take it to gigs?
if its going to stay at the studio you should go for the regular pci card...
you can save alot of money this way which you can invest on add on plug ins.

Its going to stay in my studio, but my PC cannot house such a large PCI card, so that's a reason why I prefer the firewire unit. OK, the firewire unit does cost 50% more than the PCI version, but it is 50% more powerfull.

THe problem I have now is that all my recordings sounds pretty raw. So I thought it's getting time to buy a descent DSP processor like the TC Powercore.

go for it man.

You should consider the UAD1 studio pack. Its a much smaller card than the powercore and the UAD plugs that come with the studio pack are a LOT better than the ones that come with the powercore. The only powercore ones that are decent are all the sony plugs (which cost about another ?700 in total) dynamic eq, master X5 and a couple of others, all of which you have to buy on top of the powercore unit. You do get classic verb with the powercore which is amazing and sounds great for trance productions and of course the virus is now available for powercore which is great.

The uad studio pack comes with 1172, fairchild, la2a, dreamverb, cambridge EQ all included as well as the other plugins. These are all awesome plugs and really make productions come alive.

I have 2 uads and 2 powercores in my DAW and an emu1212 main soundcard. If I had to choose though I would take the uad over the powercore.

ten

What you need to decide is whether you need more dynamics style processing, like compressors etc (UAD-1) or reverbs/Virtual Synths (T.C Works)

If you have some outboard synths, then maybe the UAD-1 is the way to go. I am looking at getting one of these hopefully, and as stated before, alot cheaper than the PoCo

Good luck,

Jase

P.S check out my post on UAD-1 Vs. Powercore

http://www.sunesha.nu/virusforum/viewtopic.php?t=2278

I haven't used the Powercore, but just recently bought the UAD-1 project pack. I'm really impressed with the compression plug-ins. You can buy additional plug-ins for the UAD-1 as well.

I would really like to add a UAD1 to my system too but it doesn't work with powercore in the case of G5 DP1.8 june 2004 model. I have 2 powercore elements mainly because I need a Virus and the reverbs which are awesome. I would buy a UAD1 for the comps only. The rest of the plugins are not what I need.

Fair does,

I understand the need for a good reverb and Classicverb is excellent.

The things is I really recommend you at least listen to the UAD-1's EMT 140 Plate emulation. I never knew sound could get so dense - it seriously gives me a tingling sensation down my back every time I solo an instrument through it. It is absolutely incredible!

I understand if you need the Virus Powercore but read the Powercore forums first at the Powercore forums. Many people are having plenty of ongoing issues, have a read of this

Perhaps once you have heard the EMT 140 your opinion might change. There is also one more thing to remember - the plugs that come out for the Poco basically cost about ?250 upwards, whereas the UAD-1's plugs are considerably cheaper (the EMT plate cost me under ?80).

Don't get me wrong I have both and have no issues with either, thing is I hardly even use my Powercore and never have to check its meter to see how close it is to overloading the CPU. My UAD1 meter is "always on top" as I constantly have to mix channels down to free up resources - this is not due to available power it is simply a result of using 2 or 3 plugs on most channels! Just turn the Pultec on, without touching the dials and the sonic lift is fascinating!

My advice is listen to all plugs on both cards before buying. Since getting the UAD1 my mixes have gotten Soooo much better. I will put a track up on this website soon that has been mixed using the UAD1, you can have a listen for yourself soon, watch out for it - its called "Should do it..."


Drammy

Both dsp cards, UAD1 and Poco have problems, but you can avoid most of them by reading the powercore or UAD forums before making the move. There are some compatibility issues with both cards on certain systems and some other issues too.

For example you cannot run a UAD1 more than about 65% of it's DSP before clicks and pops with a powermac which has pci-x slots. However you can run up to 85-90% with a powermac which has normal pci slots. I guess the latter applies to PC machines too.

With powercore element you can always load the dsp's full of plugins (ok, there is a little margin, usually 2-5% which is unused) without problems. However the poco firewire may not work well with full load. I had a poco firewire and I always had to leave 1 or 2 plugins unloaded, otherwise I got clicks and pops. The 1.9.3 os is not stable at all yet @ PC so you cannot even use the new included plugins with the firewire. With mac it works but you may get kernel panics with virus powercore. Also the virus plugin uses a full DSP of the poco firewire altough it has 50% more dsp power compared to poco element which can also run the virus with 1 dsp and you get 16 voices of polyphony with both poco's.

UAD1 has a fixed latency of 1024 samples in logic. Powercore plugins work at the speed which has been set in the core audio driver. So it's a little difficult to play anything in realtime thru the uad1 plugins in logic at the moment. TC also suggests that you should use 1024 samples with poco too. That's a good idea maybe with a poco firewire but element/pci works ok with 512 of even 256 samples too. In my powermac the 512 samples make a similar hit to the host CPUs compared to 1024 samples so I use 512 samples and virus and the others are still very playable.

I'm not sure who's fault it is, but the most stupid thing at the moment is that if you add a UAD1 card to a powermac DP1.8 june 2004 version, your poco doesn't boot anymore so you can't use both of them at the same time. I would definitely want to buy a UAD1 too, but I cannot sell my powercores because I use very much the virus, powercore01 synth, sony oxford eq, 24/7 compressor, classic verb, mega reverb, Master X5 and I will also buy the v-station.

Both cards have a very good value these days. It's up to what you need. Even the plate 140 may be very good (I don't doubt), but it doesn't mean that it's always better than the TC Classic or mega and you have to buy the plate as a separate plugin. It depends on what you need. For example the classic verb has a sound which works well with most of my sounds. I produce trance music and I need big reverbs. The cathedral algorithm always works immediately and I love it!

I thinks the same still applies...If you need quality comps and other analog style plugs, buy a UAD1, if you need synths, reverbs and many other quality "digital" plugins, buy a powercore.