Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

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Artemiy
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Re: Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

Post by Artemiy »

Come on, even a 1 GHz iPad can turn a VA groovebox with about 20 voice polyphony on 4-5 parts, plus sequencer and effects. And that is like 20% of it's CPU power.
Jan_nl
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Re: Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

Post by Jan_nl »

Well, that's not bad at all.

What I remember from reading the reviews of the original single core Atom is that it was very energy efficient, but it was seriously lacking in processing power compared to other available processors.

With that in mind I did not expect anything like for instance a maximum of 400 voices for the piano, or 180 voices for the Polysix.
So, I'm really surprised that an Atom can deliver that much processing power.
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SammyJames
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Re: Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

Post by SammyJames »

Yes, the iPad can eat many more powerful processors for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But the real reasons are two-fold:

1. The iPad uses an ARM processor, and

2. The OS was tweaked beyond hell.

The ARM chips are impressive, but I dare you to come up with the huge, lush, thick sounds available using more powerful chips. Don't get me wrong -- I'm more than impressed by ARM technology, and I'm looking forward to the day when desktop PCs employ an array of ARM chips to help us to create some mind-blowing stuff.

I'm just saying that there is a world of difference between the two technologies. Try creating an Illustrator, Photoshop, or even Framemaker document using an ARM chip -- and you may see its limitations.

- Sammy
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Artemiy
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Re: Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

Post by Artemiy »

Just wanted to add this, Sammy. True, it's up to the OS. iOS surely draws much less resources than OS X. And in an even more dedicated machine you have even less stuff to worry about as you have no bluetooth, Wi-Fi or other stuff.
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SammyJames
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Re: Kronos! Ooh...Ahhh!!

Post by SammyJames »

Yes, you're 100% correct. It's interesting though, because I had a vision just a couple of days ago about how cool it would be if I could create an entire computer DAW using a dual-core Atom. I have to wonder how possible it is; I know that even Windows 7 is such an incredible resource hog, although it is better than XP in many respects.

And believe it or not, Win 8 is purportedly going to be released for ARM. I'm going to be really interested to see how well that works out.

- Sammy
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