Pkoi ça gresille avec cette carte ? j'ai les derniers pilotes SX2/N2 !

Citation : J'ai installé les derniers drivers developpé par egosys pour la hoontech et sur XP, SX2, les craquements ont disparus et j'ai une latence bien meilleure

Citation : J'ai installé les derniers drivers developpé par egosys pour la hoontech et sur XP, SX2, les craquements ont disparus et j'ai une latence bien meilleure

Citation : hep easy, on les trouve ou ces drivers ?

Car sur le site de staudio, que nenni

Citation : Hello everyone,

first of all, let me apologize that I could not post replies on this forum in the last few weeks. I am very busy at the moment as we are setting up the local branch office for ESI in Germany until the end of this year. We are also busy with development and making the required decisions for it. This includes the next product generation and it includes updates for drivers and software for the existing line of prooducts.



Having that said, I understand that a number of users are unhappy about the delays in fixing the Nuendo 2.0 and Cubase SX 2.0 issue:

I would like to underline the fact that our existing DSP24 drivers have prooven to be very stable with all common pro audio applications under both Windows 9x/Me and Windows 2000/XP. The original drivers developed by Hoontech have performed very well for the huge majority of our users. There are nearly 20.000 active users of DSP24 series products, the huge majority in central Europe.

The drivers are incompatible with Nuendo 2.0 and Cubase SX 2.0 by Steinberg. This has been confirmed by Hoontech engineers after they have received Nuendo 2.0 via Steinberg by the end of August, before the release of Cubase SX 2.0. The problem for this is a serious bug in handling of sample rate changes inside the ASIO 2.0 part of the driver. This bug has never caused any serious problems before and as a result was undetected before the release of Nuendo 2.0. It appears only in the new Steinberg software as they have changed parts in their audio engine.

All other common audio programs including Nuendo 1.5/1.6 and Cubase SX 1.xx are not affected by this problem and work very well with the existing drivers!

There is no doubt that everyone at ST Audio (Hoontech, now ESI - more on that below) is commited to fix problems as quickly as possible. Sadly it is not possible to do this from one day to another - the current situation makes it especially difficult.



As everyone knows (at least I hope so ... on the forum it does not always look like it), Hoontech is no longer related to ST Audio and the DSP24 series of products. The ST Audio brand name and all the existing products have been taken over by ESI (Ego Systems, Inc.). This got effective on the 1st of September this year.

This business decision by both Hoontech and ESI is of course not directly related to the DSP24 driver development situation, however it still affects what is going on. Except the President/Chairman of ESI, one of the ESI directors, the President/Director of Hoontech and myself (Director of RIDI multimedia, responsible for the marketing and concept of the ST Audio brand and most of the products), no one else knew about the takeover of the ST Audio product line by ESI from Hoontech before the 1st of September this year. This includes all employees inside the two companies Hoontech and ESI - also all hard- and software developers.

The 1st of September started a process on which all parts of the development as well as all work for sales are taken over from one company to another company. Many open questions (like: What happens with software and hardware developers at Hoontech responsible for ST Audio products? Will they loose their job at Hoontech or can they work for ESI?) had to be answered after the 1st of September. This has been mentioned in short comments here and there by myself on the forum already, but not as detailed as I am doing it now here. This reminds me that we need to install a new forum software with better search features ... maybe early next year, when there is more time.

The fix of the DSP24 driver has now become the first challenge of the new ST Audio development team at ESI. The driver problem has been confirmed and identified just a bit over a week before the takeover was anounced. Obviously this event had an effect on the imediate development. All in all, we have lost around three, maybe four weeks in which we had to check how ESI could handle the future DSP24 driver development. This situation has not been (and still is not) very comfortable for us because of the Nuendo 2.0 and Cubase SX 2.0 incompatibility (especially as more than 50% of our users are using Cubase) but we could not change it. The jobs (and so the personal future) of people at Hoontech and the structures inside the two companies had to be more important than the actual development for some time. It was just a coincidence that we have to deal with this driver problem at the same time as we had to deal with the imediate effects of the takeover.

We apologize for the problems this may have caused for some users on the short term (more on that later) and the problems that it still possibly causes. At the same time, we are extremly confident that the new situation (ST Audio is a brand of ESI) will be very good for all existing ST Audio customers and also for future ST Audio users. Yes, we are already working on exciting new products (multichannel PCI, firewire, ...) and we are working on new technology for the existing products (new functions in drivers and software). We know that our users will like the new things that we release ... especially the driver and software for existing DSP24 users. It makes no sense for ESI and the new ST Audio generation to have several thousand customers who are unhappy with the performance of their product. And of course ... let me assure all of you once again that the known problems of the existing drivers will be fixed.



As some of the "regular" users on this forum already know, ESI already has a good driver for the Envy24 chip. Some users have downloaded and installed the Audioterminal 010 driver for their DSP2000 C-Port system. While I do not recommend you to do this unless you like to experiment, the users that tested this driver could see that ESI (remember ... it is no longer Hoontech ... it is ESI now) has the technology to deliver very well performing drivers for the chipset used on the DSP24 series of cards. This technology allows us to release drivers that are not only better than the existing DSP24 drivers in terms of performance (CPU load, latency) but are of course also fixing the Nuendo 2.0 and Cubase SX 2.0 compatibility issues.

After the new software development team (with engineers from Hoontech) at ESI has been created, we evaluated the two existing drivers: the DSP24 driver developed by Hoontech and the Envy24 driver developed by ESI. The result of the evaluation is that it is better to use the ESI driver technology for the future updates of the DSP24 series rather than updating the existing driver developed by Hoontech. This means again that it takes a bit longer to release an updated and working driver that is fixing the Cubase SX 2.0 and Nuendo 2.0 compatibiliy issue but in total it will drastically reduce the development time for future updates after the bug fix that is needed imediatly as we will be able to take advantage of the existing E-WDM driver technology of ESI.

The E-WDM technology is industry leading at the moment for Windows 2000/XP. No other drivers by any other vendor for any other PCI audiocard provides the same combination of features, compatibility at such a high performance level. I personally, as beeing responsible for major parts of the ST Audio marketing and product concepts, saw this technology as one of the most important parts that the DSP24 series can take advantage of as a result of the takeover of the ST Audio product line by ESI.

This means that the DSP24 series of cards will get an E-WDM driver developed by ESI. We plan to release the final version of this driver (it will replace the existing WDM driver totally) within this year and I am pretty confident that this is possible (more on the Cubase SX 2.0 / Nuendo 2.0 incompatibility issue below). We can guarantee you already now that this driver will be no less than one of the best performing driver for ICE1712/Envy24 chip based audiocards ... in terms of latency and CPU load and in terms of features!



So you might ask: What makes this development so difficult and where are the differences to other Envy24 based cards? The reason is simple: the DSP24 hardware is more complex compared to any comparable Envy24 cards on the market, including other ESI products. On a typical Envy24 card, the AD and DA converters are initialized by the driver when the system is booting. This is not the case on the DSP24 cards. Because of our H-BUS technology and the possibility to use multiple inputs at the same channel (which is controlled by the External Links applicaation), the initialization and signal routing functions of the DSP24 card are more complex when you compare it to more generic Envy24 based boards. This means that major parts that are normally inside the actual driver (in the init part) must be on application level in the case of the DSP24 series. The structure of the control part inside the driver is simply more complex. In addition you need the software (External Links or Output Mixer, depending on the DSP24 card) that gives the user the control he needs to have.

What is done at the moment is that the E-WDM driver by ESI is modified to use the control part that is currently inside the original DSP24 driver. This is a sensitive development that simply takes time. The simple init part and simple signal routing part from ESI/Envy24 will be replaced with the better, advanced and more complex part from Hoontech/Envy24.

As soon as this part of the development is finished, we will release it as a public beta driver for users of the DSP2000 C-Port and the DSP24 Value. This public beta driver of the new E-WDM design will have all major functions of the existing drivers with a few exceptions (which ones are not decided 100% yet at this moment) and it will fix the Cubase SX 2.0 and Nuendo 2.0 compatibility issue. We originally planned this for the end of this month but had to realize that it will not be possible [or it would be finished already ...] - a release within the first two November weeks is the current realistic target.

When this beta driver is released, users with serious performance problems are encouraged to try it. Users of Cubase SX 2.0 and Nuendo 2.0 must use it for compatibility with the hardware. We will recommend other users to continue using our existing WDM drivers.

As mentioned above, the final release of the E-WDM driver with full External Links application and support for all DSP24 series cards including all external H-BUS extensions is planned for release within this year.



To sumarize the issue:

- we have lost around three ~ four weeks in the actual development process because ST Audio now belongs to ESI [in addition, we are loosing a few days right now, because ESI is moving to a larger office just at the moment, bad luck] ... we are extremly sorry for that but we could not change it
- we are loosing around two ~ three weeks because we decided to use the more difficult way (using the ESI driver, not the Hoontech driver) as it will provide a far better result for our users at the end
- we will release a public beta E-WDM driver (mainly because of the Cubase SX 2.0 community) as soon as possible, planned for the first halve of November
- we plan to release a non-beta/final E-WDM driver within this year



Now let me comment on the current situation and some of the "tension" in the ST Audio forum:

The driver works very well with most applications. Only Nuendo 2.0 or Cubase SX 2.0 users are affected at the moment. There is really no need for users of other software to call for driver updates or bug fixes right now ... nothing that really is serious has to be fixed with high priority.

For users of Cubase SX 2.0 or Nuendo 2.0 that have just recently upgraded, we recommend to go back to Cubase SX 1.xx or Nuendo 1.6 until we release our updates. You could work with that before, so you can still work with them. Look, I am just beeing realistic here.

I read one comment from a user (Stefan, his post "Patience please fellows" from Oct 29, 03) that I would like to quote because it is 100% exactly how you must see the situation with a small distance: Please everybody: I don't think yelling at the people who's supposed to do their best will help anything. At some point they'll say: What the h... Let's give 'em a driver ASAP, but with the lacks and everything... Is that what we want? At some point everybody gets tired of being scolded! So whether it takes 2 weeks, 4 weeks or 8 weeks, let's either be patient or buy another product. If you stick to DSP, then at least be quiet, 'cause it doesn't help ANYTHING at all...

I understand many of the things that happend in the forum (e.g. the so-called "petition", the request of the driver source code or the posting of a comment from the Midiman BeOS driver developer) ... but ... really ... it does not make any difference to the situation. We have explained the issue before as best as we could and now I did it in this message with a level of detail that even covers some internals which normally would not be used in public. Keep in mind: the number of messages from you about the topic will not change what ESI software developers will be doing. You also don't have to repeat how bad our existing drivers are (especially when they worked fine until Cubase SX 2.0 / Nuendo 2.0) and how excellent all the drivers from all the other companies are instead ... it does not change the work in development at all.

Still, I do not like it when things that are wrong or when people spread rumours (just a few days ago, I had to read in an email from a customer that the development for all ST Audio products would have been stopped ...) - because of that, I will now go through the messages from other people and put some comments there with a link to this message.

Lastly, a comment about the Mac OS X driver: we are currently working on an upgrade as well and we will certainly release it in this year. The issue is very important for us but it does not have the same level of importance as the Windows 2000/XP driver at this moment. As result, we gave the next steps of development of the Mac OS X driver to software engineers outside of ESI, allowing us to take all the resources inside the company to fix the most critical issue first.

Feel free to ask questions about anything in this message or anything else. I am expecting a lot of messages from users so I have to apologize in advance if I cannot answer all of them (if they adress the same issues) and maybe not as fast as needed.

I really hope that this message clears up a few things ... if not, tell me what information you need.

Best regards,

Claus Riethmueller
Director RIDI multimedia GmbH / ESI Deutschland.