CreamWare Pulsar II

Easy to use once you have sussed it out. The most flexible routing system of any audio card, bar none. Took about 2 weeks with the help of PlanetZ(Creamware dedicated forum, good people/musicians/technitions there). The manual is OK at best.

Once you buy one, you will want more. This DSP craving never goes away. When you hear the difference compared to VST effects, you will fully understand.

Goto PlanetZ, read the wisdom spread there!

The sythns are the best Ive ever heard on a PC. Some say they are as good as the real thing (Hans Zimmerman,dr.walker). I believe them. All I have to say is Minimax, blue and Pro12. Editing sounds are easy, use a midi controller and make your life simple.

This card is not just for the dance fraternity, if you check out PlanetZ , you will find a diverse and ecletic mix of musos. I have a moderate studio with clients from all scenes.

Midi is the biggest let down. For a card of this price, the midi implementation could have been better. I use a Maudio 8x8 which means I have to use Cubase to use SCOPE.

Not up to the sound quality of my Lynx2, but Ive never heard any soundcard better than this. This includes RME, Echo, MOTU, Digidesign, MAudio, Edirol etc. Im sure some of the high end Apogees are better, but not by much.

The sound is very good, I slave it of a Focusrite OctoPre. I dont know if this is the reason why its sounds so good. Remember Creamware hasnt updated this cards hardware in a long tme. The jitters come into play and Ive read that a Berhinger ADA8000 jitters are lower and hence better. This doesnt give me confidence in Creamware as Berhinger are toys (sorry, entry level) in the music world (except for ddx3216, ADA8000, BCR and BCF controllers).

Did I mention the sythns. The very best! The effects are excellent Vinco, MasterVerb Pro, OptiMaster and PSYq are very usable. I have a UAD card and the effects are on power with that. Some are better on the UAD (Pultec,LA2,Neve etc). Its all good :)

Oh, I forgot to mention Dynatube, the amp simulator, my god, its the best guitar amp sim I ever heard. Dynatube and the other effects make for a powerful guitar system (yes, its better than my Podxt)

Once set up, its a dream. Extremely low latency. I would never gig with a PC or Laptop, your tempting fate and hence a disaster will happen at some stage. If you have outboard, use them.

I have 2 PulsarII and 1 LunaII (15DSP). It doesnt mean I dont use my outboard effects anymore. Using a combination of HW and SW makes for a full exploration in sonic potential. Love it.

If it wasnt for PlanetZ, I would have given up on Creamware. Creamware support is reknowned to be dreadful and it is. The site is constantly being hacked. I owned my Pulsars for over a year and I have tried to periodically get incontact with them without success.

If you buying of EBAY insist on getting the Allkeys.skf, which you will need to get the thing working.

After reading my review, it sounds like I work for Creamware, I dont. It is a very good audio system but there are better alternatives. These alternatives will cost you a lot more money than Creamware is asking.

For the price, your getting alot. OK the synths are used a lot by dance merchants but this doesnt mean they are not usable in other music. If you have a converter with low jitters use this as the master.

In a nutshell, Creamware has transformed my studio and Im glad of that. I would buy another but would wait for a 15DSP card instead of having 3.

An excellent alternative is Lynx2, with UAD or Powercore which is the heart of my studio. I can recommend this combo 110%.

You have two work modes: integrated with sequencer, called XTC that it's very easy. The other work mode is with a window that shows you the mixer and modules (synths, samplers, effects). This is more powerful and it's like a virtual studio, you can connect everything you need and then route the signals (midi and audio) to your sequencer, works like a virtual studio.

It's powerful, it includes a lot of very good effects, synths, samplers and mixers, also it comes with a modular synth like Reaktor.
It have a lot of routing features and it extremely flexible.

The synths are excellent, sounds true analog. There is a wide range of synths for several music styles. The only thing I don't like are the presets, but when you learn to use the synts the result is very good.

I still have no problems with the card or configurations.

It is a real all-in-one solution, now I'm producing proffesional music only with this card, Cubase SX 3, NI Battery 2, Nord Lead 2, an electric guitar and some Akai cds.
I think it is a real alternative to Protools, because it has the same sound quality or better and you have a lot synths and samplers included.

Using SFP version 4, the presets for the components are good, often great. Editing patches for the various components is straightforward, but there is some trickiness around saving presets / files. The real power of this card lies in its routing interface window - it's really a first-generation virtual studio. You decide how what components you need and how they are hooked together (inputs, outputs, mixers, virtual amplifiers, virtual synths, effects, software I/Os) and just point and click to assemble a fully working configuration. Very flexible - in this way you can tailor your recording configuration around each project.

The one gripe I have - the samplers (STS-2000, 3000, etc) have such a bad UI and have so many bugs they're hardly usable. No particular problem with any other components.

Polyphony depends on what instruments you call up, depending on the instrument, it may take more of the card's resources. The higher quality synths take up so much resource you may wish to load them in a special configuration, save your work to an audio file, and go back to your regular configuration. (In other words, the DSP power puts limits to how much you can do on the card at once). Playing the synths with a keyboard works great - very responsive, and a very impressive sound quality. Expansion cards are available - but quite expensive. If you want quality, you have to pay for it, I guess. And the quality of the synths is better than any software emulation I have ever heard. The synths included with this card are reasonable quality, but the better synths must generally be purchased separately. I believe the Minimax (a high quality Minimoog emulation) is now included with the standard package.

The quality of this card's instruments and effects is astonishing. I have bought very few musical or computer based products that have delivered as well as this one has. I have spent years trying to create effects and program synths to sound as good as this. The sound is very clear and detailed, the bottom end is immaculate. You know you have a good quality instrument when you don't NEED to add any effects or processing to it, because it already sounds great.

I wouldn't use a PC onstage for a number of reasons, including reliability. But I also bought the rack-mount version of this card, the Creamware Noah, to use live. You can probably guess I like the sounds of this thing! Having a Noah and a Pulsar makes using the card a lot easier, because I can let Noah handle all the instruments and save the Pulsar for the routing / processing tasks. And the Noah sounds GREAT live, it really cuts through the mix without being louder. So I imagine if you wanted to use the Pulsar in a live situation, it would work great.

Had no problem getting support, when I needed it.

I'd have to replace this card, it has become central to my recording. It is one of those few purchases that is really more than what I paid for. For what you get, these cards are truly underpriced.

I'm using SFP 3.1c. The presets sound great! You can see how they do it and modify them to your tastes. Presets are nicely categorized in a list, and you can sort them by name or by category.

Modifying patches is a little more awkward than with a hardware synth.. but with 2 clicks you can easily map the knobs & buttons to your midi controller. If you like editing via mouse, the software settings allow you to choose how knobs behave - its a nice feature.

Another cool thing is that you can eliminate the stepping sound of hardware midi knobs. Normal hardware knobs have 128 positions, so while you tweak certain parameters, you hear a 'zipper' noise in the sound. Your computer though, has thousands of pixels - so if you move the mouse in a large radius around a knob, it will sound as smooth as a real analog. Excellent!

I found the manual easy to read, and it explained all aspects of the system (and all the synths! wow!) in a friendly manner. The manual isn't the perfect reference manual though.. it left out details about things, but you can always find an answer at planetZ, the largest pulsar community.

The whole software itself took me a few days to figure out. At first I felt overwhelmed.. but as I worked more and more with it, things became clearer. I'm going to give ease of use an 8 though, because it does have a bit of a learning curve. Another reason why i'm giving it an 8 is because the interface isn't programmed exactly like windows. For example, when I want to scroll down a long preset list I instinctively start scrolling my mouse-wheel. What this does though is brings me to the top of the list, making me lose my position. To scroll using the mouse-wheel you have to first click on the scrollbar -- which kind of defeats the point :-/

I think that the amount of DSP power is just right in this system. You have enough to run some synths and effects at the same time, but of course, it's no mega powerhouse. You can't expect to run a synth with large polyphony (you get to choose how much poly per synth) followed by more than 2 or 3 effects at the same time. Usually you're not pressing 10 keys at a time though, so you can run a few synths followed by a few effects. It's well balanced in my opinion.. and if you ever need more DSP, there's the upgrades you can buy!

The range of synths and effects is excellent! It can't get any better than this! New Pulsar II cards come with the effect and synth packages, so you get a whole ****load of stuff in the package. Theres a PERFECT minimoog emulation called miniscope, and another called miniscope MkII, which has a different sounding filter. There's another 8 or so synths, which all have their own flavor and styles, plus there's an arpeggiator, a drum synth, a few samplers, and much more.

The effects are beautiful. It's like buying a whole set of pro fx boxes. The MasterVerb is my favourite - a very warm and realistic reverb with a large array of options and styles. None of that digital VST crap!

The samplers are modeled after

Regarding MIDI, Pulsar 2 supports anything your controller can send to it :). You can easily set up your controller for the knobs/levers/buttons in the Pulsar's synths. Just right click on the knob, twist your midi controller's knob, and push the + button!

Well well.. expressiveness and sounds eh? What I can say about the Pulsar 2 is that it doesnt have the instant 'wow factor' of something like a Virus or a Nord, but once you get past the initial excitement there's a LOT to work with, and you can always seem to find the perfect sound you're looking for. The sounds are very FAT, 100x better than all those VSTi's. Excellent stuff!

- The Modular 2 is a godsend. Many people use Pulsar only for this! And with Modular 3 ready for purchase, and flexor modules coming out soon, it'll be sheer audio heaven! I love it!

The sample CD that comes with Pulsar 2 has some really nice sounds too! Quite a variety, and good quality!

It's pretty reliable.. but I don't know about gigging it. It has crashed on me a few times, and I wouldn't want that to happen on stage! Freezing, errors, etc. Most of the glitches have been with the Modular 2 software

GREAT Customer support! EXCELLENT!

SPF v 3.1a.
Too easy. I cautch the idea in an hour. Everything is stadarterzed. If you got how to launch applications, connect 'em and add effects - all you need is to read in manual about some specific features of the application you going to use. e.g. about vectral synthesiz (if you don't know how it works :-))

The only limit is you imgination and quantity of DSP. If you need more DSP power, just add another card! perfect solution. As far as all connections are virtual, you cando ANYthing you want. The only one minus is the price of additional cards :-)

Great. Synth are superb for electronic. Perfect samplers for any kind of sampling-related music. Pure sound for mixing and mastering of all styles.

NO crahes or bugs at all.

I never use it.

Great. If you can afford all Creamware software and SCOPE SRB for additional DSPs - you likely never need anything more in you till you gonna to have more then 48 channels mixing table with full automation and tones of hardware gear with someone who will constantly do switching and connection job.:-)

O my god this is heaven.. no more noise or short cables and the quality of the synths is amazing.i'm lucky to have all the synths and samplers and ok maybe you find it hard to work with a mouse: solution buy a controller..you can assign averything to an extern machine.
And if you're having experience with hardware (and a pc not to forget)it's this is a piece of cake.

let me tell you one thing. More gear IS better. you can make it sound as fat as you want with all the compressors, EQ's and fx. No excuses anymore...It's really good for dance music anyway..

yeah No latency at all(with a pc) i was a bit sceptic in the beginning but HELL it WORKS! Reverb is shitty tough..
If you can afford it: buy a sampler! STS5000 rules realtime pitchshifting and lotsa filters. maybe for many of us not useful but is says enough that akai has dropped the prizes of their products. these samplers from creamware are the best.

Well it let me down twice but that's the problem of my cubase vst copy. Gonna switch to cubase 1.0 or something. No comments so far on the pulsar

no experience

buy it!

Mac interface is a mess. With a 400mhz Mac G4 running Mac OS 9.04, it was hell on heart. Installation problems, crashes, all sort of disasters. A technical assistant from the italian distributor even came to my home and fixed the problems, but after TWO, i say TWO sessions, problems started again. I'm selling it and buying an Oasys.

Potentially, this card has amazing features. I never could access them.
Maybe Windows users, or a more patient Mac User...

The few moments the system was stable enough to be usable, I could hear very good sounds.

It actually worked three times.

The technical assistant from the italian distributor even came to my home to help me fix it.

I can't wait to sell it. If I had more money, I would enjoy turning it into little pieces.

I'm using version 2.04 of the Pulsar software, but my hopes are high for the coming 3.0 version! The graphic interface appears to be fairly "slowish" but very powerful and easy to navigate and understand. What I mean by slowish is that the mouse movements and the opening and handeling of windows are not as responsive as in normal window applications. Routing signals between mixers, effect units and synths COULD NOT be easier - big plus there! Version 3.0 of the coming software will integrate the Pulsar Synths as VST instruments which I believe will make it twice as easy to use. It's been a bit annoying having to switch back and forth between the Pulsar desktop and the Sequencer - with software 2.4 I would give this 8, 3.0 bumps it up to a 9 (hopefully =)

Six dedicated SHARK DSP processors may sound like much, but believe me, you will run out of processing power before you know it! The synths that come with it are all cool and useful, sharpish sounding and there are many features to play with. I won't go into the details of these synths, check that out on the creamware site instead! The Pulsar II comes with a few effects, I tend to use just the delay, EQ and reverb effects, and also compression. The problem is, if you use 2 pulsar synths, one cross delay and one miniverb, you are pretty much on the limit with your processing power! Be aware that the Pulsar II is GREAT to add a synth or two, or by using the sampler, but I believe the big stregth is the capability to do all your mixing within the Pulsar card. You can connect 8 stereo devices through ADAT connections (wish a A/D Converter came with it though, had to spend #200 on a Fostex VC8 that only does 4 stereo pairs), and it also comes with analog I/O and S/PDif - this means that there is no need for an external mixing table and you can apply your effects etc on screen and best of all - just save it as a project!! (great stuff unless you wanna spend loads of money on a mixingtable with motorised sliders and knobs). As for expansion, you can add additional Pulsar cards for more DSP power, but I believe it's better to just use one synth from it and use the routing / mixing power to handle incoming sounds from external gear.

Don't expect anything but electronic sounds unless you use the sampler that comes with it (good, but limited sampler - you can spend more money on better pulsar samplers, but I have not tried them). I can load some of my AKAI sample CDs in the standard Sampler you get, but some AKAI CDs turn weird sounding. The different synths all come with plenty of OSC/LFOs etc, and if you like Cutoff/Resonance stuff, you can play plenty with morphing trancy sounds!

Never crashed on me yet! The occasional stuck MIDI note.

Never had to use it.

I am not sure whether I would buy it again if I lost it, it's not adequate on covering your needs on its own - far from it. Use the power of the mixing/input capabilities, add effects to your incoming sounds from external gear, and add the power of the pulsar synths to complement your tracks! That's what I think =)
Go to www.imphenzia.com to check out some of the tracks if you are interested :)