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Average rating:
5.0 out of 5
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This represents a great bargain. if you are willing to put up with the Win98/MAC, it's worthwhile. Yet, as a warning, I might add that keeping the older machine around to house the Oasys is a hassle.
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this card is the secret weapon of the future. i put together this setup in an old b&w mac g3/300 for around 450$, representing state of the fricking art 1998.(this setup would have been about 5 grand back in those days)
the synths sound great(mini, prophet, 303, killer drum synth, physical modeling, modeled hammond b3, modeled fender rhodes) and it has some really really cool delay and modulation effects, the mini filter effect is insane as well and to top it all off it has about 70% of the triton pcm rompler sounds. theirs a couple really good 3rd party synths/effects such as a juno-106 emulation, transient eq, incarnate filter(sort of an emulation of the virus filter architecture)
the io capabilities are really nice and the onboard converters sound about as good as anything else i've heard. my only gripe in this dept is that the jingle mill monkey who sold me this board forgot to send me the digi io cable, none the less i just kick things using the adat io when digital connectivity is needed. unless you intend to use it exclusively with the adat io make sure you get all the breakout cables if you buy this board since they are hard to find.(i'm sure you could get someone to build you replacements but that could get pricey)
really the only down sides to this card is the fact that there is only so much dsp horsepower to go around and it only supports win 98/me and mac os 9. but then again someone elses need to constantly upgrade and stay bleeding edge is my gain, this is a truly great piece of hardware for musicans and will one day be a coveted part of synth history.
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The card's actual sampling rate is 48khz, not 96, but it is 24-bit. Sorry for the mistake!
Oh, and one more thing: it can be used as a WAV/AIFF-compatible sampler. It operates as a PCM synth plugin inside the card's own control panel software, as any other DSP plugin in the OASYS. Did I mention that all mixer, synth and effect parameters are controllable via MIDI? I didn't think so!
And no, it doesn't work as a VST or DXi plugin, because there's no need. This is a HARDWARE system!
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I think there's not enough words to describe how incredible this unit is. Apart from being an incredible classic synth emulator, it is a versatile problem solver when it comes to effects and wave output. You get professional effects that will stay in the digital domain without adding too much latency nor sucking up your precious CPU power. The effects are routable by the use of "streams", which are 4 input-only independent wave drivers. These streams are accessible via the ASIO driver, so you could patch them to various soft synths. This way, it becomes the perfect complement for multi-synth software such as Reason. Then you can patch everything through the ADAT ports and use them as independent record sources.
The only drawback is limited DSP capacity, but other than that I just don't know where this card potential stops. It has truly changed the way I work in my studio and I recommend anyone to buy it. I was lucky to get it used for $360 at eBay, but I was willing to pay even more for it.
The good: 24bit-96khz multi-channel ASIO audio + ADAT I/O + dozens of pro effects + analog synth emulator + 143mb of Trinity/Triton samples + The entire system setup (synths+mixer+effects) can be saved as a single file + Compatible with both PC (Win 9x/Me only) and MAC!!! (OS 9 only)
The bad: Some plug-in synths and effects may have bugs or are not too stable + DSP has relatively limited capacity for synth sounds (you have to manually manage resources quite often, especially polyphony)
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This Oasys card is a power house!!!!! It's unbelievable that this card can be had at $500 that I paid from Ebay. The analog modelings are the sweetest! The Prophet 5 model is so warm and real with the hardest sync sound I ever heard!! The orchestra samples in the PCM synth are top notch. The physical modeling are extremely realistic also. I play the trumpet and flute with my wind controller and it's just amazing! The FXs are excellent too. The reverbs are warm and wide. Highly configurable and blows any reverb plug-ins away. No wonder they priced Oasys at $2200 when it first came out. I don't think no one will ever come out with this much power in one package ever again. This card is timeless.
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