OP-X PRO-II: Famous Sounds in a Netbook!

video upload by virtualoberheim

http://www.sonicprojects.ch/opxpro2/description.html

"Playing some famous bank patches on the SonicProjects OP-X PRO-II virtual analog Oberheim VSTi synth hosted in a cheap Acer netbook.

The used netbook is an Acer Aspire One 270 - 26Dkk featuring an Intel Atom N2600 1,6 GHz CPU, 1Gb Ram and Windows 7 Starter as operating system.

The used vst host is the free Hermann Seib SaviHost. Because of the small size screen of the netbook (1024 x 600) the virtual keyboard of OP-X PRO-II doesn't fit the screen, but luckily the main panel with all controls does which is perfectly usable.

For audio only the built in audio card was used together with the free Asio4all drivers for low latency performance. The used buffer setting was 512 samples.

The audio was picked directly from the headphone output and was recorded with a different computer over the line inputs of an RME HDSP 9632 audio card directly to disk. No effects or any other treatments have been added. As you can hear the audio quality of this netbook's headphone output is astonishingly good and is completely noise free. The slight noise in the video comes from the camera microphone which was mixed to the line signal for the ambient noises.

The used MIDI master keyboard (an E-MU Xboard 61) is connected directly to the netbook over USB and is powered by the usb port.

There haven't been done any optimizations in the netbook for this video, the virus scanner and all the background services are running.

Note that in this unoptimized state and without an external good low latency audio interface OP-X PRO-II only barely can be run and there is occasional crackling and overload artefacts with some cpu intensive patches. 12-voice patches have to be reduced to 10 voices by deactivating voices for a glitch free performance.

For serious and artefact free performance for all patches the next higher Intel Atom CPU (Intel Atom N2800 1,86 GHz) is recommended and if possible an external USB audio interface like the E-MU 0204.

The played patches all are patches included in the "famous" bank coming with OP-X PRO-II. These are the featured songs:

00:04 Rush - The Camera Eye
00:21 Rush - Subdivisions
00:46 Journey - Separate Ways
00:59 ELP - Lucky Man
01:13 Gary Numan - Cars
01:41 Toto - Africa (-1 semitone)
01:55 ABBA - Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie
02:09 ABBA - Summer Night City (Wembley '79 Intro)
02:32 ABBA - Eagle
02:47 Pink Floyd - One Of My Turns
03:42 Pink Floyd - Shine On You Crazy Diamond
04:12 Pink Floyd - On The Run (+1 semitone)
05:40 Pink Floyd - Signs Of Life (intro pulse flute)
05:49 Pink Floyd - Signs Of Life (pad)
06:47 Queen - Radio Ga Ga (strings)
07:08 Barclay James Harvest - Life Is For Living
07:21 Barclay James Harvest - Victims Of Circumstance (brass)
07:39 Barclay James Harvest - Victims Of Circumstance (bell)
07:59 Barclay James Harvest - Waiting On The Borderline
08:18 Barclay James Harvest - Back To The Wall (synth solo)
08:40 Barclay James Harvest - Echoes And Shadows
09:03 Alan Parsons Project - Sirius (clav)
09:15 Alan Parsons Project - Sirius (harp)
09:37 The Who - Won't Get Fooled Again

The patches also can be auditioned with the demo version of OP-X PRO-II:
http://www.sonicprojects.ch/opxpro2/freedemo.html

The free Asio4all drivers are available here:
http://www.asio4all.com/

The free Hermann Seib SaviHost is available here:
http://www.hermannseib.com/

Related:

Polymoog VSTi
Jupiter-8 VSTi
Pink Floyd VSTi
Famous Sounds VSTi
Rush Camera Eye Subdivisions VSTi"