Creamware - Pulsar Soundcard (CreamWare Pulsar)

Name: Pingu

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Product:	CreamWare Pulsar
Date:	26/06/00 (406 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: This is an entire studio on one card. Compare the cost to that of setting up a similar hardware studio, and the high price of the card is suddenly very low. Also no more unsightly wires all over your bedroom studio.

Disadvantages: The DSP chips do have a limit. Some of the synths are processor heavy, and you may find you can only set up a very small studio. This can be worked around by dumping tracks to audio, and then recording others, but not everyone can work this way.

The Pulsar is a new generation of soundcard, having nothing in common with the type of General MIDI soundcard used for gaming. This card does not come with a bunch of built in sounds. Instead it ships with a software 'Virtual Studio Environment,' into which you can drag all manner of virtual synths, sample players, effects, vocoders, mixers etc, and link them together as you please to create a studio setup. This setup is then run by the DSP chips on the board. Also supplied in the environment are modules representing interfaces with other software, so that your favourite sequencer can be the recorder at the heart of the studio.
The card is fantastic. It really does all it claims to. The synths which come with the software are extremely powerful - especially the modular synth - and if you still aren't satisfied, then you can download some of the third party synths from the internet. I run the card alongside a General MIDI card, but even this is no longer necessary, since Creamware have made a virtual sampler available(the STS3000 and 4000) which is soundfont compatible, so that you can load a General MIDI set in as a sounfont and play them from within Pulsar. This card really can do everything you can imagine.
The card can also be expanded with the Pulsar SRB card, carrying an extra 4 DSP chips.

Summary: