Download PowerCore 4.4.0.46 from our software library for free. The most popular versions of the software are 4.4, 4.0 and 3.2. The software lies within Multimedia Tools, more precisely General. Our antivirus scan shows that this download is virus free. The actual developer of the free software is TC Electronic.
Hi everyone, could use some help in deciding whether I should bid on a TC Electronics Powercore unit that is on sale here locally. There is a Firewire 19' for 100 bucks, or a Powercore X8 for 250 quid. I assume the X8 has more DSP power, hence the higher price? I have a few questions I'd like to clear before deciding if I want to bid: Do these units run reliable under Windows 10 64bit? Is it a hassle to set up or is it quite straightforward? I do already have jbridge and run several 32bit plugins with it without issue.
My mainboard does not have any firewire ports. Can I use a firewire to usb cable or wouldn't that work with a Powercore? Can Powercore plugins still be bought or would I be stuck with the plugins that come with the unit I buy?
I've read good things about the Powercore plugins, so I might give it a try at this price if the unit will work under above conditions. Hi everyone, could use some help in deciding whether I should bid on a TC Electronics Powercore unit that is on sale here locally. There is a Firewire 19' for 100 bucks, or a Powercore X8 for 250 quid. I assume the X8 has more DSP power, hence the higher price? I have a few questions I'd like to clear before deciding if I want to bid: Do these units run reliable under Windows 10 64bit? Is it a hassle to set up or is it quite straightforward?
I do already have jbridge and run several 32bit plugins with it without issue. My mainboard does not have any firewire ports.
Can I use a firewire to usb cable or wouldn't that work with a Powercore? Can Powercore plugins still be bought or would I be stuck with the plugins that come with the unit I buy? I've read good things about the Powercore plugins, so I might give it a try at this price if the unit will work under above conditions. Click to expand.i tried it and really didnt see anything worth keeping. Now tc is making the same plugins in native version. Since there is no more suport its def a dying breed so you could get stuck not being able to upgrade your pc or have issues. There are sooo many good plugins now out there that i dont see any benefit on getting the powercore.
Uad, plugin alliance, waves and even avenger synth can easily replace those TC plugins. I mean, those power core plugins do have some merit and have specific stuff that some poeple like but many have had to jump ship and find other solutions. Plus the whole point of powercore was to save cpu power from the computer (and copyprotect plugins) so now that pcs are powerfull. Click to expand.i did have fun and used them when i had it. I bought a hardware unit that had a lot of them. I mainly wanted the virus, reverb and mx5 but liked the mono synth (sh101) and was surprised how good it sounded. Since then i sold it and got a bunch of other reverbs, a virus ti and waves ll316.
From what i can remember there was a latency issues. Which i believe its the same with uad. Its cool when its mixing time but not when producing or tracking. Plus the 32 bit issue which used to be a bigger deal in macs back in the day. I just saw in eBay and its kinda crazy how expensive those x8 are, when considering no support. Warning for any prospective purchasers of PowerCore hardware - the plugins are NO LONGER available for purchase or download, as of December 31, 2017.
That's a wrap, folks. That said, existing PowerCore systems and plugins will continue to work, but they are 32-bit only, and support for the hardware under MacOS versions beyond Snow Leopard is.
And hits a brick wall at Sierra or El Cap or somewhere around there. Somewhere on the web is a file that details how to get the PCIe cards to wake up under Yosemite, and I have that file somewhere, but I never updated the machines they were in beyond Snow Leopard / Logic v9. MasterX5 does work with 32-Lives when Logic v9 is in 64-bit mode, but I never tried to get it working beyond Snow Leopard / Logic v9.
Those machines are frozen in time right now for me. Another thing to consider is that, at one point, the plugins were copy-protected by being tied to a specific serial numbered PowerCore hardware piece - so if you wind up with a functional card or box, but don't get the exact and actual plugin files that were keyed to that hardware, but you then find a way to download the plugins - they may not work at all, even if that hardware is 'authorized' to run that plugin. I had some puzzling issues like this back in the day. I own a bunch of PowerCore PCIe cards that I got just to use the MasterX5 plugin, and I had situations where each card had to be separately authorized to run the MasterX5 plugin, but when moving cards around between multiple computers, the plugins that were installed and ran fine in computer A with card A installed would no longer work in computer A with card B installed - and I had to find the plugin from computer B where card B formerly lived.
This was super-weird, and for all I know that issue went away in later versions of the software. But for one confusing weekend back in 2005 or so I was moving cards around and searching old boot drive backups like crazy. I wound up having folders on every boot drive that contained the plugin builds for each card's serial number just in case. MasterX5 was (and still is) my absolute favorite 'mastering' plugin of all time.
It makes everything LOUD and clearly audible, effortlessly 'floating up' the quiet stuff while clamping down on the loud stuff in an inaudible manner, but it doesn't have that 'sausage fattener' effect where the waveform looks all shaved-off and square. I've replaced it with Waves L3-LL Multimaximizer, and in some cases Ozone's Maximizer module, and both of these sound quite good but the resulting waveform is distinctly different from what MasterX5 puts out. MasterX5 is like a five-band version of TC's Finalizer hardware, and it just sounds great (to me). It made all of my mixes sound 'tele-vicious' for a decade. On over 8,000 cues I never used volume automation or any other master buss processing - just slam into MasterX5 and let 'em rip. I still miss it dearly.
So I don't know what the final outcome of all the end-of-life PowerCore plugin chaos was, as I removed them from active duty about four years ago. They still work in the 12-core silver Mac Pro towers that they sit in to this day, under Snow Leopard / Logic v9 / 32-Lives - but those machines are just gathering dust at this point.
That said, I did panic-buy more cards when the end-of-life was announced, so if anyone needs a pallet of PowerCore mk2 PCIe cards, let me know. I think I have six. Warning for any prospective purchasers of PowerCore hardware - the plugins are NO LONGER available for purchase or download, as of December 31, 2017. That's a wrap, folks. That said, existing PowerCore systems and plugins will continue to work, but they are 32-bit only, and support for the hardware under MacOS versions beyond Snow Leopard is.
And hits a brick wall at Sierra or El Cap or somewhere around there. Somewhere on the web is a file that details how to get the PCIe cards to wake up under Yosemite, and I have that file somewhere, but I never updated the machines they were in beyond Snow Leopard / Logic v9. MasterX5 does work with 32-Lives when Logic v9 is in 64-bit mode, but I never tried to get it working beyond Snow Leopard / Logic v9. Those machines are frozen in time right now for me. Another thing to consider is that, at one point, the plugins were copy-protected by being tied to a specific serial numbered PowerCore hardware piece - so if you wind up with a functional card or box, but don't get the exact and actual plugin files that were keyed to that hardware, but you then find a way to download the plugins - they may not work at all, even if that hardware is 'authorized' to run that plugin. I had some puzzling issues like this back in the day. I own a bunch of PowerCore PCIe cards that I got just to use the MasterX5 plugin, and I had situations where each card had to be separately authorized to run the MasterX5 plugin, but when moving cards around between multiple computers, the plugins that were installed and ran fine in computer A with card A installed would no longer work in computer A with card B installed - and I had to find the plugin from computer B where card B formerly lived.
This was super-weird, and for all I know that issue went away in later versions of the software. But for one confusing weekend back in 2005 or so I was moving cards around and searching old boot drive backups like crazy. I wound up having folders on every boot drive that contained the plugin builds for each card's serial number just in case. MasterX5 was (and still is) my absolute favorite 'mastering' plugin of all time. It makes everything LOUD and clearly audible, effortlessly 'floating up' the quiet stuff while clamping down on the loud stuff in an inaudible manner, but it doesn't have that 'sausage fattener' effect where the waveform looks all shaved-off and square. I've replaced it with Waves L3-LL Multimaximizer, and in some cases Ozone's Maximizer module, and both of these sound quite good but the resulting waveform is distinctly different from what MasterX5 puts out. MasterX5 is like a five-band version of TC's Finalizer hardware, and it just sounds great (to me).
![Electronic Electronic](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125428861/279482660.jpg)
It made all of my mixes sound 'tele-vicious' for a decade. On over 8,000 cues I never used volume automation or any other master buss processing - just slam into MasterX5 and let 'em rip. I still miss it dearly. So I don't know what the final outcome of all the end-of-life PowerCore plugin chaos was, as I removed them from active duty about four years ago. They still work in the 12-core silver Mac Pro towers that they sit in to this day, under Snow Leopard / Logic v9 / 32-Lives - but those machines are just gathering dust at this point.
That said, I did panic-buy more cards when the end-of-life was announced, so if anyone needs a pallet of PowerCore mk2 PCIe cards, let me know. I think I have six.
Used Powercore for years. Sounds great but was a bug-ridden mess. And unless you plan on staying on a brick of a machine it's a backwards approach.
If it's DSP you're after just go UAD. If it's Virus just go Virus.
Other than that there are a ton of native plugins that play in the same sandbox, many of which I feel are frankly better than Powercore. I know what Charlie means about MasterX 5, it had a somewhat unique aggressiveness for sure. But I've found with some tweaking I can get virtually the same sound with Ozone, Melda even DMG Limitless.
But if I want to retain little details I do find I get much clearer results with Ozone/Melda/DMG/FF than I did with MasterX 5. Anyway we all have our own aesthetic preferences and at the end of the day whatever sounds good is king. But definitely wouldn't recommend Powercore for practical reasons. Its shelf life is way past due. Greetings jcrosby and thanks for your experiences and concern. Just some background so we don't misinterpret each other.subjective opinions coming I already have UAD, Native plugins galore - so no needs there. All the usual native suspects Sonnox, DMG, Slate, Voxengo, Soundtoys, Lexicon, Valhalla etc - in fact most of the big boys.
600 of them - too many LOL. But they leave me feeling a little flat - and they hammer my CPU when mixing with huge piano libraries, VSL, LASS etc. I also have the excellent Nebula as well - from all developers. And I am one as well. In any case, I use DSP and Native - the more the merrier I say. Unless one has a really high end CPU any CPU can be maxxed out. For me it happens all too often and way too soon.
Except when I use my powercore. Ironically powercore is more stable than it has ever been so the days of an unstable system are behind me now and many people attest to that fact. Hagen, one of the original developers of the platform continued to unofficially tweak the drivers and now they are rock solid. Like - seriously solid. You do need the latest beta and for the firewire version, the legacy 1394 driver. Windows 10, 64 bit with jBridge is just fine and yes - sounds great as you say. And I am more than elated when other people around this great world of ours do not see the value in them any more and are happy to rid themselves of the hassle of ownership while getting some of their investment back.
It is an injustice for those amazing cards to be just gathering dust I say. I have an i7 7700k and it doesn't take me long to smash it's ceiling with nebula and Seventh heaven. Had me thinking I need a new PC with faster CPU - then I considered this option. UAD is too expensive to build the kind of similar rig to a powercore one.
So I am happy to relieve anyone who has one in an 'obsolete system'. I do prefer the cards though and not firewire.
As for native - even after all these years later to my ears, the punch is lacking, definition is different and I prefer the powercore version every time. I have just about every license so all I need is to grow my rig so that I can take on a mix of any size. But that is just me and I am happy to continue being impressed by the incredible programming by the guys from Denmark.
I have Sonnox native and powercore and the TC is superior to these tired old ears. I know what each developer says - that they are the same or that the native is superior bla bla bla. The main benefit is the ability to offload strain on my pretty fast CPU and allow the CPU to just deal with Softsynths. I also have not found a Native replacement for MD3. I have the VSS3 in both powercore and Native and prefer the powercore. So again, I am more than happy to invest in this obsolete system if anyone has them lying around. Just PM me and I will happily part with my own hard earned money for them.
![Download Download](http://i.imgur.com/UWh0tsF.png)
Again thanks for your insight and umm err Charlie, you there??????