I've compiled this information in reponse to the questions raised at the VST
presentation last week. I'd be grateful if you could circulate this amongst your
sales staff. If you find anything missing please let me know and I'll get right
on it. Bullet points on the various programs are coming shortly as are some NFR
copies. The TDM Plug ins you needed for the Digi presentation are winging there
way over to you right now.

Cubase VST Hard Disk Considerations Important Settings for Best Performance
Hard disks for audio must have an ASYNCHRONOUS driver installed. The Apple
driver installed in most stock Power macs is suitable, however this only works
for internal Apple ROM hard drives. Otherwise, Hard Disk Toolkit by FWB
Technologies, a native PowerMac driver, or similar tools will do the job. Make
sure that 'Blind transfers' are enabled. We recommend HDT because we use it and
know it works. (Anything else that uses an asynchronous driver should work) If
the audio playback is "stuttering" this usually means that the hard drive has
been formatted with a non-asynchronous driver.

Important Note for Digidesign Users
Some Digidesign systems require that you connect your audio hard disk to a
special Digidesign SCSI card. Examples of such systems are Session 8 and
ProTools III. The SCSI card included in these systems is optimized for data
transfer within the Digidesign system, rather than to/from the computer's
processor. Therefore, trying to use Cubase VST to record or play back audio from
a hard disk connected to such a Digidesign SCSI card will provide poor results
in terms of audio performance (you will only be able to play back a very limited
number of audio Tracks).

With the VST version of Cubase, we strongly recommend you to record audio on a
hard disk connected to the computer's own SCSI connector (or possibly to the
internal hard disk).If you wish, you can power down your system and reconnect
any hard disk(s) currently connected to the Digidesign card, to the computer's
own SCSI connector. This will allow you to use the hard disk with Cubase VST,
both to record new files and to play back files already on the disk.

Hardware support for VST is currently being looked into. More information
forthcoming shortly.

Problems with Digidesign Sound Manager Driver.
Digidesign Hardware for stereo output may be used with their Sound Manager
drivers on Nubus hardware. Any attempt to set the Digidesign Driver as an Imput
with Sound Manager may cause unpredictable results or crashes Existing Audio XT
users can record in XT and reopen the session in VST.

Audio Performance
In general, RAM and HD speed determine the number of audio tracks attainable.
Processor speed and amount of RAM become more important with the usage of EQ and
effects which also affects the performance (this will be indicated by the CPU
bargraph in the Audio Performance window). If the OVER indicator is lit there
could be drop outs or general slowing down of the system. To compensate
increase the amount of memory allocated to each track or increase RAM. Also
remember that the channel figures above imply that all channels play back at the
same time, without silence gaps. If this is not the case, feel free to
experiment with increasing the number of available audio channels and memory
allocation. Just keep an eye on the Audio Performance window, and you'll be on
the safe side.

Compatibility
VST requires a 2nd level cache It will run without,but the system performance
would be very low. PowerBooks and Performas can not be fully supported.
Although they have Power PC chips, they don't have 'disk to memory' DMA transfer
chips and can only manage 3 or 4 tracks.

Level 2 Cache:Most Power Macintoshes come equipped with a second level cache
(size in not important
512k or 256k). The exceptions are 7100/66, , 7200/75 and 7200/90.
The 604 powered Power Computing models are fully compatible

Minimum Requirements:
Power Macintosh 6100/66 24MB RAMwith level 2 cache and fast HD (14ms or
better)

Suggested Systems:
A Power Macintosh 7200/90 with enough free RAM for the recommended memory
assignment and using the internal drive (or an external 1 GB drive of equal
specs) should be able to handle at least 16 audio channels and 32 activated EQs.
Often external hard disks are somewhat faster than the one built into the
Macintosh, which may allow up to 24 channels with 24-32 EQs.

A Power Macintosh 9500/133 using a large and fast external hard disk should be
able to handle 32 audio channels and 64 activated EQs or more.

TDM Plug-in automation
We are currently looking into this matter.