DEF HDX Power/Voices vs HD Accel answers

[soundworx]

Could AVID please answer me this:

Why do you communicate the HDX card power anywhere from 2 to 5 times that of an accel card? I have a HD2 system and want to know EXACTLY what i might be getting into. I'd appreciate an explanation and a statement about the MINIMAL power increase.

Equally important for me, does the HDX system also burn voices when mixing AAX and RTAS plugs? (like TDM and RTAS)

[Emcha_audio]

Could AVID please answer me this:

Why do you communicate the HDX card power anywhere from 2 to 5 times that of an accel card? I have a HD2 system and want to know EXACTLY what i might be getting into. I'd appreciate an explanation and a statement about the MINIMAL power increase.

Equally important for me, does the HDX system also burn voices when mixing AAX and RTAS plugs? (like TDM and RTAS)

It's hard to give an exact estimate. Some test that Avid has talked about at AES are said that it could actually reach 7 times the hd card.

But spec wise here's a small analysis.

HD had 9 chips that had a speed of 220 mhz.
The maximum numbers of audio tracks were 192 (3 cards)

HDX you have 18 chips of 350mhz
The maximum numbers of audio tracks are 768 (3 cards)

Now as you can see if you calculate that you have double the number of chips and about 1.5 the speed of each chip that roughly equals to 5 time the power.

Basically, just one card out does a hd 3 in the number Audio track, Aux channel, Master Channel, processing depth, mixing depth. If you remember the presentation they did, they did a comparison of the number of voices and they said that a 2 card hdx system was 4x stronger than any hd accel system that could be built. Making allusion that 2 hdx card were stronger than a hd 10 system.

Go to 23:53
http://www.youtube.com/watch?src_vid=lUrAKPIhHBA&v=5P3UBU-D7I4&annotation_id=annotation_882735&feature=iv

[Frank Kruse]

I
Basically, just one card out does a hd 3 in the number Audio track, Aux channel, Master Channel, processing depth, mixing depth. If you remember the

HD2 can do 192 as well, BTW.
But even a native PT10 system out-powers a HD3 both in voice count and possibly in DSP power (believing some user reports on DUC) at a fraction of the cost.

A fair comparison would be PT10+CPTK (non HD) on a powerful mac against a HDX1.

That would be interesting. Since HD is more or less obsolete soon it would be more interesting how HDX1 compares to PT10 with CPTK on a top MacPro in terms of DSP-power.

Question is how much more powerful is a HDX1 since it costs significantly more.
At the moment the PR compares it to the slowest PT available (PTHDaccell) which of course makes it look as good as possible.

[pbthias]

Is there a reason people are always trying to compare the plugin-count of HD TDM / HDX with the native counterpart? I mean the moment you have a TDM/HDX system you get the DSP power in addition to the Native power. Without ever having to worry about buffersizes, latency, etc.?

I have a quite a fast DAW, but when I have a really busy mix (>40 tracks + bus, amp-simulation on 4-6 tracks, something on the master to mix into, etc.) I always have to adjust the buffer size no matter what. And then I decide to add a guitar solo and want to user software FX on it. During record. I yet have to see a native DAW pull that trick...

[Frank Kruse]

Is there a reason people are always trying to compare the plugin-count of HD TDM / HDX with the native counterpart? I mean the moment you have a TDM/HDX system you get the DSP power in addition to the Native power. Without ever having to worry about buffersizes, latency, etc.?

I have a quite a fast DAW, but when I have a really busy mix (>40 tracks + bus, amp-simulation on 4-6 tracks, something on the master to mix into, etc.) I always have to adjust the buffer size no matter what. And then I decide to add a guitar solo and want to user software FX on it. During record. I yet have to see a native DAW pull that trick...

It does make sense because in TDM a complex surround-setup with a couple of busses will already eat 60-80% of the cards ONLY for the surround mixer without even a single plug-in. This doesn´t happen with native which means a HD3 can be less powerful than a native rig especially when working in surround.
The fact that RTAS-TDM transitions eat additional voices not even mentioned.

Which is why I´d find a comparison between HDX1 and PT10+CPTK more significant than HDX1 against HD. It´s already obvious that HDX1 will eat HD for breakfast but what about PT10 (non-HD)?

frank

[pbthias]

It does make sense because in TDM a complex surround-setup with a couple of busses will already eat 60-80% of the cards ONLY for the surround mixer without even a single plug-in. This doesn´t happen with native which means a HD3 can be less powerful than a native rig especially when working in surround.
The fact that RTAS-TDM transitions eat additional voices not even mentioned.
frank

Okay, but I was aksing especially about plugin-count, voice-count is a different story of course. Especially with surround. ;-)
I am mainly into music production, not into complex post-production. Is that a scenario where low latency monitoring WITH plugins is needed in every production step?

Cheers,
thias

[Shifted Music]

an AAX only computer based processing will compete with a HDX card for sure, if all your looking at is number of specific plug ins instantiated and where native is only native and HDX is only HDX.

That seems to be what people are referring to in the fricking millions of comparison threads.

So for a real comparison there needs to be another step...

and I will use a fictitious number to illustrate my point.

Native 150 new channel strips
HDX 120 new channel strips

now even if this is the case people stop here and go. . . "SEE theres no need to spend the money on that overpriced hardware by the big bad company. . . OCCUPY AVID. . OCCUPY AVID!!!

But wait theres one more calculation necessary.

REALLY the HDX power is the combination of BOTH numbers.

SO how can anyone really say Native is more powerful, most people in the world know that if Jimmy has 10 lima beans and Johnny has 10 lima beans plus 10 pinto beans that ...

Johnny has more beans!!!!

Add to that the buffer or lack of, practically for most people that HDX has to offer and the only real difference comes to Live recording/inputs and inherent latency or lack of with sessions that are big.. thus recording in late stages of large sessions is not a problem.

The lines are blurred by those power users who are able to tweak a native system to compete in the HDX buffer ranges but still will ALWAYS be less that that PLUS an HDX system.

Its simple. Native systems can be amazingly powerful!! and HDX can be even more powerful adding the two together.

It all depends on what you need, simple. The best part is one can start native and expand later.