GIVE US DELAY COMPENSATION IN PT-LE!!!!!

[Kris75]

.....And at what expense should PTLE "keep up with the times"? As far as I know there are still problems with ADC in other comparable products. So I ask, are you willing to give up on PT just because other software companies are offering water down Version of ADC?

I am not giving up on PT. I am trying to make it better through user experience. These are things I notice everyday and wish they could be part of the software. I don't mind Paying a price to get these features (as soon as I decided to buy the 002R, I bought the MPT as well).
I am more than happy to pay for them as a matter of fact. I mean really, if you want to buy a DAW softare package, it ususally costs more than 35 - 75 dollars (on the LE side). But digi is a hardware based company and basically gives you free software. You get the same software from them whether you buy an Mbox Mini or a 003. I have always respected that about them.

If they offered a price tag on ADC and or PDC, would you pay to get it? I bet most would because the software is amazing. The platform is RockSolid. You can go back and forth between OSX and XP without even thinking about it. There is no other DAW like it.

I also understand why including offline bounce is a hard one. If they give it to LE users, or NATIVE users, the people that buy their HIGH END gear (spelled HD) cannot have it. It is a design issue with the TDM structure. Cool. TDM sounds great. 48 bit. If I was mixing a cartoon and had to wait in real time???? My paycheck would be much bigger but the boss would not be happy when he found out that the guys across the street (literally) do it offline in half the time.

If I'm mixing pop songs, the offline bounce is not needed (by me) because I usually want to listen to it anyways.

Believe me, I like the HD stuff. But I see it's value declining every day as people start to understand the power of the modern computer.
It's gonna be. It already can be. Who will be there first?

[davemc]

Yes I would like ADC. Although as I said I know when I brought LE I knew that it might happen in weeks or years or never. I can get by without it, even if I buy the SSL DSP box I will just use time adjuster or playlist/track slipping. Like I did for years on a mix system.
When it comes and it works I will again have to go through each plugin to make sure they do not lie to Pro Tools. Lucky I use hardly any waves stuff anymore

I used HD and Mix and also Cubase/Nuendo. I prefer the way I edit/mix in Pro Tools so I am happy to live with some limitations with LE for the $'s I paid.
I do not think a lot of people understand the difference between DSP power and CPU power. With a HD/Mix system when I filled up the DSP's my playback and video was fine as that was all the CPU was doing. I would audiosuite stuff down to free up more DSP or Bounce stuff. I knew my limit.

In Native you have to guess how hard you hit the CPU depending on what tracks you have or else it slows everything down as the CPU does everything. I do a lot of realtime boucing to a stereo track in record mode instead of bounce to disk with LE.

Now the whole ADC as a must have or I cannot use LE. I know personally I would rather them not dumb down automation as much, my mate would like 5.1 added and another wants more tracks as even MPT is not enough for him. HD does all this, so we either upgrade or just wait and ask nicely.
If you cannot work without ADC right this minute try another program as when you brought LE you should know it does not do everything HD does. Hence LE.
You can still make high end recordings in it, it is just missing some features which may come soon or come later.

I did hope the 003 had some HD DSP chips in it enough for 48 tracks of ADC and low latency recording. It would of costed more. Maybe something like this will be coming soon. To me the 003 was really the 002 Mk2, as I agree it seems it is just a BLA upgrade version
I also thought that they would make a cheap HD card with less chips and a cheaper IO box in two versions 8 and 24 ins/out and call it HD LE. So you could still add HD Accell card if you wanted although your first card had hardly any DSP. You could add 96io and 192io if you wnated to. So a real upgardable system.

[golli]

I also thought that they would make a cheap HD card with less chips and a cheaper IO box in two versions 8 and 24 ins/out and call it HD LE. So you could still add HD Accell card if you wanted although your first card had hardly any DSP. You could add 96io and 192io if you wnated to. So a real upgardable system.

This sounds like a winner!!


Golli.

[Top Jimmy]

There's a misunderstanding going on here about what TDM is and does.

Time-division multiplexing

TDM is a communication protocol between the i/o interfaces and HD cards in Pro Tools HD. Because of it, Pro Tools HD has no i/o latency, and can run TDM plug-ins live that only introduce a few samples of delay without impact on the monitoring.

Pro Tools LE has to use the data bus of the host processor. This bus does not have the inherent low latency of a TDM bus. The amount of latency in the i/o of Pro Tools LE is controlled by the hardware buffer size in the playback engine settings. The lower the buffer setting, the less i/o delay there is, but also the faster and harder the host processor has to work at moving the data in and out. The higher the buffer setting, the greater the delay, but the processor doesn't have to work near as hard.

Pro Tools LE will always be hobbled by the limitation of the host processor data bus.

MrBossPlaya,

I would characterize an amateur as someone who sells something they can't really deliver. Being a Pro Tools LE user is not the determinator (heh-heh) between pro and amateur. An LE-based studio cannot deliver the level of service required by all who may enter the door. If you recognize this and work within this limitation, you are a professional. I use LE frequently to edit projects both large and small. I also use it to mix the smaller projects that don't require the "horsepower" or level of production excellence that I can only give them in HD. What I call ADC-LE would be a great step forward in efficiency in being able to provide higher excellence when using LE.

[golli]

Pro Tools LE has to use the data bus of the host processor. This bus does not have the inherent low latency of a TDM bus. The amount of latency in the i/o of Pro Tools LE is controlled by the hardware buffer size in the playback engine settings. The lower the buffer setting, the less i/o delay there is, but also the faster and harder the host processor has to work at moving the data in and out. The higher the buffer setting, the greater the delay, but the processor doesn't have to work near as hard.

Pro Tools LE will always be hobbled by the limitation of the host processor data bus.

Top Jimmy! Does the Firewire Protocol convertion not add to the latency also??

I have not done any comparison between 001 and 002, but I do remember some discussion about the swap from a deticated PCI to using Firewire and some micro-latency. I have not come across any discussions on since however. A MYTH ??


Golli.

[Top Jimmy]

I'm no computer guru so I could be slightly off, but I don't think there's any real difference between a PCI and a firewire interface when running on a native DAW. From what I know about motherboard architecture, there's only one additional controller in the firewire bus as opposed to the PCI bus. Will data navigate this controller in less than one audio sample time? I should think that data would be able to go both ways in way less than one audio sample time. So realistically there would be no additional samples of delay between the output of a firewire interface and a PCI interface.

Other than that, the only other differences between them is that the PCI bus at 32 bit can peak transfer 133 MegaBytes/second, while firewire can only do 400 Megabits/second.

[JFreak]

Could these so-called TDM chips possibly be implemented (built-in) inside a Digi 003 in some way? Or perhaps into a PCMCIA card adaptor?

No – it's basically either fully TDM or fully native. You have to understand that in Protools HD practically *everything* happens inside the TDM world, and the so called voices are input and output points of the TDM world; they are used if you need to visit outside the TDM world (for example, RTAS processing) and every time you use voices there will be a penalty.

If HD session does not have any RTAS plugins instatiated, then Protools HD does not even use the native engine at all. Not at all. Everything happens within the TDM world, which means DSP chips on the card(s). Everything from mixing to processing. It's not some afterthought you could add to some other system.

Think about Duendes and Powercores for comparison. Yes, it would seem nice to add some DSP to the native system, but as native systems know nothing about DSP, then one must visit outside the native world to be able to use the extra horsepower; and just like HD has penalty for using native processing, native systems will penalise you from using the DSP.

Because of how the systems are built, there will always be additional latency from using DSP within a native system or native processing within a TDM system. If you want to use the lowest possible latency, you *must* stay within the very world your system has been built. Go outside your world and the latency is always going to grow.

[JFreak]

I'm no computer guru so I could be slightly off, but I don't think there's any real difference between a PCI and a firewire interface when running on a native DAW. *snip* the only other differences between them is that the PCI bus at 32 bit can peak transfer 133 MegaBytes/second, while firewire can only do 400 Megabits/second.

Wrong. Transfer rate does not tell the whole story.

Firewire bus is *clocked* at 8 kHz and PCI bus at 66 MHz. What does it mean? Simply put, PCI bus transfers instructions over 8000 times faster than FW bus. It means that PCI bus can transfer the audio streams in smaller chunks and in real world it means that PCI is more responsive than FW.

This is exactly the same reason why FW400 in real world is faster than USB2(480), because FW is clocked at 8 kHz while USB is only clocked at 1 kHz. That's only 8 times difference, but it's still noticeable. Compare that to the 8000 times faster PCI bus and you'll get the picture.

So no, transfer rates are not the whole truth and FW is not as good as PCI.

[mal777]

I just switched to using all the McDSP plugins and a few choice others , that all have zero latency, hence no need for ADC with 0 latency plugins.

Problem solved, Have a great day!

So you are saying that there is no need for ADC when using the plugs you listed? Cool (if this is a fact)
Anyone else care to comment on this?

[davemc]

So you are saying that there is no need for ADC when using the plugs you listed? Cool (if this is a fact)
Anyone else care to comment on this?

Yes there is a lot of plugins with zero latency in Pro Tools. Or there are a lot with 10-30 samples, which are easier to time adjust against. Or if not part of a multi mic'd set so you can just not worry about. 10 samples on a single vocal track running at 44k is not really going to bother me to much doing a rock mix.
Although a lot of plugins like brickwall limiters, waves, some reverbs add delays of over 60-1000. Then you have external DSP boxes that are over 2000+ (very noticable). The people using these are normally the most vocal wanting ADC. Digi does not sell external DSP boxes for LE so this could be one of the reasons we have not seen ADC yet A lot of the plugins they sell have less then 100 samples, which is not that hard to adjust for.
So hope that answers your question, yes a lot of plugins have low latencey.
Just click on the window down the bottom and you will find the delay of the plugins you use