Any reasons not to go PT HD at the moment?

[SwirlyD]

I am considering upgrading to a PT HD system - I'm currently using a Quad G5. One of my fears with such a big investment is that the cards may become obsolete as OS's and Mac intels change things. Are there any reasons to wait or is it a relatively safe time for me to go HD (i.e. the cards should be good for a few years work at least)....any things looming on the horizon I should be aware of??
Thanks much!

[Craig F]

upgrading from what?

PCIe should be around for some time and I personally believe that Digi will not have new cards for 3 or 4 years

But god only knows what shifts in platform design Mr. Jobs will hit us with

[BradLyons]

There is nothing to worry about, Digidesign ALWAYS provides upgrades to the future from the past---that's the nature of computer technology. While Digidesign will not be releasing anything new this year, 2009 is around the corner...but do you want to wait and see, or get working NOW? The fact is, an HD system is extremely powerful right now and no matter what's around the corner, it will rock for years to come. I personally have (2) HD3 Accel systems, and I also sell a great deal of them.... there's just nothing like it, NOTHING.

[x9blade]

i would have to disagree about the power of HD.Its powerful if you have an HD7 system(even then a modern quadcore machine is just as powerful maybe even more so) while i love my hd 3 setup greatly and use it everyday on big sessions, the power of the DSP cards are WAY WEAK compared to todays modern computers. HD 3 is the bare minimum if you want to work with dense sessions. i know everyone has different workflows but in my case hd 3 at least, to do anything halfway serious as far as power goes.

going hd 3 or higher comes at a price. $8,000(retail) just to get your foot halfway through the door is a bit.........well,HIGH.then add an I/O for $4,000 thats some serious wood for anyone in these times. professional or hobbyist.oh, then add your computer of choice.

HD's buffer can only go down to 128 while le goes down to 64 (or less?) been a while for me. this is a big problem at times. one which you should consider if you are a heavy VI user.

in le you can use the 3gig swith to access more ram in protools once again this is great for heavy VI users. i don't know of anyone having luck with the 3 gig switch with HD. big thumbs down

try loading a waves gtr maxed out stomp box plug in in HD.guess what, i can't do it,not enough dsp power on a chip but, you can open up many native once again dsp showing its age.

i can go on but i just wanted to give some of my honest opinions as far as HD goes. please do not take this as a bash PTs post i use my HD system everyday and very much enjoy it. maybe because i have so much invested in HD would be silly to ditch it for a new grim other DAW.

Protools hd is awesome but underpowered for the price

[dubaifox]

I would agree with above post. Well said.

[doug_hti]

it depends on what your big picture is. if you are generating revenue 5 days or more a week and you are rewarded for your pace (billing per project rather than per hour), it might be hard to justify NOT having HD. it might possibly be a reality that pro tools isn't going anywhere anytime soon from an industry perspective, regardless of what apple or steinberg come out with.

personally i've never been happier with the mac pro and HD combo. Large sessions open up so much faster, the internal sata drives are very peppy, lots of work can get done at a very efficient pace for many situations.

[SwirlyD]

Thanks for the replies. At the moment, we are using a Digi002 interface with Apogee Rosetta converters, Waves/Massey native plugs, DigiTranslator, lots of RAM, and the Musicians toolkit for expanded track count. When we set up, we considered HD, but after reading lots of comparisons, felt the extra cost was not worth it.

We do advertising music production and audio post, and our system is very stable and works fine for us, except for a few annoyances like using .040 for frame nudging (PAL) and having to reset the buffer to 64/128 for recording voices because of latency. Our system is actually more powerful/stable than some HD systems I've used while freelancing at other studios and our clients are always very happy with the results.

The main reason we are considering the upgrade is simply that as a (small) audio post facility, using Pro Tools LE, even though it's good enough to do everything we need and produce high-quality results, is not as acceptable when selling yourselves to clients (even though most have no clue and are more interested in your coffee machine). Though we've never lost a job because of this, it's been in the back of our minds, but as a small and growing company, we don't yet have loads of budget to upgrade things like this (we could buy 3 Tubetechs with that money!). We will probably go ahead and go HD, but before doing so, I wanted to just check out that there wasn't some new PCI-Z around the corner that would make the investment worthless after 6 months!

Also, we use Logic Pro for our music production, including Native Instruments and East/West symphonic Libraries - anyone else using these combos with HD (via Apogee Rosetta?) ? And the Waves native bundle will still work in Pro Tools HD right, just not in TDM "quality"?

[brianjanthony]

Swirly
The Waves stuff will work in RTAS. Forget the "TDM quality" issue. They will sound the same. OK, some people may say they sound different, or don't null out in a lab test. Who cares. They sound the same for all real world purposes. I know it's a simplification, but math is math, done by a chip on an hd card or by a CPU.

As a different perspective on your dillema, consider my case. I started my full time studio 6 years ago. I started with a Digi001, then I went HD about 2 years into the process. Not because clients asked for it, but because I wanted to have more plugin firepower for mixing and be able to (oh this is funny) use more VIs and B4s and Kontakts etc.

The amount of extras I had to deal with was staggering (new snakes, volume knob, midi io, etc). I was WAYYY ignorant in how much it would "really" cost. Worse, I was forced by Digi to buy it from a neighboring competitive studio, who was also a dealer (total conflict of interest). At the time, I was not in a position to jack my rates up, even though my setup became SUPER PRO. My clients didn't ask for more juice, and they wouldn't pay for an upgrade they didn't ask for.

While I don't regret the decision to go HD3 at the time, I'd never do it now. Not with the power that's out there. I just bought Logic to play with, hoping I can get VI/MIDI/writing sessions done quicker and more stable, since many of my clients have better performance with Cubase on their laptops when it comes to VIS and Midi production.

If you're in a town where you need to say "we have Pro Tools HD" to put food on the table, you have to pony up. In my area, only once in 6 years has someone booked specifically because I ran HD (and that session ended up in RTAS-ville, as the mix was too much for HD3 to handle). So biz wise, it would've been foolish to drop 15k to draw in HD customers (1 out of 2000 sessions requested HD specifically).

If I had to do it NOW, I'd get HD1 with a killer Mac. That would put HD on your biz cards, and give you more real processing power than anybody with a G5 and HD3. If you don't "need" HD, save your money, just buy a new Mac and some other tools that might help you get work done better and quicker.

My perspective anyway....

[x9blade]

i'm glad some others feel the same as i. HD is fantastic for what it is but,at times HD seems to be the limited version of protools. good luck to the original poster in whatever choice you make

[SwirlyD]

Thanks for all the responses. After reading them, I've decided to hold off on "upgrading" to HD. Our current setup is very powerful and I'm getting the vibe that we could end up investing $10K in an HD2 system that actually makes it weaker! If we start getting requests or lose a potential job because of it, I'll have to reconsider, but I think it's unlikely.

We'll probably just get the DV Toolkit for the frames and multiple movie options - though considering we already have DigiTranslator and Musician Toolkit, even that's quite a big amount of money for a package that offers mostly things we already have - we're hoping our dealer can negotiate some kind of crossgrade option with Digi.