Replace Expansion|HD or Switch DAW Software

[holden]

My Digidesign Expansion|HD chassis (PCI) is not yet 3 years old, an investment of $2,620. Now Digidesign has announced that it will be abandoning Expansion|HD support in future versions of Pro Tools.

Rather than purchasing a Magma PE6R4 to replace my Expansion|HD chassis, I would like to know what other professional-level DAW front ends I can use that are compatible with the Expansion|HD chassis. I expect it will be a lot less expensive to switch software than to switch hardware — I'm a fast learner.

Of course it will also be somewhat satisfying to say goodbye to Digidesign after such a display of customer disloyalty.

Can Logic run Expansion|HD? Others?

[crizdee]

Hi,

Dropping support doesn't necessarily mean it won't work, it may be ok for quite a while yet.

It won't work with any other DAW!

sell the chassis by PT LE and get a UAD-2 DUO

Chris

[Extreme Mixing]

Crizdee is right.

The PCI X slots have been dead in Apple-land for 3 years, or more, in favor of the E slots. They announced that PPC would no longer be supported recently. Nothing high tech lasts forever. That it's not cutting edge doesn't mean that it's not a useful tool.

Steve

[holden]

My HD Accel cards are all PCI, but my Expansion|HD is hooked up to my Mac Pro via a PCIe -> PCI card. The Mac sees the Expansion|HD chassis as being PCIe, so there is no issue with the Mac.

Can a UAD-2 DUO match the perfomance of an HD6/Accel system at 96k/24b (where I do all my work)? Does it have delay compensation?

[crizdee]

Originally Posted by holden

Can a UAD-2 DUO match the perfomance of an HD6/Accel system at 96k/24b (where I do all my work)? Does it have delay compensation?

NO! The only way to match your HD6 accel is to buy the MAGMA PE6R4 gonna have to bite the bullet.

depending on how many tracks you want to run? you could go HD1 accel PCIe and 2x UAD Quad cards! plenty of processing power with UAD and RTAS, but track count might be limited. Or HD2 accel and 1x UAD quad card

Chris

[BradLyons]

Get the Magma, stick with it. There are reasons that Digidesign has dropped it, greed is not one of them. The reason they came out with the ExpansionHD box was that, at the time, Mama didn't have anything that could provide full bandwidth and track-count. Once the PE6R46ERFXDF whatever it's called (I own one, sell them, you'd think I'd remember!) came to be-----Digidesign felt that it would properly work and discontinued their own.