Benefits of Avid Native Thunderbolt over a USB interface?

[V5V]

Originally Posted by fresler

How was your experience with the Denon and what did you connect to it?

I haven't actually used it yet, despite purchasing it months (maybe even years?) ago. I found it on Craigslist by accident while searching for something else. The price was low enough that it made me think it was worth grabbing and having on hand in case I decided to use it.

Putting together a rig at home has been delayed by procrastination, budget, and overwhelming scope. Plugging in devices is easy, but tearing out the shredded, glued-down bright-orange carpet left by the previous occupant, building a wall with a door to isolate the space from the laundry room, removing everything stored in that space to a storage locker to allow for installation of wall, ceiling, flooring, and acoustic treatments, PAYING for wall, ceiling, flooring, and acoustic treatments... that all requires time, will/energy, and budget. So far I've never had all three at the same time!

[V5V]

Originally Posted by its2loud

Why use the hdmi out when the macbook pro has a perfectly fine digital optical output from the headphone jack?

Because Apple dropped the optical out in the headphone jack from the Late 2016 MacBook Pro Touch Bar.

Originally Posted by its2loud

Unless, i suppose, you’re passing both audio and video through the receiver from the MB through HDMI. But then i would worry about latency incurred through the receiver.

I'd be more concerned about the potential for *differing* latencies by running sound and picture along separate paths.

Besides, it doesn't matter. I won't be doing any recording at all, strictly editing and mixing, so latency doesn't affect my work. As long as sound and picture are in sync, I'm good.

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by V5V

Good point. Does that really matter for a stand-alone workstation, though? It won't be ingesting from or playing out to other equipment, nor playing duets with devices other than the audio interface. Even if I add an AJA video box, it will be locking to the same clock source as the audio interface -- the computer itself.

Yes it does matter even on a "self-contained" system. I've posted about this countless times but these guys put together a better info about it:

https://non-lethal-applications.com/...ocked-playback

Playing back through an internal video card IS essentially almost like playing back through external video equipment. There is no clocking or locking mechanism between your audio converters and your video hardware unless you feed them or lock them to a common clock. Both of them, that is. Especially not with a native sound card as PT can not "know" when exactly the audio leaves the output or your audio card. There's no communication between PT and the converter.

That said: Wether or not the drift/or start error bothers you or not is up to you. I found the fact that not KNOWING why something looks out of sync and getting 5 different impressions when pressing play 5 times drove me crazy. But it's really a personal thing what you find "good enough". Especially when you have more latency added to your system like HDMI receivers and video monitors with different offsets for almost every picture setting I find it reassuring to KNOW that at least what leaves the PT rig is bang on. And not possibly bang on. (pre-emptive response to the people who will chime in saying that a non-locked rig is "good enough".)