We need a Thunderbolt HDX system

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

I have on stage with my band, and with the bands I have done the sound for.

You should not mix for more than 3 hours and a half at 95 db, without taking a break, 4 hours at 80 db. At 140 db, the persons actually can becomes def instantaneously even your vocal chords starts to vibrate. 130 db is the threshold of pain. It's recommended to wear earplugs to block the ambient sound at 85db in a work space, because at prolonged exposure at that level can cause hearing damage. 100 db in a headphones is enough to cause permanent hearing damage after 15 minutes.

So trust me, no one is going to have 140 db in stage earphones blasting in their ears, your signer would be rolling on the floor in pain instead of signing, in fact the hole reason to have those, is that the sound level in the earphones doesn't need to be high at all.

And it's not because it's loud enough, that it's good enough to give you a good close to flat frequency response that you need to be able to do mixing.

I suspect/hope Electrox meant the in-ears work well in/help block ambient environments up to 140dB. You both are agreeing with each other, please don't do that here.

---

But back to the original topic. We have "portable-enough" solutions now that span a range from USB/Firewire interfaces up to existing Magma PCIe and new Thunderbolt chassis based PCIe cards. I expect the market of folks sensitive to any size/portability differences between Thunderbolt/PCIe chassis based solutions and a hypothetical Thunderbolt/PCIe chipset based interfaces that have been packaged to avoid the bus hardware is very small--and products will remain expensive. And a custom packaged Thunderbolt solution will by necessity still carry lots of internal PCIe architecture/chip baggage etc. and especially in the case of HDX hardware require significant AC power supply and cooling capacity. So overall these may not be a lot smaller than a PCIe bus packaged solution.

And Avid likely has much better things to do with R&D resources, like spend every waking moment they have on making sure its own and third parties do a full and successful migration to AAX (native and DSP). And make sure the huge jump to 64-bit in Pro Toos 11 works well. That to me is all so much more important in the next few years than anything else, including worrying about Thunderbolt toys. The earlier issues are make or break the future of Pro Tools/Avid stuff. I could eventually see doing something that targeted folks who are overall size/portability sensitive by pushing say a Thundebolt HD Native interface hardware into something like an Omni or HD IO (similar to how Avid demonstrated a HD IO in the past with a Thunderbolt interface shoved into one of the slots)--but don't see why Avid would want to put any effort into this, for several years. And again a decent size HDX capability may bring power and cooling challenges. I also don't expect Apple to drop PCIe card support in Mac Pros, but obviously if they did then Thunderbolt would get more interesting. Pushing hard on Thunderbolt is somewhat academic until Windows PCs have shipped for a while in quantity, another reason I don't see this being at all urgent/likely.

Darryl

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I suspect/hope Electrox meant the in-ears work well in/help block ambient environments up to 140dB. You both are agreeing with each other, please don't do that here.

agreeing with each other is bad??

[froyo]

Originally Posted by Electrox

Have you ever tried molded in-ear plugs? If they work for major rock bands on stage at 140 db, they should be ok at a mall at 95db! But seriously, they block the outside world so hear what you need to. Off topic, but probably important...

Hello. Monitoring at 95 dB SPL for more than two hours at any one time is extremely dangerous in a studio control room, let alone in headphones, whether they are molded in-ears or any other kind. I can't stress enough how dangerous this is.

OSHA says that 90 dB SPL for 8 hours is the limit before damage can occur, 95 dB SPL for 4 hours. Maybe I am over sensitive but I think those levels are too high, and in any case that's the limit before damage can occur. That's like saying drinking 10 beers is the limit before you can suffer major intoxication or death. Who wants to go the edge like that?

According to HEAR (nonprofit dedicated to the subject) "According to the United States Safety and Health Standards, workers should not be exposed to more than 90 dB over a period of eight hours. Most audiologists would like to see that standard modified to 85 dB. If you work in a noisy environment, check out the decibel level you are being exposed to and take the proper precautions. Have your hearing evaluated at least once a year by a hearing health professional. Turn down the volume, or remove yourself from the noise area when possible. Give your ears a rest for 24 hours after exposure to dangerous levels of noise, and get yourself some hearing protection" (Underline/emphasis by HEAR). Do notice that they recommend giving yourself 24 hours between exposures. Think what happens if you monitor at 95 db SPL daily?!?

Plus consider also that after about an hour or so at that level your ears will start to get fatigued. You will start to lose mid highs and highs quickly. After 2 or 3 hours at those levels I would not trust your ears to make EQ decisions when your ears are clearly so fatigued. Also consider that hearing damage is completely irreversible. And we make our living with them. Look, all I am saying is that in my opinion based on experience, medical, scientific and government data, you are running an extremely risky proposition with your ears if you plan on doing that day in day out for weeks and weeks at a time. Please consult a doctor and check out OSHA's gudelines and see what they recommend. Good luck.

By the way, I think there are a million other problems with running a professional gig in those settings, but I don't think Electrox is saying that the entire audio engineering community should get rid of studios and do gigs at Starbucks, etc. If I am not misrepresenting him, he's saying that's what he likes and works for him. That's cool, to each their own. I just wanted to point out the hearing thing because it really is dangerous.

http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owad...RDS&p_id=10625

http://www.hearnet.com/at_risk/risk_at_risk.shtml

[Rockpolice]

Originally Posted by froyo

Hello. Monitoring at 95 dB SPL for more than two hours at any one time is extremely dangerous

I kind of agree with all you others about things in general, but I'm pretty sure what he meant is that when the ambient noise level in the mall is 95dB it's really easy to work with the Ultimate Ears headphones as the noise isolation is about 27dB's so you don't really have to listen that loud.

[Electrox]

Originally Posted by Rockpolice

I kind of agree with all you others about things in general, but I'm pretty sure what he meant is that when the ambient noise level in the mall is 95dB it's really easy to work with the Ultimate Ears headphones as the noise isolation is about 27dB's so you don't really have to listen that loud.

Yes, exactly. thanks.

[Electrox]

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad he complained that "Netbooks aren't better at ANYTHING". I am putting out there that a solution of an interface and a magma with cards and a laptop is as useless to me as that Netbook he was referring to. What I would like to see is ONE device, like an Omni, that has AAX of some sort built right in. One Thunderbolt cable into the Apple Macbook Pro. Maybe even powered by this one cable, but that probably can't be done! One rack size, and maybe a half rack mini version. And then consider releasing something that allows Pro Tools on an iPad!
On the night that Microsoft tries to play "catch up" with the iPad's success - for those of you who are still thinking "cards in boxes" - I think there is room for a new category of pro audio device. I would rather use an Avid solution if they had one. They are, after all, called "Pro Tools"!

[Emcha_audio]

Well funny you would say that, Microsoft is soon releasing the "surface" But you're still not getting the points. What ever you are rooting for, whether it's directly made by avid or an other company, it's still a card.. or two.. or three, in a box. It's just not a tower that you're asking for, but it's exactly the same thing as what Magma is releasing. Except you're asking for something that will have the I/O straight on it.

So let's play devil's advocate a moment. How many I/O would you want in it? How many HDX cards? And considering that 1 HDX card with 1 hdx 16x16 analogue is already 12 k and is what you'd need to do small portable recording gear at the very minimum, how much would you be expected to pay, for a 2 or 3 cards system, with enough I/O to take advantage of the full capacities of the cards? And if you're only wanting to do small portable rigs, why don't you go with an HDN instead and use AAX native instead? At least that way you're system would cost a fourth of the price that what you're asking would be.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Well funny you would say that, Microsoft is soon releasing the "surface" But you're still not getting the points. What ever you are rooting for, whether it's directly made by avid or an other company, it's still a card.. or two.. or three, in a box. It's just not a tower that you're asking for, but it's exactly the same thing as what Magma is releasing. Except you're asking for something that will have the I/O straight on it.

So let's play devil's advocate a moment. How many I/O would you want in it? How many HDX cards? And considering that 1 HDX card with 1 hdx 16x16 analogue is already 12 k and is what you'd need to do small portable recording gear at the very minimum, how much would you be expected to pay, for a 2 or 3 cards system, with enough I/O to take advantage of the full capacities of the cards? And if you're only wanting to do small portable rigs, why don't you go with an HDN instead and use AAX native instead? At least that way you're system would cost a fourth of the price that what you're asking would be.

Pricing is a great product planning item to hone in on first. But while we are there what power supply specs, physical dimensions, weight (including possibly large power supplies), allowable cooling fan noise, and ambient temperature environments is this portable yet apparently mighty beast meant to operate in? (remember that HDX systems rely on power hungry DSP and FPGA chips and (hopefully somewhat less power hungry) Thunderbolt and PCIe chips). If its an interface and intended to be portable what connector Jacks will it have (that may drive up package size) or will it have DB25 connectors and the user be expected to carry around a patch bay/interface cables? Since the product goal seems counter to the flexible configuration with current chassis based approaches, so how many different SKUs would Avid (and their sales channels) be expected to carry of this device with different HDX and interface capabilities. The goal here somewhere is for Avid to make money, not die building lots of products nobody wants.

Avid really has a lot more important things things to worry about. 64 bit Pro Tools. Making AAX a market success. Fixing software bugs. Implementing every Eleven Rack feature I want....

Sigh

Darryl

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Pricing is a great product planning item to hone in on first. But while we are there what power supply specs, physical dimensions, weight (including possibly large power supplies), allowable cooling fan noise, and ambient temperature environments is this portable yet apparently mighty beast meant to operate in? (remember that HDX systems rely on power hungry DSP and FPGA chips and (hopefully somewhat less power hungry) Thunderbolt and PCIe chips). If its an interface and intended to be portable what connector Jacks will it have (that may drive up package size) or will it have DB25 connectors and the user be expected to carry around a patch bay/interface cables? Since the product goal seems counter to the flexible configuration with current chassis based approaches, so how many different SKUs would Avid (and their sales channels) be expected to carry of this device with different HDX and interface capabilities. The goal here somewhere is for Avid to make money, not die building lots of products nobody wants.

Avid really has a lot more important things things to worry about. 64 bit Pro Tools. Making AAX a market success. Fixing software bugs. Implementing every Eleven Rack feature I want....

Sigh

Darryl

Yep I agree totally with you, just trying to get him to realize that

[Electrox]

What would YOU want in a portable device? You seem bent on holding on to the status quo. The market was filled with Netbooks, like AAX cards, waiting for the consumers to gobble them up. And yet the consumers didn't jump. And then the naysayers knocked the iPad as not being powerful enough to do what they want. And then the iPad sold, because it gave the users something they didn't have before - that they found USEFUL!
64 bit Pro Tools will be coming regardless of what the hardware designers are creating. The box I am talking about WILL be made. It's not so difficult to see what I'm talking about by adding the DSP in an Omni box.

A version of what I am talking about made for firewire (where is firewire on the new Apple?) is being released by Universal Audio. Let's start with those specs. (Must I on an Avid forum?!)
You can see the tech specs by going here:
http://www.uaudio.com/interfaces/apollo.html
which includes:
Audio Interface
Microphone Preamplifiers
Monitoring
Onboard UAD-2 Processing
Software