Post engineers: does Native offer enough power for big surround sessions?

[Eric Lambert]

We're looking at an 8-core trashcan and Native Thunderbolt interface to run with our HD IOs. We do a lot of large 5.1 mixes in that room but currently we have a cheesegrater Mac and 2 HD Accel cards running the show.

Switching to Native obviously puts all the stress on the computer. To you post mixers: are you using Native, or HDX? And if Native, does it seem like you have enough power to handle your big sessions?

[Meads]

I've been running HDN since its birth (I think 2010) on a great variety of machines. Starting with cheesegrater Mac Pro (12-Core) with a PCIe card over several different Hackintoshes to now an iMac Pro with HDN TB.
I'm usually running fairly huge sessions with several instances of 5.0 Altiverbs and lots and lots of EQs, compressors, deessers, delays, and other mutlifx stuff. Dense automation and lots of tracks. I.e. your usual post session.
I never ran into any issues. CPUs nowadays totally make DSP chips obsolete when it comes to mixing.

The 8 core trashcan isn't really a power house, compared to modern computers, but regardless I suppose you will be fine. You can always upgrade to a more powerful computer. But I'd say HDN all the way if you're looking for a potent mixing rig.

[LDS]

I have been moving 5.1 sessions between my native, core audio based system and HDX1 and HDX2 systems for mixing quite regularly over the last few months and I haven't noticed much of a difference at all in performance. All the computers in question are cheese grater Macs - 4,1 and 5,1s. If anything, the performance favoured my system simply because of the upgrades it has over the other stock computers (SSD drives for everything, USB3 connectivity, more ram, etc). It just felt snappier. It's amazing how long you can spend waiting for files to copy of USB2 as well.

Native is a whole new ball game since the release of Pro Tools 11+, but as Meads has suggested you do need to pour whatever you can into the computer. I do think HDX still has it's place. The new Mac Mini benchmarks faster than all of the trashcan Mac Pros except for the 12 core model. That is impressive. HDX cards are also on sale for $2500 at the moment. Together, you would have a pretty killer little system for less than the price of the base model iMac Pro, and only a few hundred bucks more than the base model 8 core trashcan. Even with the improvements in CPU processing, I probably will be going with the HDX card and Mac mini for my next system.

[Cheesehead]

I run big 5.1 film sessions on a 12 core trashcan with HD Native Thunderbolt.


I used to have an HDX 1 on an 8 core and its more powerful and more stable than that rig was.



A large Native session can come close to maxing out an HDX 2 system, and I've found, generally runs more snappily on Native.


The only problem I've had is with voices. If you're working with other Editors that are wasteful with their track usage, you can easily get in a situation where you can run out of voices.


I find its a good discipline not to use too many tracks anyway, so it suits me.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by Cheesehead

The only problem I've had is with voices. If you're working with other Editors that are wasteful with their track usage, you can easily get in a situation where you can run out of voices.

I find its a good discipline not to use too many tracks anyway, so it suits me.

Yeah, voices have been an issue here as well but I now meticulously crunch down sessions into their bare essentials. An added upside that I have found is that it has made the mix easier to get around!

[capt kirk]

We do some fair sized templates track wise and it all gets output to a DFC 5.1 console .....we do vitually no reverb or processing in the PT box, just mostly edits , acts like a sophisticated stem player......so to answer your question we never run into CPU issues...the DFC handles the faders, stemcompression 5.1 bussing panning etc etc...and then we layback everyy version needed to another PT 12 rig......

[albee1952]

FWIW, my first initiation into HDN was back when it was new. Watched a demo of 8.5 Pro Tools HD on an i7 MacBook Pro. HDN card was in a chassis connected to a card slot in the MBP with an OMNI. The demo was a 5.1 movie soundtrack with over 150 audio tracks and a video track. The rig was set at a 128 buffer and played back with zero issues.



The thing about HDN is; most of the "power"(okay, all of it?) comes from the computer and the card basically directing audio. Having said that, when I made my move to an HDN system, it was an upgrade from a DIGI003. With no changes to the PC, my Dverb2 score went from 320 to 500