Those tracking with HDX and 2018

[brianjanthony]

Every year when it comes time to Re-WUP my Avid extortion fee, I wrestle with upgrading back to HDX. Sold my TDM system years ago and have been running native. Mixing has been fine. But tracking, even with now a 6 core 3.5 in my cheese grater, as been just ok. Every now and then, It bucks during a take. I’m always managing the buffer if I need to punch in on full blown mixes. And I’ve been tracking a bunch more than usual lately.

I use a ton of native plugins. I never go above 64 buffer at 44k when tracking. I also do a fair amount of midi recording. My delay comp numbers are usually around 1000-2000. I still own DSP plugins too.

In a session with 150 native plugins and verbs, and 4 native VIs, and delay comp at 1000 ish on all tracks, I can track a bass and definitely feel it a bit latent and run up against some spikes. (Thank God for freezing!). If I go back to HDX now, and use a DSP channel strip on my record track, can I ratchet the buffer to 256? Would I feel any less latency? Would stability incrEase? Would mine or my clients experience b improved? (I run 3 headphone mixes out of my 192to different rooms).

I’m just looking for the most recent insights into where things stand stability wise. I’m not looking to buy a ton more DSP (or any plugins). Work is good. Just trying to increase the overall client experience any ways I can.

[albee1952]

speaking only from my own experiences:
I also track full bands on HD/Native and use the 64 buffer setting. However, I never track with high-latency plugins in play(and 1000 samples is very high latency IMHO). My template session does have several plugins in place, but they are inactive if they show more than 10 samples(ADC only works by making things later). If I need an overdub late in a mix, I will take the time to make high-latency plugins inactive, or I will bounce out a 2-mix and do the overdub to that. Then fly it back into the main session.

One thing that might help is, put as many(or all) high-latency plugins in their own row of inserts, you you can make the entire row inactive with a single command(example: insert A holds Slate VTM and is empty for most everything else. Slot E has my waves JJP drum plugin and Bass Rider on the bass track).

Back to HDX for a moment, I am no expert, but I have worked some on a friend's HDX system and was a bit shocked at the ADC numbers I saw with some native plugins(stuff that shows 0 on my system).

[BScout]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Back to HDX for a moment, I am no expert, but I have worked some on a friend's HDX system and was a bit shocked at the ADC numbers I saw with some native plugins(stuff that shows 0 on my system).

If you pass plugins back and forth from the dsp mixer to native plugins, you can increase the delay over a native-only system.
This was true of the TDM systems too.

The simple thing back then was to know how to order your plugins. Today, you could also switch the plugin to native from dsp if that reduces latency.

An example:
insert a, dsp plugin
insert b, native plugin
insert c, dsp plugin
insert d, native plugin

Currently there are four travels from/to the mix dsp. To save latency, switching the insert c to native would help. Then, there would be only two travels from/to the mix dsp. So the latency is cut in half. Anyone who worked on TDM systems should be familiar with this (except now, all AAX-DSP plugins are required to have a native version so there are options to do better now)

[Philthy]

Originally Posted by brianjanthony

Every year when it comes time to Re-WUP my Avid extortion fee, I wrestle with upgrading back to HDX. Sold my TDM system years ago and have been running native. Mixing has been fine. But tracking, even with now a 6 core 3.5 in my cheese grater, as been just ok. Every now and then, It bucks during a take. I’m always managing the buffer if I need to punch in on full blown mixes. And I’ve been tracking a bunch more than usual lately.

I use a ton of native plugins. I never go above 64 buffer at 44k when tracking. I also do a fair amount of midi recording. My delay comp numbers are usually around 1000-2000. I still own DSP plugins too.

In a session with 150 native plugins and verbs, and 4 native VIs, and delay comp at 1000 ish on all tracks, I can track a bass and definitely feel it a bit latent and run up against some spikes. (Thank God for freezing!). If I go back to HDX now, and use a DSP channel strip on my record track, can I ratchet the buffer to 256? Would I feel any less latency? Would stability incrEase? Would mine or my clients experience b improved? (I run 3 headphone mixes out of my 192to different rooms).

I’m just looking for the most recent insights into where things stand stability wise. I’m not looking to buy a ton more DSP (or any plugins). Work is good. Just trying to increase the overall client experience any ways I can.

HDX bypasses the buffer altogether. The buffer is only for plugins running from the host (native.) You could have the buffer set as high as you like and you would still have a couple milliseconds of latency on the bass input, as long as you only use DSP enabled plugins on that particular channel. Heck you could track another entire band into your session in realtime, with negligible latency on all the inputs. This is why people pay the big bucks for HDX.

[brianjanthony]

Thanks all for the responses. My thing is, when it was a 10k proposition, I bailed on it. But now, at 2-3k, I am investigating again.

Towards the end of my 12+ years with TDM, even with 5 cards, it was a nightmare bc more and more plugins were RTAS(native). Voice shuffling was a drag and going HDN bypassed all the hassle.

I just dread that "I spent 3k for this?" moment when I start trying to track a midi piano, or use a VI, or etc. Or my bigger concern, that I'll run out of voices with all my native plugins (verbs, channelstrips, etc).

[arche3]

Hdx is the same as hdn but better. I've never had issue. You just can't add a bunch of high latency plugins into a session prior to tracking on the master output. That sort of messes up the adc math. But if you close and reopen sessions it works fine.

[Rich Breen]

Originally Posted by brianjanthony

...If I go back to HDX now, and use a DSP channel strip on my record track, can I ratchet the buffer to 256? Would I feel any less latency?.....

Assuming AAX/DSP on record track and AAX/DSP on master fader(s) you should have essentially zero throughput latency (~1msec depending on interface / sample rate). All this head-scratching, worrying about buffer size, etc is not an issue with a well-tuned HDX system; it just works transparently like it's supposed to.

[Samanthas Dream]

I still recommend having TDM as well as HD native.

To me. TDM kills for tracking, way better than HDX as you actually have plugins you can use.

It’s cheap these days to have both.

[Samanthas Dream]

Originally Posted by Philthy

HDX bypasses the buffer altogether. The buffer is only for plugins running from the host (native.) You could have the buffer set as high as you like and you would still have a couple milliseconds of latency on the bass input, as long as you only use DSP enabled plugins on that particular channel. Heck you could track another entire band into your session in realtime, with negligible latency on all the inputs. This is why people pay the big bucks for HDX.

I have used all three. To me, HDX is a complete bust as far as useability. The only reason to go with it is to be able to take advantage of features beyond PT10 (for they typical hometown studio). If you are dealing bazillion tracks with a lot of VI’s then HDX is your only viable option.

How many of us on HD fall into that?

[WernerF]

HDX is really the only way, besides TDM obviously, to track or punch into a big mixed session and not worry about buffer size. If you have any kind of plugin on the master bus of a Native system there is absolutely no way that you can overdub and "Mix as you Go". I know that a lot if folks don't need to be able to do this but for those of us that do a DSP system is the only way to do it.