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Advice Needed: Who\'s purchased HD recently?
I'm running a 24 i/o Mix Plus rig in my studio right now. I actually rent the rig monthly for a decent price, but I'm thinking it's probably smarter for me to buy at this point. With that in mind.. I think it's time for the HD upgrade.
My situation is this: We record most of our basics to a 16 track 2" analog machine, and then dump into Pro Tools for dubs, vox, editing, etc. So, I could probably get away with 16 i/o. As for processing, I really don't run that many plug-ins, but will make use of Auto-tune... some compression and EQ, maybe verb. So, I'd say I'll use an average amount of processing power. Also.. I do realize that the old plug ins don't run on HD, so I'm factoring that into my expenses. I'll have to dig through the old threads for advice on that, I guess. Basically, what I'm wondering is... who's recently purchased a system similar to what I'm looking at? Did you get HD1, 2 or 3? Did you buy new or used? Where do you recommend buying from? Most importantly, what is a realistic figure that I would expect to have to drop to get into the rig that I need? Any other info or opinions would be greatly appreciated. I've just been renting this rig for so long, I haven't had to think about any of this. But, I figure it might be time for me to invest. (our business seems to be justifying it right now) Thanks in advance! Popps |
#2
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Re: Advice Needed: Who\'s purchased HD recently?
If you can get by with 16 inputs, then get the 192 interface with an A/D card. That will net you 16 analog inputs and 8 analog outputs and save you about 3 grand from the cost of two 192's.
Of course, this will do you no good if you have to dump all 16 tracks back out to tape at once - in that case you will have to have two 192's (unless you want to drop down to the 96 I/O's) - of course with two 192's you could add an extra a/d card in one and an extra d/a card in the other and be right back to the 24i/o that you are currently using (if you wanted) Being that you are coming in from tape, I will assume that you are going to want to use the highest sample rate you can and still have the plugins you will need. If you record at 88/96k sample rate then your plugins will take up double the processing power - as will the mixer. If that is the case then don't even bother with the HD1 as you can/will use up half of the card just to handle the mixer functions if you decide to start recording at 192! At least get the HD2 - that will get you quite a bit of processing power (about 1800 Mips) and allow you to take advantage of the [email protected]/[email protected] tracks that HD is capable of. As far as plugins, you may be better off from a financial standpoint to go with the HD3 so you can get the better plugin bundle. It looks like it is about to become an exciting time for plugins with all of the buzz about the OSX version of PT6 coming out. Of course you will also need to factor in a computer. With OSX right around the corner I would buy the dual 1GHZ if I had to buy tomorrow. Of course Apple will probably have some new hardware out sometime between now and summer- but if you start waiting for the next best computer you will never be able to buy one. At this point in time I would stay away from SCSI. By the time you buy the new SCSI card and two or three drives you could pick up an extra HD process card on ebay to go in that left over PCI slot - just my $.02 - Get you an extra internal harddisk or two to record sessions to and get a firewire drive or two for portability if needed. Buy the SCSI only if your internal drives can't keep up once you progress to recording all 24 tracks at 192KHz - you will still need those cheap IDE drives to backup those HUGE sessions to afterwards [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] As far as cost, I really can't say for certain because I got my HD3 and 2-192 during the trade in period by trading in my Mix3-888/24- but I would guess that you could pick up an HD3 core for just under 10K new. The HD3 is really the way to go if you can swing it. As far as new vs. used I really haven't seen many super deals out there on HD systems other than I have seen a few process cards go for what I thought was pretty cheap (but not cheap enough for me to grab them just yet [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img] Poke around on the Buy/Sell forum here on the DUC if you are thinking of going used. Most everyone here seems to be pretty straightforward and I don't even think Digi charges to transfer ownership anymore. I do think you loose rights to the plugin bundles for future upgrades when you transfer - but don't quote me on that. |
#3
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Re: Advice Needed: Who\'s purchased HD recently?
are you doing 96k or 48k, what are your sample rate plans a year from now, two years from now, etc?
I bought HD3 feeling that I only needed the horsepower of HD2. I got the HD3 because of the extra free plugins were definately of a great value to me, so it really brought the third process card down in price by not having to buy virus(in your case, Amp Farm) or Reverb One. I'm doing a descent amount of 96k now and although it's not maxed out often at all, I definately get into the third card quite frequently with only moderate processing (EQ/Dynamics/Reverb/Delays/Harmonizer). And it is very comfortable. Price... talk to your dealer, I made a lot of other purchases with it, so I don't know if they actually were able to reduce the digi stuff significantly or other manufacturers....but I think they have some room if they sell a descent amount of systems.
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Doug |
#4
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Re: Advice Needed: Who\'s purchased HD recently?
Great responses.. thanks!
As far as 96K, I just assumed I'd work in that way all the time... but it sounds like it's pretty taxing on the processing power? Forgive my ignorance. I work at 48K on my Mix Plus as a rule. What kind of sonic differences are you guys noticing between the two? Another thread probably, I know.. but in a nutshell? So, I have a G4 400. Too wimpy to run an HD3 system? |
#5
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Re: Advice Needed: Who\'s purchased HD recently?
in a nutshell : the new interfaces (or at least the 192) sound fantastic (better than lets say a stand-alone apogee rosetta).
The sonic diff is in the freqencies (even at 44.1 compared to 44.1 on an 888) and so much more in the stereofield. Stereo on a 192 is really amazing. All of a sudden I started to hear minor phase problems in old mixes which I really couldn't account for on the 888. The G4/400 should be fine for now (all the TDM processing is on the cards) be sure to have drives which are fast enough and a big chunk of memory (lets say 512 Mb which should do it). Goodluck |
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