Upgrading HD Native System - PCIe Chassis or Native Thunderbolt?

[CygnusX-1Bk2]

Originally Posted by R4000

I'm also running a Mac Studio Ultra; I've not had much luck with the PCIe native card running in a Sonnet Chassis (echo express IIIe); throws up many errors on playback, and this wasn't fixed by rolling back to the 2023.3 HD driver. I bit the bullet and bought a used thunderbolt native box and that's worked flawlessly.

In terms of interface I highly recommend the focusrite Red 16 line as it can work either natively over thunderbolt with core audio, or in PT mode into the HD Native card. It has extensive monitoring options, and surround monitoring easily set up via rednet control. It also sounds great. Their other Red range interfaces have mic amps options if that's something that would be useful to you. Dante is an added bonus.

There was a specific fix in 2023.6 that resolved the HDN/TB Chassis issue. I went through rounds of playback errors with Avid Support until we realized it was a known issue with HDN in a chassis. 2023.6 Came out while I was going back and forth with support and as soon as I installed the problem stopped.

[MikeC]

Thanks everyone for your help. It does seem to be a bit of a minefield regarding compatibility. I did send my business partner a link to a Native Thunderbolt interface on Ebay a little while back but it has long since been sold.

Tricky.

Would be great to know if there's something that will definitely work with an M2 machine but I haven't seen anything yet confirming it will work.

My friendly retailer suggested the Sonnet Echo I. But that's a lot more expensive than the Helios 3 TB chassis from OWC. Will either of them work? Tricky to know!

:)

[CygnusX-1Bk2]

Originally Posted by MikeC

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your thoughts. Interesting to hear that the Helios 3 TB chassis might work. Funny how there's not a mention on that chassis here https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar...-Compatibility

And agree that the HD Native/Omni is a bit long in the tooth but I think we'd like to find a way of working around what we have rather than replace. I have a UAudio Apollo in my studio and that's great.

Thanks for your help,

Mike

For the record the OWC Helios chassis is compatible with HDN but not HDX with nothing specific as to why. It is not in the Avid compatibility chart but the OWC site also has their own compatibility chart of devices they've tested and I got mine based on that so I took a chance because I have previously purchased a few things from OWC without issue.


I had an Omni for a while that I could never get to play nice with the HD IO 16x16 and 192 I already had. I needed a dedicated 7.1 output for a job and thought the Omni might work but went rounds with support trying to get it to work the way it claimed. I ended up getting another used 192 (real cheap) which was my ultimate solution for that gig. I may end up adding another HD 16x16 to replace at least one of the 192s since I've seen those for less than a grand on Reverb.

[noah330]

I had a Native PCIe up until a few weeks ago. I used it with a Sonnet Echo and a dongle to change it to USBC with a Mac Studio.

After the driver fiasco, it worked great. I decided to dump it and my Omni and buy an open box of Carbon at Alto.

I like HDN but figured I would get rid of everything before it was worthless. GC refused to take the HDN and Omni on a trade. I ended up selling them online.