Thunderbolt/PCI with HD Native and Magma etc

[ianmiller]

It seems both Avid and Apple are conspiring to make life hard for someone wanting a high performance Apple based HD Native system - Apple by being way behind the 8 ball on updates to the Mac Pro, and Avid by not allowing the Thunderbolt unit to be acquired via a trade in for the PCI card (or even to be bought by itself).
So, my long grumpy intro aside, what I am interested in is whether anyone has successfully used a Thunderbolt chassis (like Magma or other) to house the PCI native card with an iMac or other machine? Can anyone share the good and the bad of this approach?
Thank you

[nst7]

Your best bet is to use the OWC Helios Thunderbolt Chassis.

It's only $379 and at least a couple of people either here or on Gearslutz have been using it and it works great (and much cheaper than the Magma).

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thund...ercury_Helios/

[KMcK]

Yep, I'm using the Helios with a 2012 MPB 15" with the HD Native card and it works great. Only drawback is the Helios' internal cooling fan is a bit loud.

[ianmiller]

Thanks for the enlightenment - was hoping there was a cheaper/better solution and this looks like it! Much appreciated......

[SmokinBaldMonkey]

I have the Retina MBP, Expressbox 3T and the native card, which I bought because I did not find out until installing that the TDM cards simply DON'T WORK. which is horse[bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep].

The native card underperforms. You might get 2 minutes of play before a 9171 error. I get them constantly, to the point this ridiculously expensive box of fail has become a paperweight.

[tekis]

Originally Posted by KMcK

Yep, I'm using the Helios with a 2012 MPB 15" with the HD Native card and it works great. Only drawback is the Helios' internal cooling fan is a bit loud.

Hello: Tried to pm you. I'm was trying to set this up today. I have a Mac Mini Lion server (2011). I couldn't get the pci card to be recognized. I'm in the middle of downloading anf re-installing PT HD 9.05. Did you have any trouble initially? Thanks.

[nst7]

To use Thunderbolt peripherals, you need to be on PT10.2 or higher. They won't work with PT9.

[tekis]

Thanks!!

[tekis]

Originally Posted by nst7

Your best bet is to use the OWC Helios Thunderbolt Chassis.

It's only $379 and at least a couple of people either here or on Gearslutz have been using it and it works great (and much cheaper than the Magma).

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Thund...ercury_Helios/

Yes, this thing is great! They're always in stock at OWC. The fan is loud, but it's going into a "quiet-rack" with all my other fan-cooled stuff so, I don't care. Still digging my Mac Mini too!

[J-Freak]

Hi everybody,
One year ago I switched from a G5 PT HD2 TDM-Rig to a 17" MBP i7 with magma express box (pro) (per express card 34) for my new PT HD-Native card/new HD-Omni-interface . At that time I used Firewire800 for my external HDX-Audio-Drive.
With this setup everything seems to work pretty good. Sometimes in PT I had some strange delay-distortion during playback, but it was only about once a week. Someday in this first year I noticed that my Omni-interface had some issues with the internal preamps and nobs, so it went back to avid for repair.

Then I bought the magma 3t and loved the idea the be "FireWire-free" and also bought the caldigit FASTA-2e eSata-card witch avid recommends.
So the magma 3t now hosts the PT-Native and the eSata-card.

But it seems way more buggy than my previous setup with the magma expressbox pro and FireWire.

When recording or mixing in PT, I now have every day !!! Strange distortion coming from time to time. But it is only on the output-side. Then I have to close or quit PT and start again an the problem is gone.

For some clients I record in Logic 9 (same setup with my HD-Omni). There I don't have this strange delay-distortion problem but every 7 to 10 minutes I have little clicks. some kind of audio-glitches witch frustrates a lot!!

I never had this on my Expressbox-Setup.
I have not found the problem jet.
From the old setup to the thunderbolt 3t I changed:
- PT from 9 to 10.3.
- changed FireWire to eSata
- Lion to Mountain Lion

For one logic-session I tested using FireWire instead of eSata but the clicks remain ;( so the eSata-Card is not the problem I think.
The problem could also be my HD-Omni or the HD-native-card or a combination with the eSata-card.

My Expressbox pro is still around, so the next days I will test to go to the "old" setup and see how it works.

But for now I can't recommend the magma-thunderbolt box

Perhaps anyone out there can help me or has same experiences.
Thank you!
Greetings from Hamburg!
Flo