Question about PT 10 HD, Digi PCIe cards and Track Count

[williamconifer]

Greetings,

I'm still new with PT. I am the engineer for a small project studio. The owner relies on me for tech issues. The studio has a PT HD 10 system running on a Mac Pro (beefy) and 3 PCIe cards (Accel Core and 2 HD Accel cards). I did not build or purchase the rig. We have 2 Blue Digi HD 192 IO units. We record exclusively at 24/192. The PT rig is used for normal music tracking and mixing. No virtual instruments. Not a lot of plugin usage at the moment.

The digi cable connects the Accel Core card to a HD IO then there is an expansion cable connected from IO unit 1 to IO unit 2.

The track count for recording projects we are working is growing and yesterday I ran into a situation where PT warned me that we were at our max track count of 32.

The owner was sure that his PT rig would handle 64 tracks.

I need to know what the card set up we have can handle with PT 10 at 24/192. I need to know if there is a hardware failure, just some bad settings or just an underspec'd system.

Thanks!

[Barry Johns]

Why are you recording at 192? Its a waist of resources and brings marginal value to the end product.

If you are doing audio, you should be recording at 44.1 if doing post/video then 48. Do not waste time in either 96 or 192 in my opinion.

Like Momma always said "Just because you can, does not mean you SHOULD". Translated, just because you can record at 192 does not mean you should be recording at 192.

See the chart below:



Audio Recording and Playback Capabilities

Pro Tools|HD 1 (for PCIe and PCI)
Pro Tools|HD 1 systems provide recording and playback of 24-bit or 16-bit audio files with the following track counts:

• Up to 96 tracks at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz
• Up to 48 tracks at 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz
• Up to 12 tracks at 176.4 kHz or 192 kHz

Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel and HD 3 Accel (for PCIe and PCI)

Pro Tools|HD 2 Accel and HD 3 Accel systems provide recording and playback of 24-bit or 16-bit audio files with the following track counts:

• Up to 192 tracks at 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz
• Up to 96 tracks at 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz
• Up to 36 tracks at 176.4 kHz or 192 kHz

[albee1952]

While I wouldn't recommend 44.1, I certainly agree that 192 is overkill(especially if you are recording pop/rock/country/hiphop). I work at 48K and have never lost a customer over sound quality

[williamconifer]

Thanks for the info. High resolution 192 is a requirement at this studio being there is an association with the Pono ecosystem. Frankly I was was very skeptical of working in 192 but after a year working part-time in a 192 centric studio, I am a believer. Although my personal recordings are at 96.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[JFreak]

Go to 96k or buy more interfaces

[WernerF]

The 192 versus 44.1 debate is quite old. Personally I agree with the software/hardware engineers that say that the converter is the most important aspect involved in sound quality. I record and mix full on records at 44.1 all year long. The loss of plugin count and track count at any higher resolution is absolutely unacceptable, even if the alleged higher sound quality were true. IMHO, higher resolution abilities are mostly a marketing scheme.

[albee1952]

Originally Posted by WernerF

The 192 versus 44.1 debate is quite old. Personally I agree with the software/hardware engineers that say that the converter is the most important aspect involved in sound quality. I record and mix full on records at 44.1 all year long. The loss of plugin count and track count at any higher resolution is absolutely unacceptable, even if the alleged higher sound quality were true. IMHO, higher resolution abilities are mostly a marketing scheme.

Where I hit this was when a client brought me 96K session that were tracked at another studio. Running them on my rig at the time was just dragging it to its knees, so I ended up converting down to 48K so I could work without constant errors or system "burps"(playback would stop). As it turned out, the original recordings were done so poorly that it made absolutely no difference and I was able to deliver mixes that made the client happy(the most important detail). At the end of the day, I'd rather hear a decent recording of a great performance of a great song, than a perfect recording of a crappy performance and/or song

My 2 cents only; I work at 24 bit/48K for almost everything. My reasons are simply that 48K pushes the Nyquist filter a tad higher so the corresponding phase shift happens above the range of hearing(for anyone older than 20) and most audio for video needs to be 48K

[WernerF]

Yah, 48k for video and 44.1k for audio, as that is what CD's are (even though hardly anyone uses cd's anymore). The difference between the two is not noticeable, IMHO, in any way.