Need some serious advice! Is native worth it for me?

[squizo]

I have quite a dilemma here. After a few weeks of laborious research i cant find someone with my specific setup to base this decision on so i throw it out to you guy here in the 'ol DUC.

Currently, i own a PCI HD3 system running on a Dual 2.0 PPC G5 with 6gb RAM. Its running 7.4.2 on Leopard 10.5.4 very stable. (do these cards work with PT HD 8.xx in Leopard?) with 2 now 'legacy' 192 interfaces (2i/o) No real plugins on it. Got it for a steal recently.

I also own a Mac Pro first gen. Dual 2.0 Xeon with 8 GB RAM and a UAD-2 Duo card.

It was my intention to ditch the TDM system on ebay and purchase the newly touted HD Native card, but now im somewhat concerned. Will it perform well with a 1st generation Mac Pro? How well does it work 'latency' wise with the older 192 interfaces? Should i just buy plugins and keep the OLD HD3 rig? Would a magma chassis actually work with my Mac Pro?

About me: I track and mix (err sometimes 'master') rock bands, maybe a folkie or two here and there. I cant see myself EVER needing to track more than 16 inputs at once, i usually try to keep things at around 12-14 tracks going in at once. Ive been using a Signature Black Lion Audio 002R and a Set of UAD-1 cards for about 4 years now and IM SO READY TO GO BEYOND. I just want to make the most of what i have without having to spend a fortune. I also want stability and good workflow, obviously im used to errors and going up to the HW prefs to change buffer sizes and when using the UAD-1's on a PCI-X you have to disable a processor....so ive dealt with that inconvenience for years.

Im ready for a vacation.......any info/comments/insults/sarcasm are appreciated.

Thanks

[squizo]

Actually forget it......


Im keeping my HD3 rig and building a PC. After using a friends HD native rig last night. I CAN NEVER JUSTIFY SELLING MY HD3 CARDS! especially for a sub $2000 price on the bay. It was one of the most eye opening, what a bunch of [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] moments ever! Low Latency Monitoring!!! Really! Nope...Sorry, thats LE speak

I'll stick to my HD3 guns for a while.

NEXT!

[Greg M]

From an economic perspective, clearly you should stick with your HD3 system.

What seems disconcerting to me is the varying experiences some people seem to be having with the HD|Native systems. I have an HD Native card and use an Omni with an i7 based PC. For monitoring while tracking, I either monitor directly from the Omni or through PTHD at a 32 or 64 buffer setting. With either method, there is no discernable latency. I really don't know why LLM is even needed with these systems. I never use it.

Did your friend have a 192 or 96 I/O or a newer HD I/O interface? I never thought this could/might make a difference. The current generation of computers have way more processing power than the multiple HD/TDM cards so HD Native shouldn't really feel that different.

But, as you read the various threads you can clearly see that some have much better experiences than others. So something real must be going on here. Any thoughts?

Greg

[midnightrambler]

It probably depends on what you want to use your system for. I'm primarily mixing other people's stuff, with the odd overdub / VI, and HD|Native (aside from the occasional semi-pro 909x errors) is serving me very well. On the other hand, I wouldn't like to try tracking a band on it. I'm sure it's fine, but.....

[Greg M]

To your point, there don't seem to be any complaints with HD Native while mixing. However, the tracking experience seems to be quite varied due to the latency that some users are experiencing.

The published latencies for both HD|TDM and HD|Native are so low that they should be indistiquishable to the talent while tracking (even recording dozens of tracks at a time) as long as you are using a current generation computer whether it be PC or Mac.

Clearly, Squizo, an experienced PTHD|TDM user, had a bad experience with HD Native. I guess I'm wondering what it was about the system he used that resulted in the unacceptable latency issue or performance.

One of the things I am beginning to question is if there are any performance differences that could be expected with HD Native using new generation HD I/O interfaces vs. a HD 192 or 96?

I guess my simplistic view of TDM is that for the most part signals are routed in and out of the TDM cards and on some frequency the cards dump the data to the computer hard drive via the PCI(x) buss. This is important because the PCI(x) buss and processor speeds just weren't fast enough in the past to allow near real-time operation. So, PCI(x) buss and processor speed just aren't that important when using TDM cards under this scenario. At some point, the computer processor and buss speeds became so fast that the TDM cards don't really need to do much. Which means you should expect an HD Native system on a current generation computer (very high speed busses, massive processing power) to perform very similarly to a TDM system.

So the question is, why aren't some users seeing the expected performance that should be achievable with HD Native?

Thanks,
Greg

[carlone]

It's amusing how the people that seem to have a problem with hd native don't own it. Those of us who own it know the system and typically aren't having problems with it. Go figure.

Yes you can track a live band with it.
Yes you can track through plugins so you don't have to deal with LLM.
Yes you still need to know what your doing.

I own both systems (TDM and hd native). The main difference between the 2 systems in a word is predictability. We all know exactly what to expect from a TDM system. I know how many plugins I can run and I know what the latency feels like.Hd native will work exactly like a TDM system until you cross a certain threshold. It depends on your computer speed.

If you work within that threshold then you can track, overdub, have huge mixes with lots of plugins. If you go beyond the threshold of your CPU then you'll be shuffling buffer settings. We can typically leave the buffer at 128 and track with latency on par with our hd TDM system and also punch in if need be with the occasional overdub while in mix mode.

In other words we can work as always on either system - we bought the hd native system because it made sense price wise for our 2nd room. Now it's become our go to system.

[K Roche]

Originally Posted by squizo

Actually forget it......


Im keeping my HD3 rig and building a PC. After using a friends HD native rig last night. I CAN NEVER JUSTIFY SELLING MY HD3 CARDS! especially for a sub $2000 price on the bay. It was one of the most eye opening, what a bunch of [bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep][bleep] moments ever! Low Latency Monitoring!!! Really! Nope...Sorry, that's LE speak

I'll stick to my HD3 guns for a while.

NEXT!

That is probably a wise idea, and I don't know for certain, but It appears that for tracking without noticeable latency It may be realistically only possible with the latest generations of computer. I don't notice any with my system but its pretty fast. I only track with the mac pro but mix on both

[filosofem]

Originally Posted by Greg M

Did your friend have a 192 or 96 I/O or a newer HD I/O interface? I never thought this could/might make a difference. The current generation of computers have way more processing power than the multiple HD/TDM cards so HD Native shouldn't really feel that different.

Digidesign legacy blue HD interfaces do not contribute latency. HD Native card and 96 I/O on a Nehalem Bloomfield Core-i7 Socket LGA1366 QPI DDR3- 1333 Native Windows 7 system can achieve 64 Sample Hardware Playback Buffer and 32 Sample Hardware Playback Buffer making Low Latency Monitoring non-existent. What does the next-generation Sandy Bridge Core-i7 Socket LGA2011 DMI 2.0 DDR3 systems going to do for Pro Tools HD Native?

[Rectifried]

I have a first gen 192 8x16 works great with HDN
happy to be free of PCI TDM

HD PCIe would be fine but Im not falling for that at 2800-ish for just a core