HDX-II What are the chances?

[TrentWilliams]

Hey all,

I’m teetering on the edge of buying a second hand HDX card for a good price. I’m a long time PTHD stand-alone user but have never really been in the position to buy-in. I work in post, predominantly TVCs and shorts. I’ve always wanted an HDX system for various reasons, mostly side-chain delay comp and mixer offloading.

I’m in two minds, I feel like it’s getting a little long in the tooth and HDXII is around the corner.

I’m just wanting to do a quick survey to talk myself into buying in.

What would you do?

[Darryl Ramm]

You know folks here who would have any idea could not say... and everybody else speaking up including me is clueless. My 2c guess is Avid is going to have it's hands a little full dealing with the Mac ARM transition for some while and it's not likely have anything new coming in a while. It's also my impression that most (or all) of the folks who worked on HD Native and HDX are no longer with the company. I'm not even sure it makes sense to do a PCIe card HDX II for a while or maybe at all. Maybe the current card can just chug on.

Eventually Avid needs to get off Digilink, I could for example image a future there where things transition to USB4/Thunderbolt 3 interfaces or USB4/Thunderbolt3 outboard processors. Maybe leveraging Dante for IO connectivity (moving to MTRX at least gives those boxes a scalable non Digilink connection).

OK sorry to make your head hurt. If you can get a HDX card cheap and want it I would grab it. Make sure a HDX1 will be big enough for your needs.

[Darryl Ramm]

Pro Tools 2020.3|Ultimate, UAD Apollo 8, UAD Octo+Quad Satellite, UAD Apollo Twin Quad Core, Focusrite 8PreX • iMac 27" Late 2013 - 3.5GHz i7 - macOS 10.14.4 • RAM 32GB DDR3, GPU NVidia GTX 780M 4GB

Is this system, spec up to date? What card cage are you planning on running the HDX card in? That's not a Thunderbolt 3 iMac. Maybe you can run it fine in a Thunderbolt cage, but I'd prefer to use the latest supported Thunderbolt 3 card cages.

What Digilink interfaces are you going to use instead of the UAD Apollo?

And it's not like you are tracking stuff.. but be aware that your UAD plugins all exit Pro Tools via an IO buffer... so you still get that overhead on/from a HDX system. And you get that eating your DSP voices... but complex since it depends on the plugin insertion order and you get so many exits to native "for free". Lots of past posts on DUC about his. But if you are planning to zip between AAX-DSP and UAD plugins inserts on a track be aware you might well clobber your HDX1 card. If in doubt go test some of your big sessions with this card.

And remember you will also need a Digilink license key... if you don't already have one. Widely discussed on DUC.

[henningaround]

I think you will get into lots of trouble with just one HDX card. I do mix TV features and Shorts and I find it difficult even with the HDX2 I have to use not to overload the mixer. The bottle neck here are the sends. This year I had the first session I was not able run in the same way as on the HD native edit suites. If you plan your session from the start you can manage to get it to run but if you are relying on edits from several editors all using their one sends and of cause on native systems as many as they want there will be too many for the HDX 1 or even 2 at the later mix stage. Even in a Stereo Setup.

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Eventually Avid needs to get off Digilink, I could for example image a future there where things transition to USB4/Thunderbolt 3 interfaces or USB4/Thunderbolt3 outboard processors. Maybe leveraging Dante for IO connectivity (moving to MTRX at least gives those boxes a scalable non Digilink connection).

My hunch is that it will be stackable DSP (a la UA), connected via AVB, but still using the TI DSPs. Perhaps a firmware update for the MTRX Studio to let it support AVB instead of Dante. Of course, I have no actual idea, otherwise I wouldn't be saying anything!

Having said this, I just upgraded to HDX2 so, it depends on what you near-term needs are I guess. If it will pay for itself it's a no-brainer. I mean, I just bought a Mac Pro which technically is now an obsolete piece of hardware

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by LukeHoward

My hunch is that it will be stackable DSP (a la UA), connected via AVB, but still using the TI DSPs. Perhaps a firmware update for the MTRX Studio to let it support AVB instead of Dante. Of course, I have no actual idea, otherwise I wouldn't be saying anything!

Having said this, I just upgraded to HDX2 so, it depends on what you near-term needs are I guess. If it will pay for itself it's a no-brainer. I mean, I just bought a Mac Pro which technically is now an obsolete piece of hardware

I used to be AVB biased... and since we are both Australian we should be excited for a Dante future

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I used to be AVB biased... and since we are both Australian we should be excited for a Dante future

Hah, true. But I think Avid is too invested in AVB. And Dante is a tax they only need to pay when interfacing with the outside world.

Not to detail the OP but I have been hacking away on an AES67 to AVB bridge. Still pretty rough though. Link here – https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blo...EADME.AES67.md

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by LukeHoward

Not to detail the OP but I have been hacking away on an AES67 to AVB bridge. Still pretty rough though. Link here – https://github.com/PADL/OpenAvnu/blo...EADME.AES67.md

Oh thanks, I'm curious to follow that work.

[LukeHoward]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

Oh thanks, I'm curious to follow that work.

Unfortunately my day job as a musician limits the time I can invest into it 😂

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by LukeHoward

Unfortunately my day job as a musician limits the time I can invest into it 😂

Burn the midnight oil then