HDX Consensus

[shawnhonsberger]

Thanks, all! I appreciate the responses.

[musiczebra79]

I use a avid carbon ,and I just got a mtrx ii with the tb3 card ,I definitely hear a difference when I track my drums, miss having those dsp chips

[sleiweke]

I love my HDX rig. I can't imagine trying to make music without it.

[TOM@METRO]

HDX is fantastic here. Zero complaints.

[musiczebra79]

What are most people using to house there HDX card?

[BScout]

Originally Posted by musiczebra79

What are most people using to house there HDX card?

Sonnet (Echo III/DuoModo) thunderbolt chassis. It's really the only one (there are some rare others but even the Avid one is a Sonnet chassis rebranded)
Other than Windows on the Mac Pro that can hold them internally.

[ZerglingPhilosophy]

I jumped on HDX 1yr6m ago. I had a lot of hesitation. A few well-meaning folks attempted to rationally steer me in a different direction, and they had good points. I remember telling a salesperson that HDX "is dead" (oops) and his look of frown and confusion took over. HDX is not dead, he said. I took the dive. I couldn't be happier. First it made the performance of all my sessions (DSP or even pure native) rock solid. It was this "rumor" that having an HDX card installed in your system provides "significant phantom benefits" that was the final winning point for my decision to go to HDX. It's true, installing the HDX card substantially dropped my overall CPU usage down when idling, input monitoring, recording and playing back. It was pretty sweet.

Then I discovered the awesomeness of the green DPS button. Look, I don't have to worry anymore, I just press a green button and I have rock solid ultra low latency channels for live tracking and playback. Even 5ms latency drives me nuts, it impacts the "feel" of my playing, but with a DSP enabled track, it's virtually instantaneous, plays and sounds great. I did lose some of my favorite plugins, but only when tracking, and Plugin Alliance has a subscription plan with a ton of DSP plug-ins. I am sad AAX-DSP did not continue to take off, because holy moly are they useful. That being said, Pro Compressor and I believe all the Pro plug-ins are DSP compatible and they are fantastic plugins. If I need particular sounds beyond that extremely useful plugin collection, I do them in the analog domain anyways, for example mic'ing amps or cabinets.

Finally it seems like the future of HDX is pretty clear. A lot of folks here and elsewhere say the future of HDX is uncertain, but I just don't see how. Carbon, if I understand it correctly, has an HDX card "built-in", MTRX Studio recommended way to connect to a system is via HDX, and the flagship MTRX II series is built around and requires HDX. I think of it as the core DigiLink and peripheral engine, more then anything else. AVID seems to be getting better as a company (customer support, stellar hardware), sure they're still price gouging, but if you want the best editor and hardware pairing, it's still AVID hardware and Pro Tools. Since HDX is their core engine (still), it's incredibly relevant.

Yes, many people will never need HDX, they are happy in their workflows, but I can say I am so glad I made the jump. I am not an expert either, and I'm sure people can and might dispute all my points. I'll close by saying I am so happy I never have to open a third party interface cue monitor and click buttons or set timings to "align" with Pro Tools and be reliant on less reliable third party integrations. People will suggest a lot of alternative ideas that are phenomenal in theory, but not something I can live with when I am tracking every single day.

[basehead617]

FWIW, I use a MTRX II and don’t have HDX.. its all good with thunderbolt 3.

[ZerglingPhilosophy]

Ok so you just don't have any Avid interfaces / DigiLink stuff then? MTRX II is a converter interface that can be added to support HDX if needed but it's not a requirement to run it "natively" over thunderbolt? Learning here... Thxx