Q: new to TDM/HD - a bit in the dark

[pk_hat]

I've been assigned to do the research in upgrading all our stuios at work, we are a music house with 3 control rooms. One of them needs everything new from scratch, while the other 2 have TDM systems but now we're considering upgrading to HD.

I've been told to look into HD1 sets, but I noticed that at this price braket, another couple of grand gets you into HD2/Accel territory. Is the difference worth it? More importantly, is HD in general worth it?

I also noticed that crossing over to HD means buying new plugin bundles, can someone recommend some of the better ones out there? Can you run Waves in HD?

Any avice or suggestions would be great. I've been an LE user for 3 years and all this HD stuff seems a bit daunting to me, I feel like I'm at square 1 again.

[Andy R]

HD with the 192 interface sounds way better than Mix to my ears, but like people say, 'the quality of what goes into the system is more important than the system itself.', especially if you are using an external mixing board.

Plug-ins would need upgrading only, this includes waves stuff. Be aware some plug-ins did not make it to the HD platform, like lexiverb, and some didn't make it to OSX, like Soft SampleCell. OSX Samplecell conversion and RTAS/HTDM Sampler alternatives are not getting the job done as of yet. If you need Samplcell stay in OS9.

If you go with HD, I would suggest HD2, or HD core with 1 Accel card, with the 192 interface(s) at the minimum. This would give you roughly 4x the dsp of a Mix Plus, hopefully other DUC members will correct me if I'm slightly off on that multiplier. Check the specs of the 192 as there are input/output options and some rewiring may be needed because the 192 uses db25 connecters.

There is plenty of info on this site to research, and plenty of knowledgeable people on the DUC who can help you if your stuck. Good luck!

[pk_hat]

Thanks Andy, that's a start.

I was under the impression that Accel was only for HD2 or HD3 only, I guess you can pair it up with an HD1 too then? Here's for another simple one: I'm assuming the whole Reason/Live w/ Rewire thing works well in HD too, right?

And as far as plugins, when you're in HD, the only plugins that work have to be "HD" as well? In other words, there's no more RTAS?

Thanks, I know I'll have it figured out in no time, but the help is nice. Cheers.

[Andy R]

pk hat - Let me clarify a bit for you. The old HD2 and 3 are now replaced by HD2 and 3 Accel. The HD core card is the same but the 'Process' cards are replaced by the 2x more powerful Accel cards.
HD systems use TDM,HTDM and RTAS plug-ins.

RTAS is still supported. As a matter of fact, Reason/Rewire comes into Pro Tools through an RTAS plug-in.

You'll be surprised to find out RTAS is somewhat limited in TDM. A record enabled RTAS plug-in mutes on playback. TDM is a decade old technology that was never designed to support very low latency plug-in performance. It's fastest hardware buffer setting is 128k, while 'native' applications are more like 32k or perhaps lower, I don't know.

Check out digidesigns product pages for more info and search the TDM DUC for specific issues. Between those two you should get up to speed in no time.-Andy

[tele_player]

TDM is a decade old technology that was never designed to support very low latency plug-in performance. It's fastest hardware buffer setting is 128k, while 'native' applications are more like 32k or perhaps lower, I don't know.

I'm pretty sure you don't mean 128k and 32k above... removing the 'k' makes a lot more sense.