We need a Thunderbolt HDX system

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by audioluche

I dont want to hijack this thread, but i'm curious to know if UAD cards work well with Pro Tools HD for you.
I have an HD3 accel in a magama chasis and i've been thinking for a long time to put one UAD card or two in it.

I remember enjoying their 1176, LA2A and Pultec a lot when they were available in TDM format.

What are the one you like the most?
Just curious as i did not try any of their new plugins (newer than 5 or 6 years)

Thanks!

Luc

They work GREAT for mixing. About 60% of my work is mix only. It gets complicated trying to incorporate them into tracking and overdubs situations. Haven't even messed with it to honest, probably won't. Breaking them out at mix stage has worked very well for me. BTW, I have a chassis as well with 4 HD cards in it although I am using RTAS and the UAD card mostly as it's more stable.

I only have the stock stuff plus the Neve 1081 and Ampex ATR102. I've demoed several others and will be adding some for sure. UA's 1176 from 2001 STOMPS all over the CLA76, it's not even funny. Haven't even tried the new 1176 they just released.

[audioluche]

Originally Posted by dmazurek

They work GREAT for mixing. About 60% of my work is mix only. It gets complicated trying to incorporate them into tracking and overdubs situations. Haven't even messed with it to honest, probably won't. Breaking them out at mix stage has worked very well for me. BTW, I have a chassis as well with 4 HD cards in it although I am using RTAS and the UAD card mostly as it's more stable.

I only have the stock stuff plus the Neve 1081 and Ampex ATR102. I've demoed several others and will be adding some for sure. UA's 1176 from 2001 STOMPS all over the CLA76, it's not even funny. Haven't even tried the new 1176 they just released.

Thanks Drew. Yeah, i think it fits with my workflow as i dont use a lot of plugins when i record, i use my hardware. When i use plugins in the recording process, it's filters or a little bit of Eq, but not much.

When i mix, i always end up with my 3 cards full and i use a lot of native power. So it could be a good thing for me. I will certainly try it in a near future.
I know they make great compressors and that's what i'm after, i use mainly Waves Q Clone with my hardware for Eq in my mixes, i pretty much have all i need on this side.

Thanks for sharing!

Cheers,

Luc

[Electrox]

I'm not trying to spread rumors here, but what happens to Avid if Universal Audio has their Thunderbolt DSP box for all of their plug ins, and Waves comes out with a Thunderbolt DSP box with all of their plug ins? One Thunderbolt cable and the user gets the power of some of the best plug ins in the industry using portable DSP boxes that are not tied to Avid's system or software. At this point in time the smaller companies can still write for AAX if Avid's DSP systems makes sense. From where I am working these days, anything that fits in a tower computer is based on a older paradigm that I no longer want to invest in. My TDM system sits quietly in the corner as I use two laptops every day for audio production across 5 screens. I can easily take those laptops with me and continue to work anywhere...

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Electrox

I'm not trying to spread rumors here, but what happens to Avid if Universal Audio has their Thunderbolt DSP box for all of their plug ins, and Waves comes out with a Thunderbolt DSP box with all of their plug ins? One Thunderbolt cable and the user gets the power of some of the best plug ins in the industry using portable DSP boxes that are not tied to Avid's system or software. At this point in time the smaller companies can still write for AAX if Avid's DSP systems makes sense. From where I am working these days, anything that fits in a tower computer is based on a older paradigm that I no longer want to invest in. My TDM system sits quietly in the corner as I use two laptops every day for audio production across 5 screens. I can easily take those laptops with me and continue to work anywhere...

Nothing will happen to avid, because neither solutions are good for low latency tracking with plugs on, like hdx is or HD was.

[Bob Olhsson]

This is a time of big changes because everything is in transition. For that reason its not a particularly good time to invest until we know more about where Apple is going and where Avid is going with the capabilities of their 64 bit native and HDX versions.

The only thing I know for sure is that both Waves and Avid are mighty savvy about technology and not likely to be left behind by each other or by anybody else such as UA.

[Electrox]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Nothing will happen to avid, because neither solutions are good for low latency tracking with plugs on, like hdx is or HD was.

What makes HD lower latency if Thunderbolt is as fast as the PCI bus that it attempts to replace?

[Craig F]

DH/HDX's low latency comes from the integrated design between the interface and the DSP cards and the speed of the data transfer in the time divisional multiplex environment

[RCN]

Originally Posted by Electrox

I'm not trying to spread rumors here, but what happens to Avid if Universal Audio has their Thunderbolt DSP box for all of their plug ins, and Waves comes out with a Thunderbolt DSP box with all of their plug ins? One Thunderbolt cable and the user gets the power of some of the best plug ins in the industry using portable DSP boxes that are not tied to Avid's system or software. At this point in time the smaller companies can still write for AAX if Avid's DSP systems makes sense. From where I am working these days, anything that fits in a tower computer is based on a older paradigm that I no longer want to invest in. My TDM system sits quietly in the corner as I use two laptops every day for audio production across 5 screens. I can easily take those laptops with me and continue to work anywhere...

If it does happen, it won't be cheap!!!

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Electrox

What makes HD lower latency if Thunderbolt is as fast as the PCI bus that it attempts to replace?

First of, thunderbolt is not trying to replace PCI, it's a new interface that will enable smaller device (ie laptops, tablets) to daisy chain external devices. And secondly, it's much slower than pcie 3 which is already out now.

Thunderbolt 10 gigabit each way, so 20 gigabit total. Please note that it's gigabit. And it uses 4 lanes of a pcie buss to achieve that speed.

Pcie 3, is 1 GIGABYTE each way, so 2 GIGABYTE total per lane. So PCIE 3 is 8 times faster than Thunderbolt. And it only uses 1 lane to achieve that speed at 8x faster than thunderbolt

YADA YADA about thunderbolt integrating display on it. Display cards are on PCI slots anyways.

Lastly, Even if an HDX card only uses 1 or 2 lanes of a PCIe buss, that means it still uses more speed than what the thunderbolt provides. Remember thunberbolt is in Gigabit per second, while the pcie slot is in GigaBytes per second. And 1 gigabyte is 8 times larger than 1 gigabit.

That means, that you are more likely to reach a bottleneck threshold with Thunderbolt when you daisy chain multiple display monitors with external HDD's and an audio interfaces to capture and playback what you are recording.

So on smaller device and on portability it has it's advantages, but on full systems with multiple HDD's, displays, and other peripherals that needs to be connected, it is not as good as PCIe 2 and even less than what PCIe 3 is.

Lets think a second of the path the data you are using would take.

As you would record you would have your audio interface sending the audio data on the thunderbolt to the laptop that would pass through the cpu to be sent back through the thunderbolt cable to be stored on the external HDD doubling the amount of the same data passing on the cable.

While at the same time, that same HDD that you are recording on would already send audio data back to the cpu through the thunderbolt cable, for the takes that has already been done, which would then be sent back again on the thunderbolt cable to the audio interface so you could hear the other instruments you had recorded creating again double data going through the cable. At the same time the the Audio samples of your vi, which are by then loaded in the ram, would be sent though the thunderbolt cable at the same time as the other pre-recorded data to the audio interface.

But all of that are first sent to your Chassis holding your processing cards, whether they are UA appolo's or HD native card, or HDX cards, then to the cpu for the RTAS plugins you have on in the session and then back to the Cards again so they can finally be read by audio interface so you can hear what's going on.

So recap
Your mic signal goes through your audio interface on to the thunderbolt cable to the cpu then back on the thunderbolt cableto the HDD. Then back through the thunderbolt cable to the cpu that sends it again on the thunderbolt cable to the dsp cards you have so it can be processed with the dsp plugins you have on that track, back on the thunderbolt cable again to the cpu to process the RTAS effecs you have on that track, and then finally back on the thunderbolt cable to your DSP cards so it can be routed to your audio interface. That same data passes 6 times on the thunderbolt cable before you actually hear it as it's recording. Now multiply that by the amount of mics you are recording at the same time. And at the same time you have all the VI's audio data, and what you had already recorded that is being sent on that one thunderbolt cable at the same time.

And it gets worst, imagine that you fall on someone that doesn't know the proper way of mixing plugins format. We all know that on a tdm system if you wanted to prevent too many voices loss, you had to place the rtas plugins first, which automatically makes my recap valid when you are recording through plugins and you mix plugins format. But imagine for a moment that someone doesn't know or doesn't care of the proper order, and place a rtas plug first, then a tdm plugin and then again an rtas plugins or two and then an other tdm to finally finish with an other rtas? The nightmare!!!! How many time that one tidbit of information will be sent back and forth from the cpu to the dsp card and back again on that thunderbolt cable, which only has two channel?

All the while the Video information that the display chip is rendering of your daw, the wave form, the plugins etc is also being sent at the same time through the thunderbolt cable. God forbids you are also sending a movie at the same time because you're recording music for it. Because that movie has to be read from the disc it is stored on, sent through the thunderbolt cable to be processed by the Gpu/ display chip and sent back on the thunderbolt cable to be displayed on your monitor, while the other two monitors you have hooked up are showing the daw screens. Not counting that you would by then have probably also gotten a controller that (if they come out soon) would use the thunderbolt cable to send it's information over.

So all in all, all those simple tidbits starts to add up, and if you are doing a recording big enough.. oh I don't know let's say an orchestra, a big band.. a jaz band, a ska band that all wants to play at the same time... it's a lot of data that is going on. And eventually you will hit a wall of what the thunderbolt is able to do, because it's all going through the same cable port through daisy chaining.

While on the other hand, you got your tower that holds all the HDD's you need. The display card or two you need for your multiple screens setup. And your PCIe cards for your HDX system, or uad system, or HDN system. And each are handling the data they need through their own cables from the busses on the mobo.. which are by far faster than what the thunderbolt buss offers.

Anyways, long take on just saying. Yeah it's good, it will enable portability for small gigs for sure. But It will not replace the usefulness of the PCI ports. And when you think that all of that is going to go through one cable, I don't even want to start to think of the possible latency that type of setup will introduce.

I have, for the sake of portability, a flight case on wheels that holds all my preamps, computer etc etc in one box, that I can roll around. It's actually not that heavy at all, and I don't even have to worry about wiring, since it's all already wired. All I need to do is connect the snake, the display monitors and the power cable of the power conditioner, and voila done. The same can be done of course for what ever you would have through thunderbolt. But with mine I will never have to worry about bottle-necking the data through one cable port.

[mike connelly]

Originally Posted by Emcha_audio

Thunderbolt 10 gigabit each way, so 20 gigabit total. Please note that it's gigabit. And it uses 4 lanes of a pcie buss to achieve that speed.

Pcie 3, is 1 GIGABYTE each way, so 2 GIGABYTE total per lane. So PCIE 3 is 8 times faster than Thunderbolt. And it only uses 1 lane to achieve that speed at 8x faster than thunderbolt

1 GB is eight times faster than 10 Gb?