Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Hi, Folks!

I was couting years and days to consider an upgrade.
My system is rock solid but is pretty old: MAC Pro 2008 + MAC OS 10.6.8 + PT HD 10.3.10/ HD2 Accel System.

a) With HD Native, Can I run Pro tools Ultimate 2022 on a MAC Mini with 16GB RAM?
Unfortunately at the moment I can not pick the new MAC STudio with a reasonable price down here, but a MAC Mini.

b) Is it possible to run the system described above using 2 Blue Interfaces? I have one 192 IO Digital and would need to purchase an additional interface and send to trash my old reliable Adat Bridge24 (!!).


80% of the time I´m mastering and the other 20% of time, I am co-producing huge Choirs, with sessions up to 180 tracks.

c) So Will the MAc Mini be able to handle these tasks with no hassles and just 16GB?

Thanks!!!

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Hi Alécio.
My answer is nonspecific, unscientific, but;
YES!
I think you can convert from the old 3.1 to a M1 Mini. They are fantasticly powerful and will run circles around the Mac Pro. I had a 2008MP for over ten years, it still works, but not with HD.
The experts will advice you on putting the PCIe cards onto a thunderbolt chassis and such, but the M1 is powerful, silent, and never gets hot. There might be some plugins that won't work.
Just take it one step at a time. There will be lots of new things to get used to, and some things aren't even worked out yet; Mac OS compatibility and more. Good thing about the regular M1 Mini is that it can run Big Sur which works well with current PT.

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Thanks for your quick and first reply on this!

In fact HD Accel Hardware is pretty Legacy, so no Chassis route to them.

I was always very skeptical about HD Native, comparing to the breeze I ´ve had for years under HD TDM. But now this is very old fashioned.

I am curious what other users and moderators shall bring to table here.
It would be great to run 2 Blue Interfaces. Not a big investment to add.

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Personal experience:
The old HD cards will not work on any modern setup, but the 192's should work fine(using 1 right now with HDN card and PT Ultimate 2021.12).

I never owned a TDM system, but did plenty of work on a friend's HD3 setup(Mac Pro 5,1)and found it ran out of resources faster than my native system with the old DIGI003 and quad-core custom PC:eek:

I ran a commercial studio in Nashville for many years, tracking full bands with an HDN card(in an HP Z820 12-core PC), a pair of HD IO's and a pair of 192 IO's(32 outboard preamps). My tracking template was around 54 tracks with plenty of plugins(all ran with near-zero latency). I gave the players 6 stereo HP mixes with sends in the session and used a buffer setting of 64 with no issues at all. No matter how I lusted for HDX, I just never felt the investment was warranted:o

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

I still don´t know if HD Native could run for example, with 2 192 Blue Digital Interfaces or 1 192 IO Digital (which I already own) and buy a cheaper additional Blue Interface.

I am aware that extremely Legacy AdatBridge24 would not do it.

Any Thoughts?
THanks

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

HD Native supports 64 channels of inputs and outputs. The blue digidesign interfaces work fine, with the exception of the Midi I/O.

Pro Tools is a different world in 2022 than what it was under old TDM systems. The software is incredibly optimised. With that said, you will struggle to find a system that has as consistently low a latency for tracking than TDM.

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Do you mean we would have to disable some plugs to lower the latency while tracking with huge sessions @ HD Native?


Also, do you guys think that MAC MINI with 16GB RAM can do fine? I am buying one probably today, not the Studio Max/Ultra with 32GB.

Thanks

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Yes. 192's still work fine:D

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

Cool!

Re: Upgrading soon from PT HD10.3.10 MAC Pro to Native M1
 

It depends what you mean by huge. Old HD3 systems were limited to 192 voices. HDX3 in classic mode can do 768. Current versions of pro tools offer over 2000 voices.

TDM has about half the latency of native system running at 32 sample buffers.