[rtcstudio]

Advid,

If I have a lot of edits, and in the beginning stages and up to the mix I usually do, there can be a delay of around two seconds on a big session. This delay doesn't bother me a bit, I used to wait 5 times that to lock up 2" machines and ADATS. But remember, my sessions are LONG. The last session I did had the final edited concert, plus the outtakes from another concert, plus some tracks from a rehearsal in it. The final concert is 70 minutes (some tracks are continuous, most are edited like the drum tracks for instance) and additional audio makes the total length of my sessions sometimes as long as 4 hours. I have the DAE playback buffer set to level 4, with audio spread across at least two firewire drives. Now, if I compact the session and duplicate all my tracks, getting rid of fade files and all edits, turn off Quick Punch, the session response is much quicker.

BUT I have heard other Firewire users say that on a typical use on a session of around normal song length, like less than five minutes, that they can get 64 tracks going just fine, no delays on Mix Plus, and only ONE firewire drive. I can't stress enough the importance to use FAST firewire 7200 RPM drives with the new Oxford 911 chipsets.

On PT HD I just don't know. At 96K you'll be using twice the drive space (I assume) as at 48K. So you'll just have to try it. Firewire drives are so cheap compared to Ultra SCSI ones that it would be worth the experiment to me. I haven't made the upgrade yet, so I don't know. Perhaps there are other HD users out there who have tried this. My understanding also is that my MAGMA four slot will have to be upgraded because its bus is only 32 bit, and the new HD cards require 64 bit architechture.