HD Native pcie helios chassis working on core i5 macbook pro

[chrissinger86]

Greeting fellow audiophiles! I recently had trouble getting an HD Native Pro Tools system working correctly. I had purchased an HD Native card and wanted it to be portable. I purchased a OWC Helios chassis and it has worked without issue. I ran into my first bump when I connected my Apogee AD-16X with X-HD card installed to the HD Native card and ran digi test. Results came back with the Native card passing but no firmware showed on the apogees X-HD card. After a week, I finally discovered the issue. Apparently when you update the firmware on the X-HD cards, the ROM chip doesn't always get the firmware written to it appropriately the first, 3rd, or even 5th time around. There is a green and red light on the X-HD card that should blink the ENTIRE TIME you are updating the firmware. If you get half way and the red or green light stays light... the firmware didn't write correctly. YOU MUST VISUALLY MONITOR THE FIRMWARE UPDATE TO ENSURE IT ACTUALLY HAS COMPLETED CORRECTLY. Apogee has not designed these cards to be verifiable when updating firmware... so it's basically run the firmware updater and assume everything went according to plan. After a week and speaking to Apogee support... they couldn't explain what was wrong. They never considered the firmware wasn't installing correctly. I have verified this with multiple X-HD cards. I just wanted to post this as a help to anyone who may be experiencing similar issues. If you are and need assistance, feel free to message me and I'll be happy to walk you through updating the firmware to ensure it works appropriately. Once updated correctly, the AD-16X and DA-16X should emulate a HD i/o digital.

I am also confirming the same converters and hd native card in a windows 7 64 bit system with amd 8150fx processor overclocked to 4.2ghz and asus sabertooth 990fx mobo with 32gb of 1600mhz ram. I have confirmed it is functioning, was able to track and mix but I did get a elastic audio load fail error. It's common, but no certain fix has been highlighted. I'm sure it will be resolved before 2015... but due to the nature of the system I'm running it on, it figures that something won't work appropriately. It does handle quite a bit of processing with just the native card, hope to swap in an HDX card in the next couple months coupled with a UAD2 Octo card. Pretty sure this will handle the most I can throw at it with my current console. I'll post some screen shots and processing specs soon as I have them available.

Cheers!

[DetroitT]

Thank you!