PCIe Cards for DSP offloading in PT

[bchamberlin]

Hello all,

Can the Pro Tools HDX PCIe cards be used for Pro Tools as well as Pro Tools Ultimate?
https://www.avid.com/products/pro-tools-hdx

I am looking to offload the DSP from my computer to a PCI card ala the way I use my Waves Soundgrid Server for my Waves plugins. I will eventually upgrade to Ultimate however would like to integrate into my systems sooner than later.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by bchamberlin

Hello all,

Can the Pro Tools HDX PCIe cards be used for Pro Tools as well as Pro Tools Ultimate?
https://www.avid.com/products/pro-tools-hdx

I am looking to offload the DSP from my computer to a PCI card ala the way I use my Waves Soundgrid Server for my Waves plugins. I will eventually upgrade to Ultimate however would like to integrate into my systems sooner than later.

Thank you in advance for any advice.

Welcome to DUC.

Absolutely not. You need Pro Tools Ultimate, and you need a Pro Tools Digilink interface(s) to use with the HDX. And often you may want more than one HDX card of processing power. Although you can use hybrid processing now to use mixed native and HDX processing.

But why are you wanting to do this? What exact problem are you trying to solve? You have a latency issue while tracking and want to track though HDX plugins? If it's just raw processing power modern computers should get you there, especially at mix time if you run with large IO buffer, or if needed use outboard processing with Vienna Ensemble Pro or similar (and if it's VI workloads there is typically no DSP version anyhow, all native processing).

If it's tracking issue then Pro Tools Carbon interface with built-in HDX-DSP processing is an option, although with lots of caveats (mac only, non-expandable etc.). And techncially Carbon can run with pro Tools standard, but probably not what you want.

Are the plugins you want to use in AAX-HDX format? Waves ones are not.

And any of this locks you into Pro Tools only processing, do you really want to do that?

[bchamberlin]

Thank you Darryl. I'm not having any latency issues or concerns however it is the lack of enough processors used for my non Waves and Non United Audio which are offloaded to their designated DSP chips. Izotope is one in particular that eats processing while mixing. Rather than having to but more processors for my computer which I update every few years, I was hoping for a stand alone solution for offloading DSP from Pro Tools such as the other brands and may be transferred when I upgrade computer.

Input, output, monitoring, latency, etc is all fine with my Dante setup.

Any ideas are appreciated.

[Carl Lie]

If you went with HDX you'd find many plugin manufacturers don't code for it. Izotope being one that does not.

As far as I know there is no way to offload an AAX plugin that is not coded for DSP other than getting a faster computer. I'd be happy to be wrong.

C

[BScout]

Carl is correct.

Izotope has never coded for AAX-DSP also (or TDM). So not going to happen.

[Darryl Ramm]

Everybody else beat me to it. But Izotope, yeah nah (as the Australian's say). As much as it's impressive stuff you need to troubleshoot/optimize the heck out of your setup and what you are doing with it, maybe minimize its use, maybe upgrade your computer....

[Reml@P]

While I understand the appeal in offloading processing, I don't think in 2022 your money is "well spent" on HDX cards. It's old school tech these days.

Native processing is the future and with the new Apple chips coming out, I think you'll see less return on investment in the decades old technology of HDX cards. Apart from which as mentioned, not all plugins are optimised for it.

[thin ice]

Having spent a fortune on Pro Tools cards in 3 different systems, I decided to go for a completely native setup recently and haven't looked back.

With the new Silicon Macs arriving, there is an abundance of power with even a Mac Mini outperforming my old Mac Pro with HD3. The new Silicon Mac Pro may well make the Mini look like a pocket calculator, so dealing with PCIe cards and chassis will just be an unnecessary expense and more to go wrong.

As others point out, you can also see some plugin vendors avoiding DSP versions already.

[LDS]

HDX still has its place, you just need to be sure that you are buying it for the right reasons. Particularly for tracking, there really isn't anything better... and that is because it adds HDX power on top of whatever native system resources you have. As an example, a 64 input tracking session that maxes out HDX2 will let you track using just 1% of your CPU power on a 14-core iMac Pro. That is a lot of CPU power left over to host things like virtual instruments at minimum sample buffers.

The same session hosted natively at 64 sample buffers on the same 14-core iMac Pro will bring the entire system to its knees. It won't track anything. It throws errors... the CPU meter tops out at 100%. Forgot any idea of including VIs in your recording pass. Before throwing HDX under the bus because you once used-a-HD3-system-13-years-ago-that-was-actually-released-20-years-ago-and-bares-no-resemblance-to-the-way-DSP-is-used-now.... perhaps ask bchamberlin for some more information on his/her setup?

What kind of native system are you running currently?

The relationship of DSP to CPUs is entirely different since the inclusion of the hybrid engine. Native plugins like those by Izotope are quite CPU intensive. When you chain multiple together on a single channel, they represent a serial operation that will cause single core spikes in your CPU usage. Upgrading from an M1 to a Pro, Max or Ultra might address it to a degree, depending on how big a session is being run and how well other elements can be spread across the additional cores. Or it might not address it at all given that single core performance is identical across the entire M1 range. HDX on the other hand will allow you to host just those Izotope plugins within a chain on the CPU... whilst dealing with everything else on DSP.

It really boils down to price vs performance. With HDX comes many upsides, including really effective dual sample buffers, which in turn changes the metric entirely.

[bchamberlin]

Thank you all for your input. I appreciate it.