The Hybrid Engine

[Frank Kruse]

Originally Posted by Farhoof

The cards won't be eaten by the mixer anymore, the mixer will run native. Only the signal paths selected for dsp will have the mixer on dsp, or so it seems. This way the HDX card will only be used for actual dsp and the rest will run native. The HDX1 systems will become waaaayyyy more useful in post as they will turn into (be it expensive) digilink dongles and maybe run that few dsp plugins still in use. Your computer just needs to be fast enough to be able to run the mixer native.

We upgraded all our rigs to HDX2 a long time ago just to overcome the voice limitation. We have to set all our dsp plugins to native because both HDX cards are fully filled with 'mixer' so we don't actually use dsp. Our preferred plugins are native only anyway. With the hybrid engine we can shift around cards a bit if needed.

I don't know yet if our old cheesegrater mac pro's can run the same sessions fully native. We might have to stick to the old ways for now. The hybrid engine for me feels a bit 'too little too late' (as we already invested into HDX2). By the time we move on to new macs they will be fast enough to run fully native and there will be no need for HDX cards anymore. But for current HDX1 users this will be huge and much needed.

Yes that would be a huge step for theatres. Hardly anyone needs HDX cards in post unless you record ADR or need to feed an RMU with 128outs.