50% off waves TDM -- bad sign??

[cananball]

This has to mean something is coming...or going.

Is TDM on its way out or what? I see everyone saying we don't need it native is powerful enough. But wouldn't it be awesome if the next generation of TDM had cards with 12 core intel chips on them? Imagine a 36 core HD3 system! Add native processing and you could have 40 plus.

There are still plenty of possibilities for TMD but no ones talking. Perhaps waves is looking to boost sales or are they trying to blow out near obsolete stock?

[tom_lowe]

If Avid did put a 12-core Intel chip on a next generation of HD card, it would require an entire re-write of all existing TDM plug-ins, or some form of emulation to run legacy code, which as with Rosetta when Apple changed to Intel, made PowerPC code run, but incredibly slowly.

Why put Intel cores on an Avid card when Intel are releasing new CPUs and chipsets on a 6-12 month basis, meaning that within 2 years expensive custom-made HD cards would be outdated compared with a laptop on sale for £800.

As for Waves getting rid of TDM, probably true.

[Postman]

I wonder more about why everyone is so worried about the future of TDM. I've just bought more dsp (all the worry has reduced prices!!). So while some folks fret about whether to go entirely native, afraid to make any choice at all, I enjoy tons of a low latency and very powerful TDM backbone.

[cananball]

Of course I am only speaking in hypotheticals. I have no knowledge of coding but my point was there still could be a future in TDM as far as superior processing power but you bring up a good point of how long it will stay viable before native catches up again.

How long until 36 core is the standard MacPro??

[tom_lowe]

Originally Posted by Postman

I wonder more about why everyone is so worried about the future of TDM. I've just bought more dsp (all the worry has reduced prices!!). So while some folks fret about whether to go entirely native, afraid to make any choice at all, I enjoy tons of a low latency and very powerful TDM backbone.

TDM may provide low-latencies (which can now be got pretty much with native) but they are certainly not powerful. Would you buy a 10 year old Mac or PC and call that powerful?

[HD2]

Originally Posted by cananball

Perhaps waves is looking to boost sales or are they trying to blow out near obsolete stock?

Well if you've noticed, when you buy waves plugins, you download the installers and get an ilok authorization, so there is no stock. It is a virtual product that lives on a server. So it's not as if they have a bunch of "stock" laying around they are trying to get rid of. That being said I think they are definitely trying to boost sales of the TDM plugins before the big announcement of the next generation of Protools Hardware. Could be at NAB.

[Craig F]

This is not the first time nor the last time that Waves puts thing on sale to try and boost sales of an overpriced product

All this is a sign of is that people are not buying into the Waves hype and that there plugs are worth the price.

[mikevarela]

I think it's pretty certain that Avid will continue down a 2 road approach - native vs. TDM. (my opinion)

Of course the chips in the standard TDM system are incredibly outdated, but then writing for another set is a large task and without the software resources and funding to yearly upgrade the software for those alone, it's pretty clear why they haven't tackled it yet. It seems like resources can either be allocated to software updates or core coding. At least in mass.

It would be incredible to see Avid pick a chip manufacturer with a steady release cycle and target code to use those chips alone, in essence enabling incremental updates of chips while code base stays almost the same... I think it's been a matter of deciding what chips and how to position them price-wise / config that's gotten them stuck.

I think we'll probably be seeing dual-core offerings from one of the big guys now like qualcomm, Motorola, arm or nvidia. I think as we begin to see standardization of processing, especially on smaller dies, we're probably looking at an HD card that will equal around what we call an HD3 now - it'll be PCIe 2 and probably keep the 2 plugs round rear for two interfaces.

I like native, don't get me wrong... but guaranteed track count is still a major seller - especially in critical environments.

On a side note, It'd be great to see something like the TC Powercore system where Avid could use Thunderbolt and a breakout box for processing, maybe even attached to an audio interface - yielding track counts and i/o in a single peripheral that you could use with either your mac pro or macbook. Ultimate portable power

[Bill Denton]

Originally Posted by HD2

Well if you've noticed, when you buy waves plugins, you download the installers and get an ilok authorization, so there is no stock. It is a virtual product that lives on a server. So it's not as if they have a bunch of "stock" laying around they are trying to get rid of. That being said I think they are definitely trying to boost sales of the TDM plugins before the big announcement of the next generation of Protools Hardware. Could be at NAB.

Maybe if you don't use Santa Claus as a middleman...he left a nice box under the tree with my Waves plugins inside.

I believe that is not "virtual" stock; it's "physical" stock, sitting around in a lot of warehouses...

[Postman]

Originally Posted by tom_lowe

TDM may provide low-latencies (which can now be got pretty much with native) but they are certainly not powerful. Would you buy a 10 year old Mac or PC and call that powerful?

My intended point is this. Whatever Waves is doing to drum up more sales, whatever other plugins have been developed without a TDM counterpart, whatever cloud formations drift overhead, do not signal the demise of TDM. The current implementation of TDM is long in the tooth but still very worthwhile and considering the dropping cost of bulking up an existing system, I see no reason not to if I can use the added power. I have an opinion that tdm will still be valuable to me even when a "new tdm comes along, and I think one will. If you are 20 years old, for example, it is easy to see something that is 10 years old as being hopelessly archaic and pathetic. If you look at only the merits of that something, excluding assumptions, you may have a different opinion.