HD Native With Apoggee Symphony

[jaminjamesp]

You'll have to forgive me if this is a completely dumb question, but here goes.

I currently have a Symphony 8x8, Pro Tools 11, and a 6 core nMP. A buddy and me are pooling gear and moving in to shared space to open a studio. Nothing major or fancy, but I've gotten so many requests this last year to record local bands and singer songwriters, that it makes sense to have a dedicated spot, as apposed to cramming people into my small house.

We're set on gear, but I am thinking about upgrading my Pro Tools rig. Often times in sessions with larger track counts I'll get a fair amount of latency when tracking. If I set my buffer too low, like 128 or 64, I'll get errors here and there. Will adding a Thunderbolt Native HD card do anything for my latency? I'm not even sure the role that the card plays in the whole game, to my knowledge it doesn't handle any DSP. Would it be wiser to add the Thunderbridge for the Symphony? Again, if thats dumb, I apologize, computers aren't my thing, I like knobs and faders and things I can twist and turn. I might add that I don't need any of the functions of PT11 HD, simply want to deal with latency.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Matt Hepworth]

HD Native card has lower latency than Thunderbridge. As far as native solutions go it's probably one of the very best options. It's still, however, going to have the same limitations as native inherently has, which is part of latency is directly proportional to your buffer.

Do a used HDX system if the budget allows. You'll also need an HD license regardless of whether you go HDX or HDN. The other option is the tried and true PTHD10 with an Accel system. They're super cheap and have a lot of horsepower if you go with at least an HD3.

If you're running USB with your Symphony right now you'd get a huge reduction in latency going HDN. USB has much more latency than PCI (TB).

128 with the Symphony I/O is not much lower latency than 512 with HDN at 96k.

[Matt Hepworth]

The other option is to dump the Symphony I/O and go mk II. Low latency TB and no need for the HD license.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Matt Hepworth

The other option is to dump the Symphony I/O and go mk II. Low latency TB and no need for the HD license.

You talking about the new Symphony with the modular computer interface?

[Matt Hepworth]

Symphony I/O mk II (black face).

[JFreak]

The old Symphony MkI plays well with HD/HDN/HDX and loop syncs to other HD interfaces. MkII launches as TB only and HD version comes later

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Matt Hepworth

Symphony I/O mk II (black face).

Okay - that is a good looking alternative and the sound is amongst the best.

[nst7]

If you have a 6 core new Mac Pro and can not do basic tracking of a band at 64 without issues, something is seriously wrong somewhere in your system. I would look into what might be wrong. Either that or Apogee drivers are really bad. You should not be having these issues with a powerful computer like that.

[Matt Hepworth]

Depends on whether he's running VI's and such. Native is always a bit of a question mark for full band tracking (low latency), especially over a USB interface.