HD Omni Mini-Review

[TimNielsen]

Today I took delivery of my new HD Omni interface. Thought I'd write up a few quick thoughts, offer a couple of suggestions, in case anyone is interested.

Firstly, it's a really nice piece of gear. It looks good, it sounds really good (better for sure than my 96 I/O) and has some really great functionality.

I LOVE the mixer functions. Ran the optical from my Mac Pro to the Omni, and under the hardware setup, you get a new tab called 'Mixer' where you can set the behavior of inputs when PT is not running. From my tab I could see Analog I/O 1-2, 3-4, and Optical. I assume if I had other digital formats actually hooked up, they would appear to. You can set pan and level, assign it to mains and/or headphones, and set some choices like 'have these inputs mute when PT is in record' or not.

I set the input, and quit ProTools, and voila, my MacPro is still getting to my speakers. Not even the tiniest snat when launching or quiting ProTools, it's seemless.

The control room monitor knob is great, a quick way to adjust overall level, and a mute button next to it is great.

The unit doesn't seem to have a fan, or if it does, it's quieter than my 96 by a long shot. The 96 was noisy, louder even than my Mac Pro. This interface is very quiet.

The headphone circuitry sounds very good, although I admit I don't have any super-audiophile headphone amps to compare it to. But it sounds very clean to me, and it's fantastic not to have to have another mixer to get headphones from PT.

I haven't experimented too much yet with the 'fold-down' capabilities, will do more of that tomorrow I think.

It appears that you can control most of the setup of it directly from the device itself, although I admit, it seems much easier to just fire up PT and make changes through the 'hardware' dialog.

So far I haven't started using the inputs, preamps, etc. It's been running about 30 minutes now is all.

Already a couple of things I wish:

1) This thing is really asking for a remote. I wish I had it sitting right here in front of me. Luckily my Omni is really close, I can reach the control room volume knob. But to be able to have a remote, with mute, volume, and DIM (something absent from the Omni) would be fantastic.

2) I wish it had a quick way to get back to 'reference' level. There's no quick shortcut to just say 'go back to 0' on the volume level.

But so far I'm finding this really well designed, really beautiful sounding, and I'm really happy with the purchase. For a home project studio, this thing is brilliant.

If anyone has questions, please post them, I'll do my best to answer them.

Tim

[nst7]

Speaking of the mixer functions, I saw something in the manual to imply that this could be used as a standalone converter, but it was vague. In your experimenting, could you try to find out if this is possible?

Thanks!

[TimNielsen]

Noticing my first 'quirks' with the Omni, but my guess is that these things could somehow be fixed. At least I'd like to propose them...

These all have to do with the 'Fold-Down' features.

1) There isn't any visual indicator anywhere, in PT or the device, that fold-down has been activated. With what I'll post as #2 below, this could be a problem.

2) When fold-down is active, the meters on the HD Omni continue to show 'un-folded' meter action. Meaning if you normally have 5.1 output, and fold-down is set to stereo, and active, so that the HD Omni really is only sending out stereo, the meters still show 5.1!!! This just feels wrong. The meters should accurately reflect what is hitting the output channels. That would at least be an indicator that fold-down is on.

I really hope there might be a way to fix that, as it really does seem kinda weird. You see all these meters flashing, but what audio is hitting your speakers doesn't reflect this. If one turned on fold-down, and forgot, and then saw this meter action, and wasn't paying attention, you could just keep working....

3) Fold-down is a bit of a pain to activate. You either do it through the Hardware setup, or through the Setup button on the Omni. But either way it's a multi-step process. Might be nice in a future version of PT to have an easier way, maybe a menu selection, or a button.

4) The mono folddown doesn't behave quite like I'd like. Instead of say folding down your 5.1 mix to the center channel, which would seem ideal, it instead generates two mono streams and sends them to L and R.

Shouldn't it just, if your CR output is 5.1, generate a 'center' channel folddown?

[rico4mix]

Had a question about the Digi connection on the back of the new I/O, are they still the same connecter? Someone told me they changed the connector and you had to use an adapter it the end of the digi link cable. Is that ture?

[TimNielsen]

Correct, the connector type is new, its much smaller than the old one, but an adaptor cable comes with the Omni. But if I wanted to use the 'expansion' port on the Omni, I suppose I would have to buy another adaptor cable.

[rico4mix]

how interesting. I wonder why they would change the Digi port connecter, knowing there are tens of thousands of HD card/users out there. Is there a new HD card coming?

[Dism]

Originally Posted by rico4mix

how interesting. I wonder why they would change the Digi port connecter, knowing there are tens of thousands of HD card/users out there. Is there a new HD card coming?

[P A M]

Got mine today also, it actually sounds really really good, seriously good actually and totally smokes the 192. To me this is the real upgrade, great converters. Pres sound neutral and I’m sure I’ll use the two on the front quite a bit as its easy to just plug-in.
I second the build-quality; it feels nice and is quite heavy for the size.

A great addition to my system.

[edadema]

Question
There are 2 send and returns on the back. Are they for outboard EFX and how do you access them? I have a old Roland Space echo that I use direct ins and outs. I would love to be able to access it like a plug in.

If so I think I will pick one up today!!

[ekuehnl]

Originally Posted by edadema

Question
There are 2 send and returns on the back. Are they for outboard EFX and how do you access them? I have a old Roland Space echo that I use direct ins and outs. I would love to be able to access it like a plug in.

If so I think I will pick one up today!!

Those inserts are part of the analog input signal path. So they're only useful when you're recording from an analog source. You can't use them as Hardware Inserts in Pro Tools. You'd have to use the standard inputs and outputs on the OMNI.