The Hybrid era - 1 HDX card or all native?

[basehead617]

Hi all-

I remember on release of Hybrid mode, i believe some places like PT expert said their tests showed that even if you weren’t using AAX DSP plugins, with a large session, 1 HDX card in hybrid mode performed better than all native, due to load balancing.

Is this the experience you guys have had? I’m not really in a position to do so but am wondering if the HDX card can go at this point.

Are you post guys running purely HD native now? What about music guys?

[Cheesehead]

I'm running really big film sessions Native in post and have been for some time, but the HDX spooky load balancing thing intrigues me too.
I'm not in a position to compare HD Native and HDX performance any more, got rid of my HDX card a long time ago when I realised my laptop at the time could run bigger sessions Native than my Mac Pro could with HDX 1!
I wonder if the Hybrid thing has changed that?
Is there anybody in a position to do a proper comparison, HD Native to HDX 1 Hybrid?
It would be interesting to see the results.

[smurfyou]

There are a lot of post mixers working Native. HDX1 was quickly outclassed and really not viable with the bussing resources. It would be good if we could see a real world comparison with Hybrid. HDX is still desirable for ADR and Foley.

[LDS]

If anyone has an appropriate session that they think would be suitable, I'll happily run some tests next week. HDX1 was pretty useless until the hybrid engine appeared, but for the most part, I prefer using HDX2 in classic mode whenever possible. It just feels a lot more solid and responsive.

It also has the totally unintended side effect of keeping sessions a little more disciplined and tidy. Endless resources aren't necessarily always good!

I can't say that I have noticed much difference specifically with mix sessions running under hybrid vs native, other than the usual responsiveness. HDX would need to offer some impressive additional load sharing over decent native alternatives to justify the price tag for mixing. Surely you would always be better off spending the money on a faster native machine?

Tracking is another story completely. HDX still king of the crop.

[Farhoof]

I think this is the article you are referring to?
https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/hom...a-game-changer

I am unable to compare HD Native pci-e to HDX-hybrid-but-set-to-all-native, but I am very curious. Afaik the HDX card is only used as an IO connector to the interface when set to all native, and it's processing power is only used when using anything DSP. This "mysterious optimized CPU usage factor" is indeed still a mystery and i'd like to see some evidence before I trash all the HDX cards over here.

What I CAN confirm is, running HDX2 on old cheesegraters, switching to hybrid but setting all to native actually runs smoother compared to old-way-hdx on the same hardware. I must mention, running in post, all plugins have always been set to native because both HDX cards are completely filled with 'mixer'. Voices and delay ran high because of the constant switching to the dsp mixer and native plugins. Now with the hybrid engine, everything runs native, latency is way down, the UI is more responsive, sessions and tracks are a lot less limited and there is still some unexpected life left in our cheesegraters. We are using the cards just to connect to the digiport interfaces but I highly doubt these will survive a next hardware upgrade. Unless the cards are indeed 'mysteriously' doing something to help the cpu...

[Cheesehead]

LDS if you could do a comparison I'm sure we'd all be very grateful!
Unfortunately I can't send you a session because they're all under copywrite.


Maybe just a simple test of any fairly large session on Native and then HDX Hybid and see what the usage meters in PT do?


If they turn out to be the same we can all forget about the spookiness.


I have a suspicion the 'spookiness' may just be HDX users finding a load more power in their systems from using Hybrid, which is essentially the same as Native... controversial!!

[fsavell]

Originally Posted by basehead617

Hi all-

I remember on release of Hybrid mode, i believe some places like PT expert said their tests showed that even if you weren’t using AAX DSP plugins, with a large session, 1 HDX card in hybrid mode performed better than all native, due to load balancing.

Is this the experience you guys have had? I’m not really in a position to do so but am wondering if the HDX card can go at this point.

Are you post guys running purely HD native now? What about music guys?

Hey folks

I'm running HDX1 on a 2019 MacPro, mixing music. I find that using the DSP on the card makes a massive improvement to my CPU resources. In heavy sessions with a solid mastering chain (that usually eats up most of the CPU) I find changing some tracks to DSP makes a huge difference in the CPU usage, when using Hybrid mode, confirming the load balancing concept.

I've attached a couple of screen shots of my System usage:

The first is a mix session in Hybrid mode using only Native tracks/plugins. It is unplayable. As you can see all the CPU usage is centered around 2 CPUs.

The second picture is the exact same session moments later after changing a single track to DSP mode which had no plugins on it - as you can see in HDX Card graph, it is just using mixer DSP and the CPU balance is significantly better.

The third shot is where I've changed my Playback Engine to Mac Headphone output, completely removing HDX from the test. This session is also unplayable with these settings.

So for me, using HDX in Hybrid mode is essential for bigger sessions and I definitely need to convert tracks to DSP. The caveat is I do a lot of mastering processing on my mixes which taxes the CPU significantly, which I'd suggest is ultimately the cause for my needing Hybrid DSP on a 2019 Mac Pro. On 'light' master bus chain sessions I can throw almost anything at this computer and not need to engage DSP.

[basehead617]

Originally Posted by fsavell

Hey folks

I'm running HDX1 on a 2019 MacPro, mixing music. I find that using the DSP on the card makes a massive improvement to my CPU resources. In heavy sessions with a solid mastering chain (that usually eats up most of the CPU) I find changing some tracks to DSP makes a huge difference in the CPU usage, when using Hybrid mode, confirming the load balancing concept.

I've attached a couple of screen shots of my System usage:

The first is a mix session in Hybrid mode using only Native tracks/plugins. It is unplayable. As you can see all the CPU usage is centered around 2 CPUs.

The second picture is the exact same session moments later after changing a single track to DSP mode which had no plugins on it - as you can see in HDX Card graph, it is just using mixer DSP and the CPU balance is significantly better.

The third shot is where I've changed my Playback Engine to Mac Headphone output, completely removing HDX from the test. This session is also unplayable with these settings.

So for me, using HDX in Hybrid mode is essential for bigger sessions and I definitely need to convert tracks to DSP. The caveat is I do a lot of mastering processing on my mixes which taxes the CPU significantly, which I'd suggest is ultimately the cause for my needing Hybrid DSP on a 2019 Mac Pro. On 'light' master bus chain sessions I can throw almost anything at this computer and not need to engage DSP.

Fascinating! Well, there you have it I suppose... changing tracks to DSP even without plugins can still have significant benefits.

Thanks for this!

[LDS]

What are we testing here? Is it just playback? A quick test with 10 channels with 4 HP sends, I am not seeing any difference in CPU usage with DSP mode on or off. Initially I did see an improvement, but HEAT was turned on. HEAT only works natively in the Hybrid engine, and it gets bypassed when DSP mode is engaged.

From what I have experienced, newer builds of Pro Tools are really good at shuffling loads around on the CPU as the workload increases. It is also exceptionally good at buffering the playback portion of any session. If you are just playing back audio, the CPU load is exactly the same regardless of whether you have the sample buffer set to 64 or 1024 samples.

[francois]

I had a session this week recalling a full mixed session(loads of DSP and native plugins + Omnisphere2) where I had to record a new singer to replace the previous one.
I try to use the Hybrid engine keeping the new track being recorded in DSP(with Sphere 2 Townsend labs on insert) and got the playback error right away on low buffers
Switch back to full DSP(HDX1) and everything was smooth.