Digi, don't make us wait for AES

[Guitar Dude]

I have been sitting on the sidelines, waiting for an upgrade to the 001. My usual luck has it that the day after I buy, a new updated, cheaper, better product will come out. So I have been holding out for the AES show, which we all now know has been pushed back due to the recent events in New York. What I would like to request is that Dididesign goes ahead with at least some of the product announcements that they were going to make tomorrow.

[Jerry Finklestien]

The AES show moved foward is a good opportunity for Digidesign to double and triple check their new product line to ensure that all the bugs are worked out before they release them at AES. Be grateful for that at least but do not be happy about so many lives lost in the United States. It's tragic and the only way we can benefit from it is to become stronger and make better music and make better Protools!

[who]

This is just my guess, but I doubt Digi will release anything aimed at the semi-pro level at AES given the nature of the show.

However, I really don't know what I'm talking about so I guess we'll see. It would be cool if they decided to update the 001. Maybe more tracks, smpte, TCE tool, etc., etc., etc.

[surchur]

more tracks/more effect use of the CPU

[Park Seward]

I found this on the DUC yesterday.

Hi folks,

after reading all your interesting ideas and interpretations about what "HTDM" is I figured I should tell you what's really going on. For the people who don't know me, I'm Product Manager for Pro Tools MIDI, Synthesis and Sampling and I'm also responsible for DirectConnect and thus, for HTDM.

HTDM is a different "flavor" of DirectConnect. Instead of connecting an external application such as Soft SampleCell to Pro Tools via DirectConnect, HTDM allows us (and our third party developers) to create TDM plug-ins that do their audio processing on the host. You could say that we're using DirectConnect "behind the scenes" to allow host-based applications (plug-ins) to work and appear as a TDM plug-in. That's pretty cool and we're expecting to show first examples of this at AES in New York. If you got interested please come and see us or some of our third party developers for demos!

If you own Pro Tools v5.1 TDM you've sure noticed the new RTAS on disk tracks feature. This is almost the same idea, however, as the feature name suggests RTAS plug-ins can only be used on disk tracks and not on aux inputs or master faders. HTDM overcomes this limitation and will make your Pro Tools TDM system even more powerful and better to use.

To summarize: HTDM is another evolutionary step to make intelligent use of the host CPU power that's available besides TDM. It's no revolution, it's no new hardware and it's no new audio technology. Please note that we won't use the term HTDM in our marketing literature to avoid further confusion (read through this thread and you know what I mean ;-) Instead we will continue to refer to "TDM" with some added explanation.

Hope this information is helpful. I'm looking forward to seeing some of you at AES!

All the best,

Adrian Haselhuber
Product Manager MIDI/Synth/Sampling
digidesign, a division of Avid
[email protected]

[mike connelly]

Digi just sent out press releases last week announcing digipronet and 5.2. (plus a couple other minor things)

I assume those were their AES announcements and that there won't be any additional news at the rescheduled AES.

[Park Seward]

It means that TDM systems will be able to use Direct Connect to access RTAS plug-ins in their systems.

It means nothing to LE users.

Just an example on how to use the greater processing power of new microprocessor chips.

[who]

TDM users can already use RTAS plugs. My interpretation is that softsynths, stc will now be operated from within PT like as is done in Cubase or Logic.

This could very well be used in LE as HTDM uses native processing. Will we see it in LE? Hmm, I guess we'll see.

I could be wrong though.

[Park Seward]

well, not exactly...

It won't help LE users at all.

From Digi:

HTDM won't have any effect on DirectConnect's latency. HTDM just allows a plugin to be a client of the StreamManager. Here's some more info...

The StreamManager is an extension that allows us to get host audio in and out of the TDM environment. Right now DirectConnect is the only plugin that is a client of the StreamManager (it uses the Streammanager to get other applications' host streams into TDM land). With "HTDM" we are allowing other plugins to be a client of the StreamManager so they can do their processing on the host, but still exist anywhere in the TDM chain.

The reason that RTAS plugins can exist only on disk tracks in a TDM system is because the audio on a disk track originated from the hard disk, i.e. on the host. So we can insert some host effects at the beginning of the chain, before the audio has entered the TDM realm. On Aux and Master tracks, the audio never has a host stage, it's TDM the whole way so there's no chance to get a host RTAS process in there.

Hope this helps...

Ted Barram
Digi Engineering
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[who]

I stand corrected. [img]images/icons/smile.gif[/img]