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  #1  
Old 12-10-2022, 05:31 PM
TNM TNM is offline
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Default Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Hi there
I have used UAD for years with 6 thunderbolt 2 devices (2 Apollo 8, 1 Apollo Twin and 3 Satellites). After I moved to windows I lost all use of the devices as my windows computer is thunderbolt 4 which is not backwards compatible (on Windows at least with the way it's implemented).
I'd have to literally replace it all with UAD thunderbolt 3 devices, so I look at this as an opportunity rather than a problem, to sell it all along with the plugins, and instead of rebuying UAD Tbolt 3, just going with HDX. I already have a ton of AAX plugins that have DSP versions so that's a start.

The big thing for me is external synths and inputs.. With UAD at the time before PT was updated, I was limited to 32 inputs via Core Audio (now Asio and 64 inputs) so I also had a 32 channel analog mixer subbed into 8 of those ins so I could fit all my external synths.

Ideally what I am looking for is a minimum of 40 analog ins for HDX but I'd be happier with 64.

My plan is to run all those live through PT mixer through AAX DSP effects.
I want access to any synth at any time by simply clicking a track as this is the way I work, I want them all ready to go through PT mixer at all times.

I don't care if it's not Avid, my first question is the easiest way to get that large count of analog inputs into HDX.

My second question is, well a statement first that I think two HDX cards is right for me, would you put them inside the PC desktop or run them to a thunderbolt 3 chassis? I thought the latter might be preferable so I can tuck it away somewhere quiet.

I only have a windows 11th gen laptop at present but am building a 13th Gen based Intel desktop, 13700K/64GB Ram/Win 11 Pro system, the motherboard has thunderbolt 4 ports native so I presume a thunderbolt chassis for the HDX cards would be fine. What do you think? The PC itself is in the room with me so I presume the HDX cards would add too much noise if I had them internally? Also is a chassis a safer bet for compatibility, since many of them are made with HDX in mind from the get go? The board has native intel thunderbolt 4 so I should be good to go.

The inputs things is where I am stuck as I keep looking and finding different solutions so would really appreciate advice on the cheapest and/or easiest way to get large analog input counts into HDX.

Cheers and TIA!
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  #2  
Old 12-10-2022, 06:00 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

If you have a bunch of UAD stuff and was happy with that, I'd be running back to that. Go buy a compatible Mac. Apple silicon Macs are pretty damn impressive.

I'm not sure what compatibility problem you are having, if you have tried a genuine Apple thunderbolt 2 adapter, or if you have tried a Thunderbolt 4 hub if that might help. etc.

You need a Digilink interface(s), (multiple) HD IO or MTRX if you want lots of IO. You need Pro Tools Ultimate, and the increased cost of that if you are not on Ultimate already. Your non-Digilink interfaces will be useless except for Audio Bridge use, and that has a bunch of issues including reliability and no delay compensation. Sounds more like you might want a MTRX. You looking at spending US$10k-US$15k on this? You might need more DSP than a single HDX card. You can look at plugin DSP needs and maybe get an idea. Be careful of assuming a HDX card is too powerful.

The absolute last thing I would be doing on Windows is trying to run any HDX or HD native card in an expansion chassis. Built a PC and put the PCIe card in a PCIe slot or multiple cards in multiple slots. Too much noise? Say what? That's how the cards are supposed to be used.

Avid is having a bunch of problems with HD and HDX Cards, may be Thunderbolt chassis related, may be macOS/driver related or more, lots of frustrated customers. I would not be sticking my head into any of that. Hell unless I absolutely needed HDX style low/no latency monitoring or more than 64x64 IO with Pro Tools the very last thing I'd be doing now is locking myself into Avid hardware/HDX. Digilink is looking very long in the tooth. Why is the commodity tail (choice of a computer) here wagging the dog? ... driving your choice of the rest of a complex ecosystem?
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  #3  
Old 12-10-2022, 06:46 PM
TNM TNM is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm View Post
If you have a bunch of UAD stuff and was happy with that, I'd be running back to that. Go buy a compatible Mac. Apple silicon Macs are pretty damn impressive.

I'm not sure what compatibility problem you are having, if you have tried a genuine Apple thunderbolt 2 adapter, or if you have tried a Thunderbolt 4 hub if that might help. etc.

You need a Digilink interface(s), (multiple) HD IO or MTRX if you want lots of IO. You need Pro Tools Ultimate, and the increased cost of that if you are not on Ultimate already. Your non-Digilink interfaces will be useless except for Audio Bridge use, and that has a bunch of issues including reliability and no delay compensation. Sounds more like you might want a MTRX. You looking at spending US$10k-US$15k on this? You might need more DSP than a single HDX card. You can look at plugin DSP needs and maybe get an idea. Be careful of assuming a HDX card is too powerful.

The absolute last thing I would be doing on Windows is trying to run any HDX or HD native card in an expansion chassis. Built a PC and put the PCIe card in a PCIe slot or multiple cards in multiple slots. Too much noise? Say what? That's how the cards are supposed to be used.

Avid is having a bunch of problems with HD and HDX Cards, may be Thunderbolt chassis related, may be macOS/driver related or more, lots of frustrated customers. I would not be sticking my head into any of that. Hell unless I absolutely needed HDX style low/no latency monitoring or more than 64x64 IO with Pro Tools the very last thing I'd be doing now is locking myself into Avid hardware/HDX. Digilink is looking very long in the tooth. Why is the commodity tail (choice of a computer) here wagging the dog? ... driving your choice of the rest of a complex ecosystem?
It's not "my" compatibility issue, thunderbolt 2 devices (my UAD) do not work on windows in thunderbolt 4 ports. Spoken to UAD myself extensively. The only solution is a mac as you say or a PC with thunderbolt 3 or re buying everything UAD in thunderbolt 3 which is just as expensive as a good HDX setup (3 octo satellites and 3 Apollo X8 would be about 20K AUD, right now I have 2 Apollo 8 thunderbolt 2, 1 Apollo Twin and 3 Octo Satellites).

I have 6 UAD devices with most of their catalogue, already have offers that are good and with my savings I can easily go into HDX x2.

As I said I am looking at 2 HDX cards, one is not enough, I was interested in MTRX studio but they are out of stock everywhere so the situation might be pointless at present. I thought since MTRX can do 32 in with 2xadat and 16 analog on board that 2 of those would give me 64 ins but I just can't buy them.

I will not be going back to mac for any reason.

What about antelope's HDX options? Or Focusrite?

I can't even buy HDX locally at present they are due in stock in FEB so this is all about chip shortage, so I started this topic prematurely, unfortunately.
I have been looking since posting.

Pro tools works better for me on Windows than it ever did on my previous Imac Pro.
I am not interested in moving to ARM and apple want stupid money for the mac pro which I could use windows and OS X on. The system I am building is more powerful than the 16 core mac pro which is 17 thousand dollars here+
for a third of the money.

The one possible solution is going back to an imac pro 10 core as I know bootcamp windows/UAD works flawlessly on it but I am not in the habit of spending top dollar for second hand computers.

Arm is out of the question, I am a WINDOWS user.

Please, no advice, no matter how much you want me to, about going to mac. I am not interested.

I AM however interested in hearing about HDX issues with windows. If that's the case I'll just get a presonus 2626 thunderbolt 3 or a steinberg USB interface with DSP monitoring and continue to use PT native.

I am already planning to upgrade to the ultimate software when my studio license expires in a year.. however you can get a perpetual ultimate license in HDX bundles which is what I would go for.

What I thought looked good was the MTRX bundle, then adding a card and interface down the line, but as said they are out of stock. And if they are not going to work properly then well, that's an issue.

Why are expansion chassis an issue? Thunderbolt has worked perfectly for with windows and thunderbolt 3 devices.. Yes, silent computing IS an issue to some of us in the control room. We all don't have studios where we can cut holes in the wall and put the computer in the next room.
I also need access to it for various reasons.
I could however tuck the chassis away in a corner behind a partition.
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  #4  
Old 12-10-2022, 07:29 PM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

You can google Antelope on DUC (use site:duc.avid.com) and find user feedback about Antelope's problematic support culture/customer focus. I would not be touching them.

Focusrite stuff is nice. One minor hassle is if you are after sample accurate delay compensation... they emulate a HD IO but do not match Avid's standard HD IO latencies. I would sure like not being locked into Digilink, and how Focusrite also support both Thunderbolt 3 and Dante is impressive.

Another well regarded, more boutique, interface with DigiLink support is Lynx Aurora. https://www.lynxstudio.com/products. And then you have Prism and other exotic toys, but it's hard to want to look at even the highest end otherwise drool worthy Prism when MTRX is an option.

You can also Google past threads about Focusrite and Digilink and find folks that you might even reach out to if they don't post here.

If you really want a lot of IO the big MTRX boxes are oh so nice, expensive nice, lovely quality. Made by NAD. Nice support from NAD folks on DUC. Great monitoring/matrix IO options. But comes down to how much I/O flexibility you want. MTRX Studio or Focusrite stuff could save a lot.

If I was doing this and wanted to save money or maybe to start getting my feet wet with Digilink I would just go buy used HD IO 16x16 boxes. HD native folks are getting out of Digilink and more hardware will be appearing in the used market. Including I expect in 'stralia.

Expansion chassis are an issue at least on Mac, who knows why. May be driver issues. May be it's related to the improper PCIe compatibility Avid managed to built into their cards which caused them problems on PCIe 3 in Thunderbolt chassis (why the chassis used for HD and HDX card actually have a PCIe 2 not 3 slot(s) or have switchable slots). May be a separate hardware issues with some boards, since only some seem affected. May be multiple problems. Avid is not communicating clearly what is happening, which is you know kinda usual -- and that would concern me about getting on board with HDX or Digilink or investing more money with Avid hardware in general. I have no idea if there are current issues on Windows with expansion chassis, but I'd just not be spending time to find out when it's easier and more reliable (no cables to pull out, no thunderbolt driver hassles) just going direct into the PC PCIe slot and be the same as the vast community of HDX/PC users.

Last edited by Darryl Ramm; 12-10-2022 at 08:12 PM.
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  #5  
Old 12-10-2022, 08:50 PM
TNM TNM is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Good points, thanks.

The delay compensation of the I/O is certainly important to me, but when I think about it, if I plug an adat 16 input into the MTRX to have 32 total analog ins with one MTRX, I doubt the latency compensation would be correct their either.
I mean there are so many adat boxes around with different converters, how could it be possible to "just work"? I would presume I'd have to put a sample delay on the adat inputs through the mixer(?)

Of course if I used just avid I/O it's not a problem. Please correct me if I am wrong about this, but even with 3rd party interfaces, couldn't I set a general offset and have it sample accurate that way?

I thought as much about Antelope so yeah if they still haven't got their act together, forget it.

For I/O I am not fussed about second hand so will check the HD I/O out, thanks.

The problem is that I sadly can't do a thing right now which I honestly did not realise (about the stock shortages) when I started this topic. I apologise for that. I can't find stock *anywhere*.

You have certainly put some reservations about a chassis into my mind. I think I'll probably go the internal PC route then and I may borrow a chassis from someone to try it out for a night and if it works, THEN buy one.
No risk that way hehe. I do know a few people using expansion chassis with PT so that should be OK.
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  #6  
Old 12-10-2022, 08:51 PM
TNM TNM is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Good points, thanks.

The delay compensation of the I/O is certainly important to me, but when I think about it, if I plug an adat 16 input into the MTRX to have 32 total analog ins with one MTRX, I doubt the latency compensation would be correct there either (on the adat analog ins).
I mean there are so many adat boxes around with different converters, how could it be possible to "just work"? I would presume I'd have to put a sample delay on the adat inputs through the mixer(?)

Of course if I used just avid I/O it's not a problem. Please correct me if I am wrong about this, but even with 3rd party interfaces, couldn't I set a general offset and have it sample accurate that way?

I thought as much about Antelope so yeah if they still haven't got their act together, forget it.

For I/O I am not fussed about second hand so will check the HD I/O out, thanks.

The problem is that I sadly can't do a thing right now which I honestly did not realise (about the stock shortages) when I started this topic. I apologise for that. I can't find stock *anywhere*.

You have certainly put some reservations about a chassis into my mind. I think I'll probably go the internal PC route then and I may borrow a chassis from someone to try it out for a night and if it works, THEN buy one.
No risk that way hehe. I do know a few people using expansion chassis with PT so that should be OK.
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  #7  
Old 12-10-2022, 10:06 PM
smurfyou smurfyou is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

The Focusrites would be excellent candidate for this.

But it really depends on why you want HDX. My general guideline is, if you don't need HDX2 then you don't need HDX. The primary exception is audio post using a Sync peripheral.

So the question to ask is why do you need HDX2? Obviously you're used to UAD DSP but what HDX DSP plugins do you have that are essential and not replaceable? I ask because the main thing I record is synths (and sound effects). There's not much I need DSP for. And I sure don't care about matching latency. If I use hardware inserts it's a true insert and not a parallel situation so sample accurate is meaningless. Either it's too insignificant to worry about or its easily fixed because I don't care about real-time performance.

Just some thoughts since supply issues are at hand.
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Old 12-10-2022, 10:24 PM
TNM TNM is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

I work entirely in the midi domain for production using outboard gear. HDX would allow me to mix everything without tracking to audio stems and that is an insane thing for me, hence DPS plugins with low latency.

With Apollo even though I did most of my mix I had to track everything to audio but it's the same principle.. low latency mass synth input (plus vocals and an instrument, usually a guitar) without any cpu load at a ridiculously low latency. I'd need a very powerful machine to do this at native at 32 buffer. I just like the guaranteed performance and native is left over for audio tracks and insert plugins for those, and VI's if needed.
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Old 12-11-2022, 12:46 AM
Darryl Ramm Darryl Ramm is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Quote:
Originally Posted by TNM View Post
Good points, thanks.

The delay compensation of the I/O is certainly important to me, but when I think about it, if I plug an adat 16 input into the MTRX to have 32 total analog ins with one MTRX, I doubt the latency compensation would be correct their either.
I mean there are so many adat boxes around with different converters, how could it be possible to "just work"? I would presume I'd have to put a sample delay on the adat inputs through the mixer(?)

Of course if I used just avid I/O it's not a problem. Please correct me if I am wrong about this, but even with 3rd party interfaces, couldn't I set a general offset and have it sample accurate that way?
You are exactly correct. No interface wether DigiLink, ASIO, or CoreAudio knows what digital I/O box is connected to it via ADAT, AES/EBU, S/PDIF or MADI interfaces. And it can't know the input or output conversion latencies on that box, and can't report them back to the DAW. CoreAudio and ASIO drivers for interfaces that have analog and digital I/O by convention report the (slower) analog latencies for the overall main interface, so any H/W insert correction Pro Tools makes will end up being correct for the analog ports and the digital I/O if you loop it back at the digital layer will be shifted ahead in time, expected behavior but seems to confuse folks. If you loop back through say ADAT the delay compensation applied to that H/W insert might end up putting that signal ahed of or behind where it should be all depending on what the conversion time of the interface digital I/O + ADAT box is compared to the interface main analog I/O. DigiLink is similar but it's more Pro Tools HD just has hardwired latency values for the different Avid interfaces... and third party vendors typically reverse engineered an 192 IO or HD IO and emulate those devices (so they literally show up in Hardware settings as that Avid device, or multiple of those devices) different vendors either chose to make their boxes sample accurate to match the Avid boxes (e.g. adding latency into the box to do this), or they chose not to. e.g. IIRC Lynx does, Apogee did with their Symphony, Focusrite chose not to, but I can't remember their offset. Of course you can correct offsets by manually adjusting delay compensation on H/W inserts and tracks, or just pushing things around.


Quote:
You have certainly put some reservations about a chassis into my mind. I think I'll probably go the internal PC route then and I may borrow a chassis from someone to try it out for a night and if it works, THEN buy one.
No risk that way hehe. I do know a few people using expansion chassis with PT so that should be OK.
Neat, I just want you to be a little paranoid about chassis, even if it's really a only Mac problem right now. I wish we all knew what was going on. I run one or sometimes two Sonnet chassis (not for Avid cards) off my MBP, and with a dock and wired Ethernet and cables to interfaces etc. it's a wiring mess and the fragility/ease of accidentally disconnecting USB-C cables has pissed me off. Credit to Sonnet for trying to fix that at least at their end of the cable. I badly want a next gen Mac Pro and no more Thunderbolt chassis.

Lots of hardware vendors are having supply problems. RME has had multiple supply issues, and ended up having to discontinue the flagship UFX+ due they said to Thunderbolt chip supplies... and then I saw a dealer claimed to had some the other day so go figure. Tempting to buy a spare.
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  #10  
Old 01-14-2023, 11:10 AM
MarkH MarkH is offline
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Default Re: Can someone advise me on a brand new HDX setup?

Get an Antelope Audio Galaxy 64 and use Thunderbolt 3. I've had mine for 18 months and it's rock solid. You can go as low as 32 buffer Core Audio with 1.5ms round trip latency. It does support up to HDX2 128 channels if you really want to go that route. You'll run into similar issues as Focusrite where ADC will be off by a few samples. Antelope Control Panel lets you manually adjust HDX ADC so at least you can fix it directly instead of inside Pro Tools, something Focusrite does not offer. I think the issue is some 3rd party companies with analog *and* digital I/O on their interface are emulating Avid HD I/O 16x16 Digital, not HD I/O 16x16 Analog, so if you are using HDX with the interface's analog converters, the additional ~20 samples is not accounted for and needs to be fixed manually. Similar to what you pointed out if using MTRX Studio ADAT ports and you have another converter hanging off the MTRX, there is no way for Pro Tools to know what that added latency is from that ADAT converter and you'll have to adjust in Pro Tools > Setup > I/O > Hardware Latency. On another note, I love that Cubase/Nuendo, Logic, Studio One, include Ping utility in the External Hardware plugin and it precisely calculates the latency for you.
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