HDX Consensus

[shawnhonsberger]

Hi Everyone,

I've done a lot of reading on the topic, but I'd love to hear a consensus on the strengths and weaknesses of the HDX card. I've heard about issues with ADC and latency, and I'd like to understand what the issues are and how people work around them before I invest in HDX.

I have a MTRX Studio with TB3 now. I've considered Carbon for the HDX workflow, but I'd rather not have more than one actual interface if I can avoid it.

I love the idea of the Hybrid Engine workflow for tracking, thus my reaching out regarding HDX.

Worth it? Not worth it? What are your thoughts?

Thank you!

[LDS]

I doubt you will find much in terms of a consensus. Bugs and tech issues aside, is the hybrid workflow actually beneficial? Or was it really just a move Avid needed to make to try and keep 12 year old HDX DSP vaguely relevant in an age of rapidly advancing CPU technology?


It is worth taking the hybrid engine for a spin before you commit to dropping a fortune on a HDX card. Personally, I fall in the latter. The hybrid engine wasn't an improvement in workflow to me. It was the thing that caused me to ditch HDX entirely...

[Will Russell]

Good morning!

I love my HDX system. I'm primarily a recording studio. I love being able to not worry about latency when tracking or overdubbing into a big mature mix. I haven't had any latency issues except some time ago when tracking with a session with a lot of complicated signal routing. Haven't had latency issues in years since that.

[BScout]

I find Hybrid useful to use your digilink hardware through the connection while having all the voices of native.
For tracking, I only use HDX (classic) mode.

Tracking with Hybrid mode (DSP channels, lightning bolt on) I dislike immensely. Too many compromises and too much hassle. I'd rather switch to classic HDX mode.

So I mix in hybrid and track in HDX classic.

[Will Russell]

Originally Posted by BScout

Tracking with Hybrid mode (DSP channels, lightning bolt on) I dislike immensely. Too many compromises and too much hassle. I'd rather switch to classic HDX mode.

So I mix in hybrid and track in HDX classic.

Hi,
I trust your opinion having read your responses all over the DUC for years.
What have your experiences been recording with hybrid to have made it not worth your time?

[BScout]

Originally Posted by Will Russell

Hi,
I trust your opinion having read your responses all over the DUC for years.
What have your experiences been recording with hybrid to have made it not worth your time?

First there's the plugin situation between native and DSP. I'm very used to enabling native on DSP channels if I need them through the old trick. Hybrid DSP doesn't allow this. Plus, some DSP plugins won't run on Hybrid DSP tracks (the ones I refer to as 50/50 plugins; they are AAX DSP but they also use some native resources -- Nugen, for instance, makes a few of these)

Second there's the path to output. Every track on the way to output needs to be in DSP mode. I think Avid may have now made this "intelligent" and interrogates the path and flips them all now but it didn't used to. And then we loop back up to problem 1 above -- any plugins on that path non-DSP get disabled or if you hit a hybrid plugin, the whole session can crash. I have sat in with clients and an engineer where they were "let's put the artist in the booth to take a quick overdub", throw a channel into DSP and watch Pro Tools blink out of existence.

None of those things are an issue with classic HDX (where you can also mix DSP and native plugins.)

[Guy McDude]

Originally Posted by BScout

So I mix in hybrid and track in HDX classic.

this.....

[Darryl Ramm]

And workflows for fix-up/rerecoding/punch in if you need to do that? Can you pick up the mix in process you have that needs this and get stuff done OK staying in hybrid mode or are there problems?

[Will Russell]

Originally Posted by BScout

First there's the plugin situation between native and DSP. I'm very used to enabling native on DSP channels if I need them through the old trick. Hybrid DSP doesn't allow this. Plus, some DSP plugins won't run on Hybrid DSP tracks (the ones I refer to as 50/50 plugins; they are AAX DSP but they also use some native resources -- Nugen, for instance, makes a few of these)

Second there's the path to output. Every track on the way to output needs to be in DSP mode. I think Avid may have now made this "intelligent" and interrogates the path and flips them all now but it didn't used to. And then we loop back up to problem 1 above -- any plugins on that path non-DSP get disabled or if you hit a hybrid plugin, the whole session can crash. I have sat in with clients and an engineer where they were "let's put the artist in the booth to take a quick overdub", throw a channel into DSP and watch Pro Tools blink out of existence.

None of those things are an issue with classic HDX (where you can also mix DSP and native plugins.)

Yup. I must generally have simpler sessions than you. I just DSP safe my master fader and reverb returns and generally have no other issues. Tracking in HDX Classic definitely solves the issues you describe.

[LDS]

Another issue I always encountered with HDX in hybrid mode was totally cooked delay compensation. Mixing in Pro Tools with a coreaudio interface would give me beautifully synchronised two pips on printed audio in the session. HDX in classic mode would do the same with some blue mode use. The hybrid engine was a total mess, with two pips flamming all over the place.

All this stuff absolutely adheres to a laws of diminishing returns. I love using HDX in classic mode, but it also suffers from its own diminishing returns. 256 voices per HDX card, along with changes to how those voices are allocated. A native plugin on a 5.1 aux channel will chew up 2.5% of the available voices. Toss a Nugen DSP plugin on the aux instead, and there goes 2.5% of your available DSP. It's the weird conundrum that the Hybrid engine was meant to solve. 256 voices of HDX Classic processing is really a non-event for modern, powerful native systems running at 32 sample buffers. You should really try switching out HDX for a decent, low latency native interface to do some thorough testing. You will probably be shocked to see how limited HDX is. Probably even more so, now that the 2024.3 update allows Pro Tools to use both P & E cores in the system.

The only place I have really found HDX to hold its own anymore is in sessions that both stretch the voice numbers towards 2048 of the hybrid engine, whilst also requiring low latency monitoring. It is just a shame it hasn't be executed very neatly.