Solutions and Workarounds For Accel TDM Studios To Use Pro Tools 11

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by Bill Denton

I don't know if this would be at all feasible, but it just hit me as a possibility...

I note you're a Mac guy and I'm a Windows guy. I'll tell you what I would try in Windows, and maybe you can "translate" it into Mac...

Go into Device Manager. That is a part of Windows that shows you every device connected to your computer. It allows you to add or upgrade drivers, but more importantly, it allows you to disable and enable devices.

If your TDM cards show up in Device Manager, disable them. Not "uninstall", just "disable".

If you can't get this far, my dastardly scheme will not work, so sorry, fuggedaboutit...

If you can get past the red writing , reboot your computer, start PT 11, and see if PT gets all whiney about "can't find hardware" or whatever.

In Pro Tools, try to set your hardware device to your built-in Mac hardware.

If that works, you can experiment with some other configurations and see if you can find anything that works for you.

And if smoke starts pouring out of your Mac, this post was written by someone who hijacked my user name....

In the vein of "smoke pouring out", if the above works, you might also try having a TDM card and an HD Native card in your machine, and alternately disabling/enabling one and the other. And again...if smoke starts pouring out of your Mac...

I do this regularly w my HDN system and you don't even have to restart. Just disable or enable what you need in the device manager, click out of it and launch PT.

[Brandonx1]

I hate to say this but what about that waves grid thingy. They say you can use 32 I/o with pt11 and a blue interface. You would just be switching the playback engine and the cable connected to the TDM cards to the waves grid thing. Seems fast and functional. Only thing is it might cost a few grand.

[docric]

Originally Posted by relaxo

The Dilemma:
... It's certain that hundreds (thousands?) of studios can't get rid of their Accel workstations in the foreseeable future. One category is studios supported by visiting engineers with non-AAX'ed plugins in their sessions. How are rooms that must keep their Accel cards planning to run Pro Tools 11 in any real sense? What are/might be your solutions?

The Possible Solutions:
(Solutions 2-5 preface) Professionals studios are built around a high quality multichannel interface(s) and are usually very expensive. They are connected to Accel cards. To operate with full efficiency and normality, these interfaces are wired into the patchbays of each room. These wired up installations and the interfaces are both extremely expensive and many studios have 2-10 rooms. PT 11 cannot run through this IO interface and patchbay if connected to Accel cards, either by TDM or Coreaudio! So what do we do? What are you going to do? Help!

This is EXACTLY where I'm/we're at here. Just finished demo of PT11 & loved it. Jumped on it as much as I could & couldn't even get it to pant! Using a ton of VI's/rewired stuff/live tracking/etc.. simultaneously & it was rock solid.
I've stayed on PT8HD for stability's sake... had no need/desire for 9/10... but the smoothness of running 11 actually inspired me to compose quite a bit ... hasn't happened in quite a while.

1)The easiest and by far the best solution is for Avid to rewrite some code and enable PT 11 to send CoreAudio through Avid interfaces. (Logic Pro can use Accel>interface as 8 channel CoreAudio, but PT can't?)

It's lunacy like this that just pushes me "over-the-edge" with Digi/Avid as a company... [brief Rant over!]

The Curse:
PT 11 will not output through the the studio's multi-channel interfaces connected to the Accel cards, not even using Coreaudio and certainly not, of course, using TDM.

2 caveats: 1) I moved to "Windows-ville" a few years back ("cost of living" was just waaaaay too high for me in the Big City of Macopolis), AND 2) I have not tried this solution yet.
We've been using 3rd party interfaces (mytek) for as long as I've been using Pro Tools. Similar to the Lynx, the Myteks have DUAL interface cards... what I'm hoping is that PT11 will "see" the Firewire connection to the interfaces and allow PT11(Native) to communicate with them... I'll likely have to disable the Accel drivers in Dev Mgr as Bill & gdom referenced above... For now, PT11 will only be used for composing (and possibly some minimal mixing), I'll continue to do all our "real" work in 10.3.6/TDM... eventually, the plan will be to add an HDX card when everyone's on board w/AAX64 plugs.

It's been my experience over the years that I just have to try stuff and see if the million nuances of each system I use allow for stuff like this to work. Unfortunately, it often seems expensive in both TIME & $$. (3 FW iface cards will be approx.$1k...OUCH !)
Worst case scenario is I keep working in TDM (8HD) on our A rig & just use PT11 in our pre-pro room.

It amazes me how complicated this move appears... I wasn't on PT when the "Mix" to "HD" rollover took place... was it the same deal? worse? better?
-OK, done "thinking out loud" !

[Matt_G]

Originally Posted by relaxo

The Dilemma:

The Curse:
PT 11 will not output through the the studio's multi-channel interfaces connected to the Accel cards, not even using Coreaudio and certainly not, of course, using TDM.


The Possible Solutions:
1)The easiest and by far the best solution is for Avid to rewrite some code and enable PT 11 to send CoreAudio through Avid interfaces. (Logic Pro can use Accel>interface as 8 channel CoreAudio, but PT can't?) Avid say's it's not worth it to spend the time and money on this, so we must accept this and move on. (I do not expect Avid to rewrite to enable full TDM on Accel in PT11, just CoreAudio via Accel.)

This most certainly would be possible, see some of my other recent posts on this subject. Essentially though, it is definitely possible to write the code for PT's 10/11 to see the Digidesign Core/Accel cards and the attached interfaces for use with PT's Native. They've done it before with PT's 7 LE (without DSP/TDM plugs of course) and I tried it out back then with success. Since then they disabled that functionality and have never re-introduced it. My guess is that they are forcing the hand of the user base to invest in PT|HD Native cards or HDX systems.

Does anyone have any other suggestions on how to get 4+ channels of PT11 IO going on a Mac Pro with Accel cards inside? And what are/might be your solutions in your Mac Pros with Accel cards??

What I ended up doing is keeping my old PCI HD3 ACCEL cards & Digital 192 I/O with PT's 9 HD on an older Quad core Hackintosh as my archival system/second workstation (back up system, and soon to be Studio B system). For now it's used for digital metering only. Then I built a new Hexacore PC/Hackintosh with 2 x Lynx AES16e cards for use with PT's 10/11 HD Native. Yes this did involve re-doing the wiring, which I simply did with custom Lynx breakout over Cat6E to XLR into my Forssell MADA-2a converters. Now I have forward & backwards compatibilty, on separate machines which has it's advantages because I can use both simultaneously if I desire and also have my assistant using it as a second DAW if Studio A is busy.

[relaxo]

Anyone else?

[relaxo]

I can't believe this is not a massive widespread catastrophe. No one has any concern or insight here?

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by relaxo

I can't believe this is not a massive widespread catastrophe. No one has any concern or insight here?

I bought an HD Native upgrade, discounted from my dealer. I then sold that PTHD asset (back when you could). I sold my old TDM cards. I bought a couple of UAD cards. The cost was actually quite low all totaled.

UA got my money, not Avid. Their loss.

Yes, my workflow has changed radically, but I am making it work. Native plugs throughout tracking/overdubbing, then I use UA for mixing.

Only tough part? Overdubbing into a finished mix. But then I just do an offline bounce and overdub onto that. Works perfectly.

Now, if you need to replicate your TDM workflow, then HDX (and possibly switching to different plugins) is what you'll need to do. I found another way.