HD Accel plug-in counts Digi please explain.

[Dutchmuzik]

So I just invested in a HD3 Accel system and have discovered that one of my old sessions from an HD3 system won't play because of "not enough DSP" . Now how is this possible ? I thought this is supposed to be about 50% more powerful. I know that there are different chips on the Accel cards but it seems that the 3 last chips on each card are "duds" Why are these chips on this card. Why not 2 original and 7 "new" ones, what are these chips for ? Are they a cost cutting measure ? After discovering this I did a test and the following list of plug-ins does NOT work on these 6 open chips on my 2 Accel Cards.

1.Autotune
2.Virus Indigo
3.EchoFarm
4.Eventide Reverb
5.Princeton Digital 2016 Reverb
6.Eventide H949 Harmonizer
7.Bruno/Reso

There might be more but this is from the plug-ins I own. Digi can you please explain the function of these chips ?

[Vaphoron]

So, all those plugins work on the Accel DSPs, but if you allocate those Accel DSPs, the first two slots on the Accel card which are the old DSPs, won't load those plugins? Did I get that right? I have noticed some weird things but I will have to test this out when I get a chance.

[Dutchmuzik]

Post deleted by Dutchmuzik

[Dutchmuzik]

Done some more research. It looks like the above mentioned plug-ins don't work on the last 3 Chips of any Accel card, Yes that's unbelievable but true. It seems that all these plug-ins need the off chip memory that is only on the original HD Process Chips and the 4 Accel chips on the new Accel cards. There are 3 Accel chips with no off chip memory. Digi why is this ? Is there an advantage to this ? I now have a session open with 6 Accel chips empty but I can NOT load any of the 7 above mentioned plug-ins. Are there more plug-ins that behave this way ? Is this lesser chip purely a cost saving move ? I would like to know how this card is "almost 50% more powerful than a HD Process card" according to your literature. The main reason for my TDM system is to be able to run the cool TDM plug-ins like Eventide and EchoFarm that are not available as RTAS plug-ins but now I can only run 6 instances on a card as before I could run 9, seems 50% LESS powerful.

[Dutchmuzik]

Make that 10 plug-ins that don't work!

8.Soundtoys/WaveMechanics SoundBlender does NOT work. Another one of my favorite TDM plug-ins.
9.Digidesign Extra Long Delay II
10.Cosmonaut Voice

[Vaphoron]

I was thinking it was just an issue of plugins not loading onto the older chips at first but now I understand what you mean. I have to say I have only run into that problem about once or twice but its really annoying that we took a step backwards. One of the coolest thing about the HD cards was that all the chips were the same.

[Dutchmuzik]

I guess what I don't understand is why the off chip memory was left of those 3 chips. I can understand the 2 HD Process explanation of running the mixer and engine etc etc. But that the other 7 chips are the same 220Mhz but 3 are without the 512k off chip memory. It seems that any plug-in that does some form of delay function uses this. Is there an advantage to leaving this of ? Or is this purely a cost issue ?

[GL]

I guess this stuff has just changed my mind about upgrading my HD2 to Accel before the June 30th deadline -- I don't want any limitations, even while making gains in other areas.

[Camilo Orozco]

I guess this stuff has just changed my mind about upgrading my HD2 to Accel before the June 30th deadline -- I don't want any limitations, even while making gains in other areas.

Second that. I prefer to pick a used "old" process card at ebay and save $1.500.00...

[debolish]

Or just adding another Mix Farm to my Mix3 system.