Carbon Lite?

[Skytouch]

Has Avid considered a Carbon-lite product that sits in between Carbon and the new Mbox Studio? I would like Hybrid HDX functionality with say 2 preamps, 8 line inputs and 1 or 2 headphone outputs. Like my Omni, this would be well-scaled for a small project studio rather than for recording bands where extra pre's and headphone outputs are needed.

I checked Avid Ideascale but it seems idle. If someone from Avid can chime in or direct me to an active feature request site I'll much appreciate it.

Sky

[JFreak]

Carbon is HDX Lite. I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Skytouch]

I don't have high hopes for this but it doesn't hurt to ask. Omni for me has been the perfect project studio interface. I've only needed a second headphone output once (for an experiment) and 2 mic pre's is adequate for my solo projects. So shaving hundreds from Carbon by simply removing some I/O from the same chassis would work for me; similar to Apollo X8 vs X6.

Sky

[AxeDye]

Wouldn’t the 8pre unit be a lite Carbon, can’t it be used standalone?

[dominicperry]

Originally Posted by AxeDye

Wouldn’t the 8pre unit be a lite Carbon, can’t it be used standalone?

No, the Carbon Pre is only for use in connection with a Carbon. It has no DSP of its own.

Dominic

[Skytouch]

To add a wrinkle, yesterday Avid announced its decision to EOL HD Native Thunderbolt Core, which follows discontinuation of the core PCIe card a few years ago. This further sunsets Omni on old and new Mac platforms. Now, staying with Avid hardware means MTRX, Carbon (HDX enabled) or MBOX Studio (native).

All are nice products for their intended purposes. Carbon is great except for the cost of I/O capacity that is not needed in a small ITB production suite. Two preamps with excellent single-user monitoring like Omni has been perfect for this application. Carbon-lite would simply bring HDX Hybrid Engine and future-proofing to what Omni has offered. The Carbon-lite version I envision might cost perhaps $2500 - 3k; not cheap but a fair savings from the current $4200 cost for Carbon.

That's about all I can say about this - hopefully someone from Avid is taking notes for future product releases.

Regards,
Sky