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No Apogee AD-DAx firmware update for PT 9


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Hi all! We´ve just updated our Pro Tools HD 3 PCIe to HD Native 9 and we´ve found that Apogee didn´t update its firmware to work with new Avid protocol. Yeap: looks horrible for us. We really have big investment in Apogee converters and what is more important; we are really use to these interfaces. PT 9 recognizes them but these doesn´t receive neither transmit any audio. We connect them through X-HD cards...

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That totally sucks. You should take this over to the Digidesign User Conference:

http://duc.avid.com/

I'm positive that if more people will complain, Apogee will update their firmware (or maybe there's a driver issue that can overcome the problem).

I did update to PT 9 and actually have enjoyed it -- like getting back on a bicycle after a ten-year absence. Pulled up a bunch of my old PT6 and PT7 sessions, and all was well. The big problem for me was updating all the old plug-ins, but those are now settled down. These were very simple sessions (no more than 12 tracks), and I'm just using it as native at the moment.

--Marc W.

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Thx Mark; you are true; it really sucks. We were promoting Apogee here in Madrid because of its great AD-DAs. But now they reveal being more concern about sales than about keeping customers updated. They try to sell us their new converters by the simple fact of skipping an update. What the want us to be? Programmers? We are artist. They should keep us updated to let us earn enough to get on buying their products. I can tell these are really rude manners. I wont deal with people that put me and my firm in this kind of position. We are OFF Apogee

:((

I´ll talk about it all in the Digi forum. That is a nice idea. And talking about Avid, yep, the Native seems to run really fine. I just wonder which is going to be the place of PT in the mixing enviroment. Now we are limited with no DSPs and no TDMs. How can I mix a 160 track sesion for 5.1????

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Hi John; If your system is HD Native based you cannot use TDM; just RTAS. You can still use Accel cards but has no sense really. Limitations of PT 9 concerning tracks and voices are really a step back talking about big productions. With TDM HD systems you just add more and more Accel cards in order to get more proccesing, building PT HD3, HD6... HD15.... (using expansion chasis like MAgma). You can reach 160 voices. Now we will be limited to 64 voices. That is one 5,1 channel sended to 5 5,1 aux buses :))

of course there´s still the HD non Native choice. I´m just wondering if these systems will we soon replaced or not...

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Hi John; If your system is HD Native based you cannot use TDM; just RTAS. You can still use Accel cards but has no sense really. Limitations of PT 9 concerning tracks and voices are really a step back talking about big productions. With TDM HD systems you just add more and more Accel cards in order to get more proccesing, building PT HD3, HD6... HD15.... (using expansion chasis like MAgma). You can reach 160 voices. Now we will be limited to 64 voices. That is one 5,1 channel sended to 5 5,1 aux buses :))

of course there´s still the HD non Native choice. I´m just wondering if these systems will we soon replaced or not...

I wonder this too.  I guess I think that Avid WILL keep making at least some hardware in the TDM model, even if they abandon TDM.  But this hardware will be very expensive and thus used by a declining number of people.  It seems like the direction of the industry is towards all-native for everything.  Bummer about the Apogee non-update.  Are they working on one?

phil p

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi Phil. I really don´t know. Guess they aren´t. By the way I wonder if the rest of interface builders have upgraded their firmware; like Antelope, Prism, etc. Does anybody have experiences to share??

I'm using an RME FireFace 800 w/Pro Tools 9 with the Complete Production Toolkit 2 added. This supports almost all the features that the HD Native (with the Avid cards) installation does, such as the potential of 192 voices at 48kHz, etc.

Initially, I was using a MOTU 828mkII interface but recently upgraded to the RME. For HD sync playback I've installed a BlackMagic Design Intensity Pro video card. It's a shame Avid can't support the same video cards for Pro Tools that they do for Media Composer -- such as the Matrox MX02 Mini (since we already have one to use with both Avid and Final Cut Pro), but, I guess Avid's concept of integration is much different than mine.

I still think our SADiE system sounds a bit better, but Pro Tools has the edge when it comes to track count, plug-in support, and automation. I'm currently posting a feature with it.

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It would seem to make sense that Apogee would update the firmware on the X-HD cards if a solution is feasible, but my bet is that they are probably working on "X-TB" or whatever named Thunderbolt cards. Avid too, is likely abandoning the DigiLink and MiniLink architecture and moving to direct Thunderbolt interfaces. Avid already showed a working Lightpeak (before it was named Thunderbolt by Apple) HD interface several months ago during the Lightpeak technology demonstration. The Native Card is likely a temporary stopgap measure to allow support of the existing DigiLink user base and to provide HD systems for people who absolutely need to buy HD systems now. In the studio, we are running X-HD cards but are very cautious to change anything at all until absolutely necessary. In fact, still running PT 6. We lost the first job ever, a music gig, to another studio that happened to have a more powerful HD system than ours, a client that had heavy plugins on their session I guess. Definitely looking forward to the new Thunderbolt solutions from both Avid and Apogee.

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Guest Carretero

It would seem to make sense that Apogee would update the firmware on the X-HD cards if a solution is feasible, but my bet is that they are probably working on "X-TB" or whatever named Thunderbolt cards. Avid too, is likely abandoning the DigiLink and MiniLink architecture and moving to direct Thunderbolt interfaces. Avid already showed a working Lightpeak (before it was named Thunderbolt by Apple) HD interface several months ago during the Lightpeak technology demonstration. The Native Card is likely a temporary stopgap measure to allow support of the existing DigiLink user base and to provide HD systems for people who absolutely need to buy HD systems now. In the studio, we are running X-HD cards but are very cautious to change anything at all until absolutely necessary. In fact, still running PT 6. We lost the first job ever, a music gig, to another studio that happened to have a more powerful HD system than ours, a client that had heavy plugins on their session I guess. Definitely looking forward to the new Thunderbolt solutions from both Avid and Apogee.

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Hi Tom; can you provide any link in orden to learn more about Thunderbolt?

Thx!!!

I don't have any industry insider scoop or anything, this is just my conjecture. Here are some images from the past Lighpeak technology demonstration, that show's an Avid HD interface hooked up directly to a MacBook Pro via Lightpeak (now Thunderbolt).

IDF-LightPeak-8197_575px.jpg

AnandTech - Intel Light Peak

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Thx Tom! And sorry for my long silences: a lot of shooting here round Madrid. Hope you're also having nicejobs in the States.

I knew nothing about Thunderbolt but I have used something similar in MADI format with apogee and rme converters. Mixing live music with DIGICO míxers and recording them vía MADI. Very smart to tell the truth.

And yes I'll bet the future will come this way though I keep asking apogee for support, as far as the AD DAs have been such massive sold

Now that we have spend couple moths working with HD Native systems I'll like to tell u all that are not pro at all. They may stop a bouncing mix because different transmisión issues, plugins may fail regularly, what else? Please any more experiences with HD Native? We keep an studio working with HD tdm and we are not going to grow Native anymore

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...Please any more experiences with HD Native? We keep an studio working with HD tdm and we are not going to grow Native anymore

Although I'm technically not running what Avid's calling HD Native (with Avid interface and PCIe card), I'm running essentially the same thing with full native (i.e. third party interface). However, with the Complete Production Toolkit 2 I have almost all the same features as HD Native. Avid has stated that it is identical in features, but I've found one or two minor differences -- other than that, same feature set.

I'm having good success with the system. It's running on a Mac Pro 4-core machine (two dual core processors) and plenty of memory -- 8gb up until last night when I maxed the machine out to 16gb.

No crashes -- and plugins work great. I have a full feature film (about a 106 minute timeline) loaded into one session to which I keep adding tracks and P.T. handles it with aplomb. Including main tracks, hidden tracks where I hide dups or other edits, and sub-mix stems, etc., I'm at above 70 tracks with well over half of them stereo. I'm also running an HD video track in the session. Oh, and lots of plug-ins, multi-band E.Q.s, compressors, several rebverbs, (including several instances of two different convolution reverbs), and various other plugins -- most tracks have a set of at least two or three plug-ins, along with several sends. If I stop to think about it I have to say I'm a little surprised that a fully native system can handle so much, so gracefully.

Early on I had a crashing issue under a given, repeatable circumstance. The combination of a MOTU 828MK2 interface driver and BlackMagic Design video card driver caused a crash when I brought up the "System" window within Pro Tools, other than that it was rock solid. With the change to an RME Fireface 800 interface (for quality reasons), even that little anomaly is gone.

The only other crashing issue I've experienced was with one particular plug-in. It was a mono to stereo converter, from a not-well-known company that I was trying out. It acted sluggish from the beginning and, when trying to adjust it, crashed the system. When it demonstrated the same results twice, I purged the trial plug-in and all is good.

All other plug-ins, from several of the well-known makers, are running great.

While there are things I don't care for in Pro Tools -- abysmal file management, to mention a glaring one -- I must say that the stability I'm experiencing with an all native system is stellar.

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The only other crashing issue I've experienced was with one particular plug-in. It was a mono to stereo converter, from a not-well-known company that I was trying out. It acted sluggish from the beginning and, when trying to adjust it, crashed the system. When it demonstrated the same results twice, I purged the trial plug-in and all is good.

Wow, that sounds bad. You might try the Waves PS22 "Stereomaker" plug-in, which I've used with radio commercials and docos that (for reasons beyond my control) had a mono music bed, into which I had to place a mono VO track. Widening out the track with their comb filtering system gave me a "middle" into which I could drop the VO without clashing as much with the music, and it only took a few seconds (vs. trying to carve it out with an EQ notch or something). The nice thing about the Waves mono -> stereo is that it doesn't screw with phase or sound too "clangy," very much like the old Orban box from the 1970s and 1980s.

--Marc W.

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Wow, that sounds bad. You might try the Waves PS22 "Stereomaker" plug-in, which I've used with radio commercials and docos that (for reasons beyond my control) had a mono music bed, into which I had to place a mono VO track. Widening out the track with their comb filtering system gave me a "middle" into which I could drop the VO without clashing as much with the music, and it only took a few seconds (vs. trying to carve it out with an EQ notch or something). The nice thing about the Waves mono -> stereo is that it doesn't screw with phase or sound too "clangy," very much like the old Orban box from the 1970s and 1980s.

I appreciate the suggestion, Marc, but unfortunately, PS22 is one of the few Waves plugins that is "TDM only," and I'm running native. The one that is no longer welcome on my system is the NuGen Stereoizer. It seems to have a lot of good reviews and comments -- it may not have made the transition to PT9 gracefully.

BTW, in the full disclosure department, I had a crash on Saturday. This is with spending many hours a day, every day, on the machine. I was turning on a whole boatload of tracks at once, probably "outran" it. That's the only one I can recall that wasn't connected to a specific setup (both of which I have since fixed).

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