Hi Charles !
I first wanted to thank you for all your articles that are very helpfull. Then, when you moved to the Hd system, except from the improvement of dsp sharing, do you notice a really difference in sound (i mean better hig end, low end, wider, and still at 44,1) ? Do you own your own PT Hd ? And last question, don't you think that the price of all these plugs for tdm are really too much expensive ?

I'm not Charles, but my HD rig sounds better than my Mix+ rig did. Better converters, no more dithering between shared chips... Money well spent.

I'm not French either, but I wouldn't mind swapping citizenship. Anybody want to help a brother out? Je parle un peu de Français.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by juniorhifikit
[B]I'm not French either, but I wouldn't mind swapping citizenship.
----------------------------------------------------------

unbelievable statement. wow

United States:

no healthcare system
failing educational system
rapidly approaching overt fascism
rampant ignorance, obesity and intolerance
cultural void

I could go on and on, but I'm already WAY off topic.

Yep...

If I could afford to move to Canada even...

I just upgraded from Mix Plus to HD and all my sessions do sound better in HD.

Anyone have an opinion as to whether the PT 196 D/A sounds better/different than the 96k?

I remember reading some "white paper" type thing from the designer of the 192 A/D. It's completely different and superior to the 96K interface as far as the analog side of things go. And that's where all the big difference lies.

Then the mix sysetms must have gotten something right. I would be upset if playing a Mix project back on an HD system sounded bad. I'm perfectly willing to have my work sound better coming back through better converters. On the other hand, if it sounded bad coming back through HD, that would mean that I had been enticed in to making bad mix decisions by the crummy 888/24 converters, and the inferior performance of the Mix System.

Luckily, that desn't seem to be the case. This seems to be great news for us Mix users, don't you think?

Steve

Sounds awful. Get out while there's still time.

When considering this question, I think you have to break the system down to at least three basic components.

1. The A/Ds
2. The internal DSP handling
3. The D/As

Any of those factors could be responsible for a percieved sonic improvement, except in the case of importing a session recorded with Mix using other A/Ds. In that case, it could only be #2 or #3.

1. If the A/Ds are better, it's good news all along the food chain. That one's easy to see. The benefit is captured everywhere.

2. If the internal DSP handling is better, it's good news everywhere as well, unless you move the files to another platform for mixing, in which case, the result would be reduced to any benefit imparted to the recording due to more clarity while monitoring. The benefit is captured primarily when mixing internally.

3. If the D/As are better, the only benefit would be in monitoring, unless using an analog mixing or summing device. Mixing ITB would capture none of the improvement, except due to potenially better sonic choices because of improved monitoring.

The first, obvious quantifier would be to play HD recorded files in Mix. You could also route a stereo bus AES output from Mix into HD, and A/B the D/As. Or do a BTD on both, of the same session.

All interesting IMO. I will say this. Based upon what I've heard so far, which involves lots of songs from various producers and engineers that were recorded in Pro Tools being mixed on my non Pro Tools DAW, I believe much of the improvement being enjoyed by HD users is in the D/As. Some probably in the internal DSP handling. Not as much in the A/Ds as seems to be assumed. At least IMO.

Seeing as I pull PT files out of PT midstream, I immediately can rule out all of the D/A and most of the internal DSP. So what I will mostly hear on my system when comparing projects I get from Mix vs HD is the A/D converters.

I don't hear much difference between well clocked 888/24s vs 192s. In fact, in some cases I have preferred the sound of Mix based sessions as compared to HD based sessions from the same person. Weird, huh? I was pretty surprised, as that was not my expectation.

Please note that in no way am I saying HD can't, won't or shouldn't produce better end to end results than Mix. What I am saying is that I don't think people are breaking down the possible sources of improvement, then considering which ones are fully retained in the end, and how to maximize how much of the improvement actually reaches the end listener/consumer.

A question. If the D/As were to prove to be much of the reason that a Mix session sounds better when played on HD, is that always a good thing? Is that causing the engineer to get satisfied with his sounds sooner than he used to, not because they're actually recorded better, but because the DA's make them sound better than they did before?

Just a question. And it's not really just a question about PT. Do your monitors sound too good? Are they making you get sonically happy, sooner than you should?

Merde! The fat, ignorant, uncultured Americans are coming! Quick get me a one way ticket to Paris immediately!

We slender, educated, cultured people must stick together! And we shall go to France! Maybe we can stay at Johnny Depp's house?

Brian,

As far as I can determine, the move to the HD chipset didn't involve that major of a change in technology. I'm not an electronic engineer, but when I read the HD specs they claimed that the each chip was 25% faster and there were 9 instead fo 6 and that each of the chips had the larger ram memory, so they could all run all of the plugs. That doesn't imply a radical improvement to me. I think the data stream is identical at least down to the 24th bit. The improvement comes in the true 48 bit mix summing bus of HD compared to the Mix system limitation of (I think) 56 faders, at which point the system adds another DSP chip and sums the remaining faders into the mix at 24 bit resolution. That places the differences in the two mixes about 140db down. I'm not sure about the DSP differences with HD Accel.

So I stand by my theory that the differences are mainly in the D/A converters on the HD system, and that that is good news for mix owners. If HD were revealing flaws in my work that had been masked by my mix systems poor reproduction, then I would RUSH to upgrade. Since EVERYONE says Mix mixes sound better when played through HD, I think it is a good report on the Mix system.

I would be interested in comparing the same mix from both systems, through a common D/A converter. I think it would be extremely hard to discern a difference.

Charles, what are your thoughts on this?

Steve

Yeah, and not everybody who upgrades to HD will find 'upgrading' to 192 conversion necessary. I don't.

A few posters in this thread have mentioned upgrading to 192's, which would most likely alter what they hear a bit more than would DSP changes between Mix and HD - especially if they were used to 888's (even "well clocked") or the like before...

Having a Mix system to quickly A/B with HD would be telling, but only if the same DA was used with each rig. Wish I could keep Mix for a week to compare.

Also, the ADC that is here in 6.4 is only available to hd. If ADC works well that may be a deciding factor in sonics as well.

music,

Judging by your post above, it looks like you're not aware that ADC would have no effect on the outcome of an A/B with HD and Mix.

Delay compensation can be done manually in Mix (has been for years now), so ADC in HD would sound no different than manual DC in Mix.

The gripe people have with DC in Mix is that it's heavily time consuming and often innacurate. We shall see how accurate it is in HD.

I'll go even further than that. I'll go on record saying that delay compensation is not that big a deal for me. I do a lot of R&B stuff where the sounds are coming from samples. A 3 sample delay from a P3 eq makes little difference in the sound of my mixes. The Drum/Squish set up works perfectly if you want to use paralell compression. Even on a live kit there is little difference in a small bit of latency, unless you are trying to add the sound back in with itself. Thats really where the problem lies. If you want to do that, then you're going have to compensate for the different processing times.

Steve

Jax,

You said. "The gripe people have with DC in Mix is that it's heavily time consuming and often innacurate." I agree it is time consuming on the mix (I am on mix now) and it can be inaccurate if not done properly. It seems that the automatic funtion, if adc is done correctly, could help sonics by taking away any inaccuracies and could enhance the PT experience by letting you get on with mixing instead of time consuming manual compensation. Just an observation.

Keith

Music,

We are in agreement.

Another thing is that some tracks benefit from being slid where they sound best in relationship to other tracks. The snare track I worked on last night comes to mind. It sounds better pulled about 60 samples ahead of the drum overheads.

I hope track nudging will still be possible in HD, and think it probably will be although I've seen no reports that it is.

I think the most significant difference between Mix and HD is the converters. I recently had to use Mix converters on a project, and after a few years of Apogees and the HD 192, the difference was palpable. With Apogees and the 192 I think you are at a level of quality at which taste will determine your choices. The Mix converters, to my ears anyway, had too much of that "digitized" sound that was made so famous by ADATs.

Not that you couldn't make a great record on any of these.

OTOH, when I switched to HD and imported my Mix sessions in, it was hard to say if there was any significant difference. I mix ITB mostly, so D/A is not a factor, except for monitoring. In that regard, I switched from Apogee outputs to what I hear as the increased accuracy and clarity of the 192.

Anyhow, it works for me.

-R

i switched about a week ago. i use my HEDD for stereo DA. [both with mix and now with HD]

i just have to say one of the first things i noticed is that it sounded better, i thought that it was just my excitement of finally getting my HD system and having the ENDLESS amounts of DSP of an HD3 accel lol.

but i still have to say it sounds better.

but i should also say that when i switched from a 15 inch display to a 23 inch display i thought that everything sounded clearer, larger, wider, more open and focused. and easyer on my ears.

Thank you for your answers.
Has anyone a comment on the tdm plug ins price ?