ProTools Native vs. ProTools HD in 2018

HD or HDX?
I'm keeping my HD3 Accel & am not craving for HDX, as of now. Unless someone here convinces me otherwise the only thing I might end up doing is stay tracking on existing system (PT HD 10) & maybe buy & mix in PT (Ultimate?) Native.

HDX has been awesome for me.  Glad I finally made the jump from HD to HDX.

96 i/o - flawless
delay compensation - flawless
unlimited busses - AWESOME (working on a template now that's quickly approaching 1000 internal busses.  (500 stereo busses)
hardware inserts - flawless
AAX - has been stable - if somewhat expensive.

I do Music and Post Production mixing. I went with HD Native. I needed Surround, wanted more that 32 I/O for occasional tracking and I Mix Hybrid so I do use a bit of analog I/O. So I have 32x32 Analog and 8x8 AES. I figured I could always grab an HDX card in the future if I wanted lower latency/DSP. I've been happy with the HD I/O quality so not dying to upgrade interfaces. PT Regular is pretty powerful these days. Most people can probably be perfectly happy non-HD, unless you specifically need some of the features.

I'm running a decked out west mere Mac Pro tower and contemplating the move from HD3 to HDX like aremos alluded to and drbill states he has done already.

Anyone know the ballpark cost of the upgrade with Avid?

Explain the difference between native and HDX pertaining to delay compensation.  I use PT when sessions come in using PT, but the delay compensation in native sucks.  That's why I prefer Cubase. 

Cubase is automatic with delay compensation. For native guys like me who use a lot of hardware, it’s a must it seems. It’s sad because I do like the new PT release.

It would be nice if PT Native did automatic hardware insert delay compensation, but it doesn't. No round-trip "ping" measurement function exists so I used the "tick" click to compare timing on parallel busses, one internal, and one with each HW insert- for 16 inserts, with some through Symphony MK1, and some through Apollo Quad Silver. Yeah, my 32x32 I/O is kludged together. It's interesting to see what a HW compressor does to what is essentially a square wave. But the moment of attack is easy to see and easy to line up using HW insert manual compensation (22.58 ms on average). It was tedious and took a few hours, but it is done and now the overall compensation out to all of my HW is in phase and sample-accurate. I also use a lot of internal aux busses for reverbs, delays and such, typically in parallel, and have never noticed phasing or other issues. Maybe I'm lucky though. You never know.

Actually, it does.  At least in HD/HDX.

Are you using one of the Avid interfaces?

I found a bug, at least I think I did, going from 12 HD Native to 10 HD ADC would turn off.

Yikes, what a difference.

I don't know if PT HD DC is perfect, but it sure sounds bad when you turn it off mid mix. 

Shouldn't "-AAX DSP plug ins"
be listed in the other ones also?

As part of testing the possible new setup I put the HDX card from the studio computer in a Sonnet chassis and loaded up a mix that was maxing out my laptop. Unfroze/uncommited tracks and even without changing what plugins could be changed to DSP I was easily back in business. I did manage to eventually crap it out again (2015 MBP with 4 cores and 16g RAM vs the studio 12 core 64g RAM is always going to be a disadvantage with using certain heavy load native plugs) but I was still amazed how far I could take this mobile setup. Not really excited about getting another HDX card but I do love the solid system it creates. Only ITB with native so I can't speak on the delay compensation vs HDX when using outboard, no issues with the latter.