Explain Avid HDX to me like I’m 5

Reading about carbon…sounds like it’s definitely the aax dsp thing. And you get a perpetual license and one year sub when you spend the $4200. (So giving)
Would I have to re-buy aax dsp plugs? And looking at the avid site - it’s not responding so maybe I’m not seeing the full list…but wow. Not many plugs available.
I might be answering my own question.

Snag a used HD I/o 16x16 analog box, hdx card, and the software and you’re good to go. No problems with hardware inserts anymore, it just works. No “console” routing etc. That’s what I would do, and am going to do.

Go in or out AES if you want a better A/D or D/A for monitor or printing.

Gonna look into that…but if I was switching, I’d probably dump the Apollo and Burl…

It really looks like the smarter move would be to just switch to Cubase or Studio One.

I had an Avid Omni, which is a little less good than a 16x16 and it was a perfectly great sounding interface. 16x16s are super reasonable now too.

The main thing with HDX is that eventually they sunset something and the upgrade path is expensive if you have to stay current.

I have a friend using an ancient HD rig and it just works for him because he barely uses plugins and uses no virtual instruments.

If you’re going to switch or consider it talk to Bills guy, otherwise let me know I can PM an idea or 2.

You get all the Avid plugs with Ultimate. 

There aren't a ton of AAX DSP plugins but there are plenty. Plugin Alliance has a lot of them. 

But really the best thing is the inserts just working. 

You have 2 options, Carbon or HDX system. 

Carbon does not require an HDX card. HDX interfaces do require that. You can pick up an HDX card some some older 192's and adapter cables for less than a carbon. You could keep your Burl too as it'll work via AES or TOSlink out of a 192. I do that with a Merging HAPI. 

Then you can track with any of your hardware with no noticable latency at all. It'll just work. Then if you go to mix, enable the Hybrid Engine and work all natively. Best of both worlds. 

Eh it's not that bad. And affordable. I mean if you want there are plenty of ways to spend way more money on HDX interfaces haha

or.... ditch the hardware???  Is that a possibility...it's a lot cheaper....what hardware do you HAVE to have to mix?

cheers

Wiz

I don't think anything can touch HDX yet in terms of latency. They claim 0.9ms. Native systems are getting closer though!

You’re not getting into a used HDX card, whatever Thunderbolt chassis you want, a used 16x16 HD I/O, and a new Ultimate subscription for under $4000. Don’t forget that $299 DigiLink I/O license if you don’t already have one!

You don’t have to pay extra for a AAX DSP license with Plugin Alliance but for the few companies that have DSP option it’s extra. But honestly those are really only handy while tracking and I don’t think any are better than the zero latency PSP plugins or Pro-Q 3 or even some Waves plugins (they have a chart) if you need a compressor on something while overdubbing…

Apollo is 1.1ms, so I'd say for the purposes of this discussion, it's right there with HDX/Carbon. Of note, these latencies for HDX/Carbon and Apollo are both at 96k.

That said, it's worth pointing out that some DSP plugins, can increase that latency on Apollo, and I know that can happen with HDX/Carbon too. IMO, one of the biggest differentiators between HDX/Carbon and Apollo is that, IF you want to use plugins while tracking, Apollo offers access to a way better selection of plugins than what is available for HDX/Carbon. AAX is kind of dead in the water.

Plus, now that Luna auto switches between DSP and native, those same UAD plugins I used in tracking are already there during mixing. Basically you're already mixing from day 1 because those UAD plugins are something I would keep in place and also actually use during mixing. I don't think there's a whole lot of those AAX plugins that I would actually want to use during mixing. Those AAX plugins would be placeholders for some better plugin during mixing, at best.

I gave Carbon a hard look, and thought about it, but I didn't like that the expandability was so limited. I think you're limited to a max of three Carbons, in which case that's a max of 24 channels (yeah, there's ADAT and all of that, but...). I have a fairly large amount of hardware, and 24 channels wouldn't get it done.

You can daisy chain up to four Apollo 16s for 64 channels of I/O. But Luna doesn't have HW inserts yet, so maybe it's a moot point (supposedly HW inserts will be coming, eventually). So it's a bit of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation. If/when Luna gets HW inserts, that would change things though. As for AVID, man, well, it's just AVID. Ugh.... Though UA is starting to get a little odiferous itself...

I thought this video (this is Part 1, there is also a Part 2) did a great job of explaining all of these latency comparisons, and also generally did a good job of weighing the pros and cons of Carbon vs Apollo.