Explain Avid HDX to me like I’m 5

And Luna is basically all the PT keyboard shortcuts. Well. The main ones. They could get people to come over in droves if they advertised basically as Pro Tools HDX but better (not arguing that it is…)

Yeah, the PT shortcuts was a strategic move, I'm sure. I think Luna actually really could be a more direct competitor to HDX if they got a few other things implemented, HW inserts being number one. Not in the post world, or anything like that, but for the band/artist/music sort of world? Yeah, I think they could.

That's one of the reasons I'm still optimistic on the long term success of Luna, and UA in general. I think UA will ultimately be fine, but they clearly seem to be in a "now it's time to make some money" phase to pay off all of the irons in the fire they currently have. Lots of debt, I imagine.

And back to the shortcut thing real quick. With a Stream Deck, you don't really need to know the shortcuts for ANY DAW. Just saying.

Well, yeah. But that requires a summing mixer and more I/O…which could be at least $4k out of pocket. If I could just buy hw delay comp for pro tools and stick with everything I have - that’s what I need. I could achieve that by switching DAWS…and it might be what I have to do.

I have a machine room too. Wouldn't want to be without it. But I don't think John has a machine room, so it was still worth mentioning that there are fans to consider.

Yeah - this is a mixing room where I can track vocals/acoustic instruments.

All fair points. But the biggest difference is flow at least to me. I really really am not a fan of all the apps needed to run all things these days. IN the case of UA there is like 2? To use their hardware? Plus your DAW. Protools, it's all one thing and there is no thinking about it. It just works. 

I personally think UA's products and plugins are overrated. I caved on a few of their native releases but never again. They just aren't that great IMO. But I'm not the biggest plugin guy either so...whatever.

I also know that UA can only do that kind of latency just like every other native DSP system which is within it's own hardware. So you have to do all your headphone monitoring in the UA app, not in your DAW. Protools it's all in it you just use it like a DAW. No other apps needed. Which I love. 


And proof is in the pudding. I think every person that uses HDX on here says the same things over and over every time a thread like this pops up. We all love it. We all would never go back. And it just....works. Every time. 

Not a lot of DAWs can say that I think.


But it also just boils down to what your are comfortable with and in the long run. Usually sticking to what you know best is best. 

Luna lacks too many major features for me to even begin to take it seriously compared to ProTools Ultimate. So I am not taking that into account at all. Once and if it grows up a lot. Then it'll be more of a level playing field perhaps. But as of now, no way. 

yeah and clearly they are undermining themselves with the native pricing structure anyways. Which was interesting..

yeah totally fair, i've never even looked at it or used it. 


But until it's more fully featured it's not really a viable comparison in my opinion. If it gets there, then you bet. But right now, its like a toy compared to Protools as it is in its infancy still. Hopefully it grows well. 

There's definitely some things it's missing, hardware inserts being the biggest one, IMO. That said, part of that appealed to me is that I tend to use a DAW like a tape machine. I'm not doing a ton of crazy editing, so I don't need some of those features, and I actually like the clean, unbloated nature of Luna. So, in some respects, some of these things are actually weirdly a positive for me.

I used Reaper for a while and, man, that DAW is the opposite end of the spectrum. You can do ANYTHING in that DAW, and there are 10 ways to do it. It was kind of just overwhelming. I was PT based quite a few years back, but I got tired of the Avid thing, and never looked back. That said, I generally didn't have an issue with the feature set in PT. It served my needs just fine. The features that I did use in PT are more or less the same features that I'm using in Luna.

Just curious. What significant features do you feel are missing from Luna, that are included in PT?

You said you hadn't ever looked at Luna, so you may be surprised to find out that Luna has some features that you just assumed it didn't have. I certainly wouldn't call Luna a toy at this point. Year one? Yeah, it was fairly basic, but they have added a lot of features since it was released four years ago. Once they add hardware inserts, it'll honestly be a fully fledged DAW, at least for my purposes, and, I suspect, for a lot of other people's purposes as well.

Pro Tools Carbon is made for hybrid environments ideally and HDX is a self contained DSP mixing solution. They both have their up's and down's, for a start you only get 8 DSP cores on the Carbon instead of 18 on HDX card which means if you want to use it like HDX then you'll quickly run out of processing power. For me that's not an issue, I'm mainly OTB and even when it comes to FX I have an outboard Lexicon / Eventide unit so the lack of cores doesn't make all that much difference, in terms of plug's it's generally EQ or de-essers which don't require much.

The major advantage of both these solutions and this something that neither Luna nor Apollo can achieve entirely is the ability to shift the entire mix to DSP (Luna / Apollo can only do audio and two busses drbill ). Now you're outside the remit or woes of core audio, DAW's etc. and I wasn't a believer until I tried it. So yes, there's zero latency tracking, DSP plugins, zero issues with HW integration but the biggest selling point has to be the self contained system. Now this isn't obviously going to work with VSTI's as they have to be run native but I often get it aligned properly then freeze the tracks and use them as standard audio. For the couple of minutes it takes (quick offline bounces) I don't see what the issue is with this approach.

Due to both MTRX and Carbon using AVB (ethernet) the downside is going to be latency outside of the eco-system. VSTI instruments won't be heavily affected as it's just midi / output latency however I would invest in a guitar amp or two. When it comes to HDX besides the first line of this post the other thing to consider is cost, after a Pro Tools ultimate / digi license plus the HW itself (I'd avoid a 192 if possible) then it's going to be more expensive plus there's support to consider as they'll be out of warranty. These aren't devices you can just fix yourself really so it's something to note. Personally if it was HDX for me I'd be looking at a Focusrite Red with Digi, tons of I/O decent converters, costs far less than the rest of the competition.

Carbon ultimately won't be that much cheaper once you consider what it's good at so I guess the question is Carbon + shiny new HW or HDX itself? Now the conversion is top notch, different to something like Burl but I wouldn't understand why you'd need one. The amps built in are actually ridiculously good and this is a first for me, I actually liked them better than some of my expensive external mic amps. Although I like to compress or EQ on the way in so ahh well..

As you have a plugin alliance sub you might have access to the AAX-DSP plugs available which will be handy, just filter the search and it'll show you compatible plugins. I think both HDX and Carbon are great but I'll warn you now John no high end Avid option is going to be cheap however you approach it.