PT 6.4 Released - Available Late April

[kittonian]

DigiDesign announced PT 6.4 today and I had a chance to see it in action last week with a beta tester friend of mine. It's unbelievable and worth every penny. The ADC is unlike anything that I've ever seen before and you can use your outboard gear in your mix with no problems/latency. We turned ADC off and listened to the mix and then turned it on and listened. The difference is night and day. Everything comes full circle and sounds incredible.

[Renie]

Yes mixes need to delay compensated.

Does anyone know if it is HD only or are Mix user's in too?

[kittonian]

I asked the same question and apparently Digi couldn't do it for Mix users just yet but are trying (no guarantee that it will work since the Mix cards aren't powerful enough to handle the ADC according to Digi's findings).

[The MPCist]

ADC, yeah! ....hmmm... waited so long for it that i think i forgot what it is! e

About time!

[Alécio Costa]

Hope ADC does not eat dsp very much...
imagine having to turn off the ADC after lots of inserts have ben done and desicions taken..

[karl]

It states that ADC will never be available for Mix users. ADC I think is powered by DSP hardware and would consume too many mixer resources. Also Mix will now never be compatible with G5. As a kind of buy off there will be a special 6.4 release for Mix with Limited features which will be free for version 6 owners.

[Jules]

Never say never!


Good report Joshua! Thanks!

[Renie]

I read that the digi engineers are working hard to bring the joy of ADC to Mix owners, but, they are doubtful they will be able to.

[Alécio Costa]

so, if ADC is power hungry, it would lead to us old mix users going after additional cards so as to keep the same power beore ADC days. Also, 6.4.1 only will accept Mix systems.

[Ruudman]

Originally posted by Alécio Costa
so, if ADC is power hungry, it would lead to us old mix users going after additional cards so as to keep the same power beore ADC days. Also, 6.4.1 only will accept Mix systems.

Huh?

Mix systems?


ruudman

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally posted by Alécio Costa
so, if ADC is power hungry, it would lead to us old mix users going after additional cards so as to keep the same power beore ADC days. Also, 6.4.1 only will accept Mix systems.

quite frankly ... I wouldn't hold off upgrading to HD accel for ever .... at some point mix support will be part of history. It has been a while since mix has been discontinued. HD realy offers more advantages then just more DSP power and ADC. Probably yet another generation of G5's peeping around the corner and eventually you will end up being old news. Wether you like it or not .... wether you have to upgrade your plugins or not .... some things are inevitable.

[kittonian]

When I was shown the setup I was told that you must turn off ADC when recording or else things get funky. ADC can only be turned on during the mix process and apparently it does eat up some DSP. I can say however that when the A/B comparison was done (turning ADC on and off to hear the difference) it was unreal. The engineer had recorded a drum track (real drums, all mic'd up, etc.) and had a nice mix going. When ADC was turned off it sounded ok but not great. As son as he kicked ADC on the stereo image got very wide and pretty, the kick drum had much more bottom end to it and didn't sound so floppy, etc. I couldn't believe it.

The other thing that blew me away is that you can now use your outboard gear like a plug-in (send, insert, etc.). You select your piece of outboard gear from a menu choice called i/o from the same menu the plug-ins are. You just connect the output of the gear to the input of a certain channel and the output of that same certain channel to the input of the gear. He showed it to me using a Fatso on the snare. It was really cool and was perfectly compensated for.

There are a bunch of other features in the update but those two are the ones that got me. PT 6.4, HD|3, a Dangerous setup (2-bus, monitor, mq), and a great analog front end with great outboard gear is pretty much replacing analog consoles (which to be honest, I never thought would happen this quick in the digital game, although I think we'd all agree that there's nothing like actually mixing a track on a 9098i, a Neve 80's series, or an API Legacy).

[C.Lambrechts]

Originally posted by kittonian
When I was shown the setup I was told that you must turn off ADC when recording or else things get funky. ADC can only be turned on during the mix process and apparently it does eat up some DSP.

that makes sence ... ADC during tracking would create unnecessary latency.

[The MPCist]

how good is it?

I mean, can I mult, let's say a snare, and bring both together without problems...?

Or is it.....?

I'm really curious about this. It would be really great to mult my drums with Alan Smarts... Up to now, I've had to do it outside the box with the Manley Mixer... But if ADC is all that it's cracked up to be, then it would be pretty cool to use in some areas...

[kittonian]

You can mult no problem. That's exactly what I wanted to see. To be honest I didn't think it was going to be anywhere near as good as it is. Make the track, copy the audio, insert the outboard gear as an insert plug-in, go to town. That's it. As long as ADC is active you are good to go. There is a significant difference when you disable ADC and you can see that Digi really did an amazing job here. Apparently there are a couple of little bugs (nothing that even came up when I was looking at it and testing it out) but those will all be addressed in 6.4.1 which is already in the works.

[karl]

I'm not trying to be negative here, but you should read this: http://www.digidesign.com/exchange/m...x_hd_exch.cfm/

I would love to take my Mix system to G5, but I think this is the end of the road. My next question would be how long it is before we expect another generation of Pro Tools TDM cards. I have only owned by Mix++ for two years and I would not like to be caught in the same situation in two years time again when HD has been left behind. It seems that the slots in HD are not enough to run some plug-ins at this stage (Altiverb etc.), so another system is likely at some stage.

As for ADC, it would save time and be much appreciated, but I can still adjust my multi mic sources by nudging back by the correct amount of samples. I do this just before the end of the mix and it usually brings the drums more into focus which is understandable. I'm not sure how much difference it would make to a bass player though. Can you tell when he/she is playing 60 samples behind the beat! Having said that, I am curious to hear it.

[nikki-k]

Hi!
Aren't the HD and Accel cards 64-bit? (they "hang over" with 32-bit PCI slots)

Eventually I can see a new Process card to supercede Accel. With Accel, some developers are really taking some steps; just look at TL Space. Stereo to Quad eats 8 Accel chips (yep, two Accel cards!).

With 5.1 and 24/96k becoming more commonplace, and emulating/modelling hardware units (like TC6000, Lexi, Sony 777, etc) becoming an "almost reality," beefier DSP chips on the cards would go a long way to helping accomplish this.

However, with ADC, using hardware inserts during mixdown becomes less of a "bother," so laying down yet more cash for "improved cards" becomes far less attractive.

At the same time, with 64-bit on the horizon, will the successor to 32-bit float come with that? And will that alter the playing field considerably?

Personally, I love the DSP card thing. As plugins get *better,* and utilize more and more dsp, and come closer to being a replacement for outboard digital boxes for some people, having a single, or dual, CPU to address this "hunger" ain't gonna cut it IMO. At least not for me, and probably not for others.

The eternal flux...gotta love it...and dislike it..