Quote:
Originally Posted by dagg
I still don't understand why somebody is willing to pay so much for an old Protools Mix card. Powercore beats Mix hands down, and costs half the price.
The mistake you're making is that a Mix card doesn't just process plugins like the Powercore, it also handles latency problems with recording, not to mention the ability to monitor plugins and sends on a live track you're recording. Yes, you can do these things in the native world, but it usually entails stopping workflow to change buffer settings, or using a form of direct monitoring, where your live signal is re-routed from the converter input to the output, in which case you can't monitor plugins on your live signal.
Again, the pain with that is that you can't put on, let's say, a reverb or delay send on the live track if you're cutting a vocalist (unless of course you're using an external console and outboard gear, but that's a whole other story). Yes, you could lower your buffers to achieve this in the native world, but what if you find yourself needing to do some tracking after you've got most of your mix done, with all your plugins going? You try to lower your buffers so you can record the new track with low latency while monitoring a little reverb or delay, and boom, the system stops because the lower buffer size has taken away the power you need to still run all the plugins you've got going from your mix. I know, because this happened to me during my forays into the native world.
Yes, UAD and Powercore cards can help in this scenario, but ultimately the one thing MIX or HD cards provide that still have a leg up is alleviating problems with recording latency, where you don't have to worry about changing any settings or configurations back and forth. Just record enable the track, add plugins or effect sends if you want to monitor those and go. And in my experience, when you find yourself working on a major project where you don't want to have to think about those things, you just want everything to work without having to change settings, it makes a difference.