In our recent interview with Francois Quereuil who is now Vice President Audio, Product Management, he confirmed that the Hybrid Engine, currently only available with Pro Tools Carbon, would be coming to HDX hardware soon. Francois has now revealed when…
In our interview recently Francois told us, in response to a discussion about users staying on old versions of Pro Tools because “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, that there might be some upcoming features that would encourage these users to upgrade to the current version of Pro Tools Ultimate. He told us…
“I’m not going to make any timeframe promises because I can't do that. But when we launched Pro Tools Carbon, we introduced new functionality for Pro Tools, and Carbon specifically, that we call the Hybrid Engine. The Hybrid Engine is very powerful in that it decouples the DSP hardware from the native mixing engine. So you have the ability to run your sessions, natively and just call upon DSP tracks when you need them. And as many of your listeners know, it's a fairly big sort of limitation of HDX, where on HDX everything has to exist in the DSP world. So your voice counts, your track count, the complexity of your mixer, all of that is bound by the amount of DSP that you have.
And yes, you can put native plugins on your mixer, but that creates a lot of roundtrip latency going back and forth between the cards and in the computer. We said when we launched Pro Tools Carbon, that that functionality was coming to HDX and it's coming to HDX sooner than later.”
Francois Reveals More On Facebook Group
On the Avid Pro Tools Users Facebook Group, a user asked “Hello all. Opinions, please... Planning on goin’ HDX from the current native version with Lynx Aurora Interfaces. Any thoughts? HD native or HDX?”
Francois chose to respond to this question and provide information about the Hybrid Engine coming to Pro Tools HDX, that he wasn’t able to share in our recent interview, suggesting that the time frame has been set since our interview. Francois told the user…
“new functionality coming with Pro Tools Ultimate in June. Right now, track count, complexity of mixer and plugins are entirely constrained to hardware. Hybrid Engine will allow sessions to run natively, up to 2048 tracks regardless of the type of HDX configuration, and DSP/low latency tracking paths will be available on demand by clicking a button on track per track basis. It is a game changer for HDX performance.”
On our Facebook page, Francois responded to a question about the HDX 256 voice limit issue. He said…
“We always said the limitation was in the hardware (we did try to extend to 384 per card and couldn’t make it happen reliably). With the Hybrid Engine architecture, we found a really elegant way to both decouple the voice count from the hardware and offer a much more efficient workflow. We hope this will make our HDX users very happy.”
Later in the thread on the Avid Pro Tools Users group, Francois responded to a question about the number 2048 was tracks or voices. This is what Francois said in response…
“The current plan is for the max voice AND track count to be extended to 2048 for PT Ultimate, regardless of hardware. And this will be for all Ultimate users Perpetual license holders who are on support plan, new perpetual licenses purchasers and of course subscribers.”
Francois has since given us an answer to the question “With this new 2048 voice count, will this be available to ALL Ultimate users or still require purchased voice packs to unlock?” Francois has told us…
“2048 will be for ALL Ultimate users, no voice pack required. We realize that voice pack adopters will no longer need those and will take care of them individually.
Voice count is no longer a “per card” thing. 2048 will be the new normal for everyone, regardless of hardware configuration.”
Francois also responded to a series of questions about whether with the improvements in computing power including the new Apple Silicon chips whether there was any need for DSP plugins. Francois said…
“In raw computing power, absolutely. But DSP chips still deliver something unique, processing with extremely low latency monitoring. And for many performers, the difference is night and day. So they still serve a very specific purpose, which computing platforms still can’t deliver...”
What Is New In This Statement
The time frame - In our interview published earlier this month on April 6th 2021, Francois couldn’t “make any timeframe promises”. In his post on the Avid Pro Tools Facebook Group, just 12 days later, Francois has stated that it is coming in June this year.
The track count - In our interview, Francois said that “It will shatter those limitations”, in response to Mike’s question asking if there was any news on getting beyond the 256 voice ceiling. Francois responded that the Hybrid Engine was the solution to this problem and It will shatter those limitations. Now we know that it will be possible to run up to 2048 tracks regardless of the type of HDX configuration.
DSP Plugins - Even with the new Hybrid Engine it is clear that DSP Plugins have a place in providing near-zero latency when tracking.
What Do You Make Of That?
There we have it, we now know that the Hybrid Engine will be coming to Pro Tools HDX in June and that we will be able to run up to 2048 tracks natively. What do you make of that? Will it be the “game-changer for HDX performance” that Francois is claiming it will be? For those of you on older versions of Pro Tools, will it encourage you to jump to the current version?
Do share your thoughts in the comments below…