In this second set of tests using a new Apple Silicon 16-Inch MacBook Pro with an M1 Max SoC with 64GB of unified Memory, we investigate using the new Apple Silicon native HD driver with an HDX1 System and whether using Avid DNxHD or H264 video makes a difference with these new powerful laptops.

Using The Apple Silicon Native Avid HD Driver

Although Official Support via Rosetta 2 for Pro Tools Software has been in place since Pro Tools 2021.6, the 2021.10 release of Pro Tools brought Native support for HDX and HD Native hardware with the release of Universal Binary HD Drivers bringing Apple Silicon support to previously incompatible HDX hardware. 

This means that there is now a driver which can run on M1 Macs running Pro Tools via Rosetta. Unlike applications like Pro Tools, a driver can't run via Rosetta. Because of this HDX and HD Native users can now use their Avid hardware on an M1 Mac with Pro Tools running via Rosetta 2 and the driver running natively.

Avid also announced Apple Silicon support for the Avid Video Engine, which means that video can now be played on Apple Silicon-based machines, but please note that with Pro Tools 2021.10 video hardware is not supported at this time.

However, the installation of the HD Driver is no longer a simple affair, because of Apple’s increased security measures and their plans to prevent developers from using kernel extensions in the future. This means that with macOS Big Sur and Monterey you can no longer simply select an option in the Security & Privacy System Preferences pane.

From Big Sur onwards, you will need to restart your Apple Silicon Mac and boot into the Recovery mode and use the Startup Security Utility to reduce the security level and enable the use of kernel extensions from approved software developers. To do this…

1. Restart your Mac in Recovery Mode (see this Apple Support article for instructions)

2. Select Options

3. Select Utilities > Startup Security Utility

4. Select your current Mac system and click Security Policy

5. Select Reduced Security and check Allow user management of kernel extensions from identified developers

For more information regarding Startup Security Utility, please refer to this Apple Support article.

Once you have completed this stage, you should restart your computer so that it can bot up normally and then install the Avid HD Driver using these instructions from Avid…

1. Go to System Preferences > Energy Saver (on desktop computer) or System Preferences > Battery (on a laptop) and make sure that Prevent computer from sleeping automatically when the display is off is checked and Turn display off after slider is set to never

2. Uncheck Put hard disk to sleep when possible (desktop computer) or Enable power nap (laptop)

3. Double-click the Install Avid HD Driver.pkg and follow the onscreen prompts to install the driver

4. When the message System Extension Blocked appears, click on Open Security Preferences

5. Unlock the setting menu by clicking on the lock icon and typing your password, then click on Allow, and then Restart Now to rebuild the system extension cache

6. The HD Driver installer, which will still be running, will block the restart and trigger a dialog Installer interrupted restart - dismiss the dialog by clicking on Cancel

7. Go back to the HD Driver installer window, wait for it to finish if it hasn't already, then click Ok on the alert requesting you to restart and after that click on the Restart button.

Once this is all complete then you can use the HD Driver and access your HDX hardware. There is one caveat that Avid has declared.

“Apple M1 machines can kernel panic if an HDX chassis is disconnected while the computer is on or the computer is put to sleep. To disconnect an HDX chassis safely, the computer must be powered down.”

This is why the installation instructions start with guidance on how to disable the Sleep options. It is also best to shut down your computer when plugging or unplugging a Thunderbolt chassis with your HDX card(s) in it.

The First Test - Comparing Netflix’s Sol Levante Session running Core Audio or using the HDX Hybrid Engine

I have an HDX 1 system with the card housed in an Avid Desktop Thunderbolt 3 chassis feeding an Avid MTRX Studio using both mini DigiLink ports.

For this test, I unplugged the Avid chassis from my Mac mini and plugged it into one of the Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports on my M1 Max MacBook Pro.

In this test I thought it would be interesting to compare the MacBook Pro running the same Sol Levante session in the previous test at 256 sample hardware buffer size with Dynamic Plugin Processing just as we did in the previous Post related test and compare it with the same settings and the same computer running the same session, the only difference being that it is running on the HDX card, albeit running with the Hybrid Engine on as I cannot run this session an HDX 1 system as it takes too many voices.

When we start the test, what you will be looking at is the MacBook Pro screen with the Big Counter and System Usage windows open on the right-hand side.

On the left-hand side, you will see just the Big Counter and System usage windows from the pass running the HDX card. So here goes…

There you have it, in this test, the HDX system, even though it was running with the Hybrid Engine uses less computer processing power.  But this test was made with the hardware buffer size set to 256 samples because the previous test compared my Mac mini setup with the new Apple Silicon M1 Max powered laptop and so it was only fair to compare like with like.

But how far could we push the new MacBook Pro? How small could we make the hardware buffer size and does the video format still make a difference? To answer these questions we set up a second test.

The Second Test - Comparing HDX With Core Audio And DNxHD With H264

To undertake these tests we changed the session. We chose an old Avid Post Production demo, which is an excerpt from an Avid made spy spoof Agent Zero. The original session used 130 voices and after extensive experimentation, we found that duplicating audio tracks in this session to take the voice count up from 130 to 1500 voices and running it with a hardware buffer size of 64 samples took it close to the edge when using CoreAudio.

We also ran this 1500 voice session with 2 different video files, the DNxHD video was a 36MB per second file played at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, whereas the H264 video was a 4.1MB per second file played at a resolution of 1920x1080 pixels.

What you will be looking at in this second test is an excerpt from Avid’s Agent Zero session, with a grid of 4 System Usage windows.

1. Top left shows the performance of a session using an Avid DNxHD video using an HDX 1 system.

2. Bottom left is also the HDX 1 system but this time with an H264 MP4 video.

3. Top right shows the combination of a DNxHD video and using Apple CoreAudio.

4. Bottom right shows the performance using an H264 MP4 with Apple CoreAudio.

So let’s see what happens…

There is no doubt, that like the test with the Sol Levante session from Netflix, using an HDX card, even while using the Hybrid Engine reduces the load on the computer.

The performance difference between using an H264 or an Avid DNxHD is less clear. Although having analysed the data closely, it would appear that the H264 video does put an extra load on the computer but it’s not as significant as we expected. It could be that the need to convert everything to Avid DNxHD may not be as necessary with the powerful graphics power and unified memory.

Whatever the reason, the power of this computer is phenomenal. 1500 voices and a video all playing from the internal drive is astounding.

In Conclusion

In my view, the M1 Max powered Apple Silicon computers are ready for the professional in terms of performance and remember like all our tests, this is an unsupported computer, running an unsupported OS and it still works incredibly well.

To be ready for the big time we need Avid to approve the 2nd gen M1 computers and macOS Monterey but we also need all our plugins to work too.

When that happens, I am already seriously considering using my new MacBook Pro in clamshell mode in the studio just like Russ does now with his studio.