http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/tareqak

Please check it out and let me know your thoughts. It was all tracked in my old apartment!

Great size and style. I’m impressed.

My previous host and domain registrar was attacked with a ddos about eight months ago and after that, the site would not work. My good friend Dave tried to help me repair it, but lack of security on their servers made stable repair difficult. This site was essentially left to die by the host. Last week, we started steeling her back. After a lot of work and a fight with the old host yesterday, it looks like audiothathz is back online and working well!

So, what will be happening here? Well, gear reviews and advice will resume hopefully in the coming weeks. Also, I am moving into a new house. With that, will be the building of the new studio over the next year or so. I’ll make sure you know everything about that!

So please come back… Stay tuned! Sorry for all the silence. I should be making a lot more noise in the coming months!

So, what’s important on the 10,000 ft view?

- No longer locked to Avid hardware. Works with ANY sound card with decent drivers.

-Delay compensation

-More tracks, buses

-Eucon support through and through

There is no longer an LE or HD… just systems with more and less features. It’s completely portable and will run even stand alone on a laptop.

I’m excited, I’m stunned, and I pity their competition.

At it’s core, Pro Tools HD Native is two critical things. 1. Pro Tools HD Native is a single PCIe card. 2. Pro Tools HD Native is the same piece of software as Pro Tools HD. That’s right, it is the same software. What does this mean?

-The HD card used by HD Native has a very small DSP controller that is only capable of running a soft low-latency mix. This is audio taken directly from the IO and turned right back around, avoiding the mixing engine and all software processing.

-HD Native utilizes Pro Tools HD qualified interfaces. Specifically, the new Avid branded IO’s as well as legacy “blue badge” IO’s (192 specifically, 96IO and 96I not confirmed at the time this article is written).

-Features in Pro Tools HD are in Native including VCA faders, selectable input monitoring on ever channel (the little ‘I’), automation enhancements, etc. It is also compatible with Icon systems and can be used as a recording and playback device for Venue customers.

-HD Native will support up to 64 Channels IO (similar to an HD 1 system). It also has a port for the Sync IO and Machine control

-HD Native has full delay compensation.

So what don’t you get?! Well, lets take a look:

-HD Native will not use any LE based IO’s

-HD Native has no DSP chips. Being as such, it will not accept TDM plugins. Furthermore, plugins can not be used for zero-latency monitoring and processing during tracking.

-Heat is not available for HD Native

-Delay compensation in Pro Tools eats processing power from your system…

Not a lot of bullet points, is it? There actually aren’t a lot of downsides. Avid has come up with a very cool, slick system to live between their flagship and their light offerings. But the differences are pretty dramatic from a 10,000 foot view. Many people really appreciate the DSP power and zero-latency plugs of PT HD. So, who is HD Native for?

-Anyone who does a lot of tracking and doesn’t need zero latency plugins

-High powered computer users that don’t need TDM plugins. Primarily, people that mix.

-Anyone who wants more and better IO than their LE system

HD Native is a fantastic, powerful platform. It will be available mid November to ship. Preorders are being taking be myself and my Sweetwater team at Sweetwater.com. If you have any specific questions or comments, I invite you to contact me at extension 1368 at Sweetwater or email me here at robby@audiothathz.com.

-Robby

To begin, I’ve made arguably the best mistakes in audio getting to my convertors. I never wanted to just settle. I let my rig evolve in a way I’d never ask one of my customers to do. The reason, investment. I guide my customers to paths that they will not have to replace pieces often because it’s a waste of funds. I know we all have our own unique monetary positions… But I don’t like setting other people’s money on fire. Luckily, my money can act as a sacrifice to other’s in the name of education! I started with a 002, got the Black Lion sig mod, bought a Big Ben, got an Apogee Rosetta 800, booted the 002 for a 96io and an X-HD card to go HD, traded the Ben for an OCX, traded the 96io and Rosetta for a Lynx (and the iPad I’m writing this from). Now you’re caught up. This review isn’t a review of something I’ve borrowed with no basis of comparison. It’s been my funds, my ride, and I hope it helps you.

My first run into Lynx was not through convertors, but through the world of tape. At the age of 20, I met a Lynx box that accepted time-code from Pro Tools HD and generated a SMPTE chase signal for a tape machine. It was a graceful, half rack unit box that locked a Studer 24 track to chase PT. While it was a little clunky, it was neat that a company could provide such an interesting solution to an emerging problem…the dual world of most pro studios. I was hooked on the name and the company. But with a college student’s budget, that rig seemed forever out of my grasp. I forgot about it years later, until I went to work at SSI.

Incase you’re not familiar, the Lynx Aurora 16 is a slick looking sixteen channel converter. It provides high quality conversion A/D and D/A thought the use of a simple, yet solid circuit. It then outputs to AES, simple as that. With the addition of an HD card, the Lynx will gladly send everything down a Digilink cable to an unsuspecting HD card that believes that it’s looking at a 192io. This is Lynx first very cool little trick. Unlike many of their competition, the Lynx is able to be controlled directly as if it were a normal 192io. Furthermore, Lynx added a mode to the their unit that allows it to see the AES ports separately and address them as well… meaning it will do 32 channels of IO, 16 analog, 16 digital. This is something Apogee failed to address until the release of the AD/DA series… And I believe it’s a serious plus.

To make a great converter, Lynx needed a great clock…a point I’ll give them. Their internal clock is very good. Imaging is great from left to right and front to back. The Auroras have a feature called “Syncrolock” that buffers an external clock AND all incoming digital signals and reclocks them to remove as much jitter as possible. I must say, you can absolutely hear it. More on this later.

For a one rack unit box, this thing does so much. So where were corners cut? Well, the metering on the Lynx is a little lacking. There is a set of lights in the middle that get brighter as the signal gets hotter. Once a clip occurs, a red light appears on that channel. This can be changed to become moving meters for a set of two channels. There are also several buttons to control functions of the unit. They are very clearly marked, but careful. They are deceiving little buttons because they also hide extra features on the unit (like changing the Lynx from 16 to 32 channel mode). The manual typically only mentions these things in one small place. It’s not that the manual has a lot in it, but when you’re freaking out that you only see 16 channels in Pro Tools, you don’t remember what sentence this is printed on and what page of what manual. The manual is very “engineer” and I found myself losing attention with it, something I later regretted.

Initial setup can be a little kludgy for my feeling. With the Apogee, it was a placement of a card, a push of a button, and BOOM. The Lynx required a little more coxing. But I’ll contribute that to the many features my Apogee lacked. But once set up, things were rock solid in PT, but when I’d leave PT or when idle, I’d start getting clocking error. Plus, every time I’d turn on the Lynx, I’d have to reset up some things. Frustrated, I contacted Lynx support for a little help. Ace 2, a very concerned tech wrote me back within 24 hours. He was apologetic that I was getting a little neurotic from my experience. Without ever making me feel stupid or crazy, he explained what was going wrong. A couple settings unique to my setup and the issues stopped. Something he pointed out that the manual doesn’t mention, the Aurora saves it’s firmware states ONLY at powering down. My system all comes on when I start my Monster Pro 2500, so I never turned off just the Lynx using it’s power button. Having made my settings, I powered her down one last time with just the power button… and the Lynx learned it’s roll in my life and never forgot it’s setup again. Two months stable, no issues.

Aside from the meters, my only other grip is heat. These things get HOT. If your Lynx is ever on for more than 30 minutes, don’t touch the face of it. It acts a a heat sync to keep the unit cool without a fan in the box. And to that end, you can cook with your Lynx while you track.

In comparison, sonically, I think Lynx was aiming for neutral with this box. To that end, they accomplished the goal. The box is clean, honest, and has no character to speak of. In the classical world, these guys should be ruling it. But let’s face it, I like to rock. Rock isn’t always pretty… and honesty in rock can be a little brutal, and a little dull. In a blind listening test with my Apogee, my Lynx, and my OCX, I was able to draw some conclusions. To test things, I did a bounce of the Apogee clocked to the OCX through my DBox, a bounce of the same mix using my Lynx internally reclocking through Syncrolock (yep, it’s back as promised), and a bounce of the Lynx clocked to the OCX, syncrolock deactivated. The Apogee clocked to the OCX had an obvious color. It sounded Apogee, urgent and up front. A clear boost was found in the low mids. It rocked well, but was a little too much color for my taste. The Lynx alone however was a little sterile. Sure, this is just my taste. It was clean, crisp, flat, honest (scary). But, when the OCX was dropped in, I heard the sound staging clean up a little while giving just a little flavor back. This has been my choice of configuration (yea, I was in debate about ditching the OCX, but no more, that box is obvious magic)). This was confirmed to me by a friend that I played the test for who said “this is the perfect middle ground”. Couldn’t have said it better. It’s nice to have the option of honesty, but it’s not my taste.

One thing to note where Apogee has a leg up, the UV22 limiter. For a little grit, I liked to drive the summing amp hard, then beat it up a little while coming back into the Apogee. The Lynx doesn’t have a feature like that (that I have found). You must be very conscious of your levels with Lynx. I will miss that.

Overall, Im glad I ended up here. For the price I paid for 8 channels of IO with Apogee, I now have my complete 32. They sounds great without having a lot of color. They have freed up rack space while keeping my work flowing in every direction. For someone not looking for a sound, I’d recommend Lynx any day. The are clean, honest, versatile IO. For the money, you get a lot more than the completion. Additional props to Lynx for using logical AES output formats to keep compatibility with interface cards and cables beyond the Lynx line (try to hook and AD/DA to a PC using a Lynx or RME card and you’ll understand it’s a big deal). Plus, unlike the new Symphony IO from Apogee, you won’t have to crawl behind your rig to swap cable when moving between platforms. With Lynx, just purchase one of their IO cards and wire up the AES. In PTHD, us it in 16 ch mode. For other platforms, use the AES IO and their Lynx interface card and everything works perfectly. Plus, the software is dual platform (unlike Apogee who has dropped PC support).

This is a big competitor and I think Lynx is about to see their time to shine. These are real engineers building serious, pro level boxes. My complements to the chef on the Aurora 16.

PTHD mode can only be used if you change around some cables behind your rig. This means you’ll have to crawl behind your computer to change things up. Also, it’s still in the Mac-only paradigm. Mic pre cards must live in the top slot only… So only one mic pre card per machine. This card also doesn’t have convertors, so an 8 ch mic card and convertor set eats the whole box.

Now the good… 32 channels in one rack (assuming no pres). Apogee is also saying this is their best audio path to date and is even a step from their AD/DA. Also, MADI is coming!

I believe this is a good step in evolution, but I was hoping for more. My feeling is that this box is innovative, but I’m unsure how well it will take off. The convertors better be darn good. It feels like this box was made so it would be an 8 ch mic pre/convertor/MADI box that has been blown up for a lot more. And since it’s Mac only, HD PC users just got the hose for now.

Pricing- varies on options. $1700 for the base, $2000 per card.