Pro Tools HDX users have bemoaned Apple’s computer offerings over the last few years citing that the lack of PCI slots and the need for external chassis made them much less convenient for Pro Tools computers.

What many of them meant was they needed a machine they could put all their HDX cards into, a problem which is largely one for Pro Tools users as most other DAW users don’t rely on PCI cards to run audio interfaces.

The other inconvenient factor with Apple Mac computers after the Mac Pro cheese-grater was discontinued in 2013 was the lack of other slots to mount drives etc.

So when Apple announced the new Mac Pro 7,1 complete with an image of it full of Pro Tools HDX cards suddenly Pro Tools users thought their dreams had come true.

Production Expert has now had a chance to test the new 2019 Mac Pro with Pro Tools, both in HDX hardware and native modes and here’s the ultimate irony: For many the need for HDX cards is gone! Read on to find out more.

Know Your Limits

The Pro Tools Expert Mac Power Test Session uses a sample rate of 96KHz to reflect use in many pro recording studios. With a single HDX card, the maximum voice count on the test machine was 128 voices (without any optional voice-packs) That’s 128 mono channels of audio or 64 stereo channels. So while we can drive the system hard in terms of applying lots of AAX native plug-ins to the session, in an HDX world, we are not going to have a massive channel count, without turning to voice packs, which were not available to us for this test.

In our Native (non-HDX) tests however, we were able to drive the machine as hard as we liked. We are still limited to 128 audio channels (with up to a maximum of 32 channels of simultaneous I/O) on a native system but we can truly go to town with instrument tracks and virtual instruments.

The Test Machine

• Computer - Mac Pro (2019)

• OS - macOS 10.15.2

• Processor - 3.3GHz 12-Core Intel Xeon W

• Memory - 64 GB of 2933MHz DDR4 RAM

• Graphics Card - AMD Radeon Pro Vega II with 32GB of VRAM.

The Results

The “new” 2019 Mac Pro 7.1 is the fastest machine and most powerful machine we have ever tested. In our native tests, no machine we have ever tried has been able to run over 400 instances of Boom (not that anyone would ever want to do that). Moving onto the HDX tests, no machine we have ever tested has been able to run 50 instances of Avid’s Eleven guitar amp sim plug-in. It’s a true powerhouse of a computer.

For comparison here are the results from a variety of team member’s computers with the same Power Test. We have highlighted the 2019 Mac Pro results in green…

At this point the question needs to be asked, do you really need that much power to run Pro Tools? And the answer in 90% of cases is probably not. One could argue you can never have too much power, you don’t know what you are going to need in 5 years time.

That said, it is our view that the 2019 Mac Pro is likely to end up in larger tracking studios and bigger post-production mix spaces where they are mixing massive feature films and dealing with immersive audio mixes. That said, we have seen how beneficial the new Mac Pro has been in music composers studios, with James Richmond and Neil Parfitt, so it may well find a home in music composer’s studios as well.

Even though we undertook these tests on what is still an unsupported computer because at the time of writing (although Avid does offer support for macOS Catalina with Pro Tools 2019.12) Avid is yet to officially support the new Mac Pro even though at the launch of the of this new computer back in June 2019, they were showing a machine with 6 HDX cards!

What is interesting is that the power available in Native mode meant we could run over 500 instances on Boom in addition to our reference number of audio tracks each with an instance of Avid's Channel Strip and Dverb.

Does this mean you should sell your HDX cards and buy a Mac Pro 7,1? Well if you are a composer running lots of virtual instruments and heavy lifting sample libraries then maybe ditching HDX and going native could be the right route. Check out Michael Carnes’ situation and what he has been able to do with a 2019 Mac Pro.

However, there are still some situations where HDX is necessary so native hasn’t quite done away with it yet. For example, if you are involved in content production with Dolby Atmos then with the new Dolby Atmos Audio Bridge (introduced in Pro Tools 2019.10) Avid has made it possible to use the Dolby Audio Bridge with HDX hardware as your audio interface. However, in this configuration, it is not possible to use any HDX DSP Processing when using the Dolby Audio Bridge, you can only use it as an audio interface. This means that all your plugins must be in AAX Native mode, you cannot have any AAX DSP plugins running in your session. These tests show that the 2019 Mac Pro has huge amounts of native processing power to enable you to run all your plugins natively, rather than using the DSP on your HDX cards.

For many users, as we’ve already said, it is somewhat ironic for Pro Tools users that the very machine which HDX Pro Tools users have been calling out for since 2013, may actually mean they no longer need those very HDX cards. However, before any Pro Tools users get an unrealistic sense of self-importance we should say that this machine was designed for a wide range of industries and not just the Pro Tools community.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Matt and the team at Jigsaw24 in London for giving us the opportunity to play on their new machine and if you have any questions about the technical specs of the new Mac Pro 7.1 you could head over the Jigsaw24 website.