Avid Pro Tools MTRX Studio is Mike Thornton's Hardware Product Of 2020, he explains why.

I have been looking at updating my Pro Tools system, for a number of reasons including…

1. My Mac Pro 5,1 is showing its age and starting to become unreliable

2. My Mac Pro 5,1 would no longer support macOS Big Sur and later

3. My Avid Pro Tools HD Omni, which is my primary interface and monitor controller, could not support 7.1.4 monitoring.

4. My Dirac Live powered miniDSP unit supports a maximum of 8 channels and so too would not support 7.1.4 monitoring

As I have said before in other articles I could not justify the expense of a Mac Pro 7,1 and having seen a number of articles praising the humble Mac mini, I researched building a system around the Mac mini we used for our power tests.

My Mac Pro 5,1 contained my Pro Tools HDX card and I knew that I didn’t want to lose that and just in time Avid produced their Desktop single-slot HDX desktop chassis, so that was that problem solved.

As well as replacing the Mac Pro 5,1 I also wanted a system that could handle 7.1.4 monitoring to enable me to handle Dolby Atmos work. However as outlined above, neither my miniDSP speaker calibration unit nor my HD Omni could support 7.1.4 and so I would need an HDX compatible interface that would.

We have seen several of our team go for a Focusrite Red 16Line including Graham Kirkman go for his Dolby Atmos Equipped Garden Studio and Alan Sallabank with his An Alternative Workflow Using The Dolby Atmos Audio Bridge. It was a serious contender but for me too, however, the missing feature was the lack of speaker calibration. I chose to push out on the budget and get the MTRX Studio. I felt that the full-fat MTRX was too expensive, but the feature set, IO layout and the integral SPQ card made the Avid MTRX Studio interface the right choice for me.

I will be able to replace the HD Omni and miniDSP units with the Avid Pro Tools MTRX Studio.

In planning the changeover, there have been several issues that I have needed to find solutions for...

How To Set Up The SPQ Card

Unlike most speaker calibration solutions, both hardware and software, the SPQ card that comes with the DAD AX32, Avid MTRX and MTRX Studio, there is no calibration setup option. You need to use a separate product to measure the room and speakers. Asking around several people recommended using Sonarworks to measure each speaker or stereo pair, like the front and rear ceiling channels, rear surrounds and obviously the front left and right. This reminded me that I have curves for my 5.1 monitoring system for my Dirac Live powered miniDSP unit. So the plan is to use the data from those curves to create corresponding curves in the SPQ section of the DADman software. Then I will use the analysis software from the Dirac Live system to analyse the additional speakers that will make up my 7.1.4 monitoring system.

How To Bring The Mac Mini Audio Into My Monitoring System

With my HD Omni and Mac Pro cheese-grater, I used an optical SPDIF cable from the optical out of my Mac Pro to the optical input of my HD Omni and then configured the HD Omni to route that through to my monitoring, enabling me to be able to monitor Pro Tools or any audio via the macOS like iTunes, Soundly etc without any switching.

However, I can’t do this with the MTRX Studio as although there are optical inputs they are exclusively ADAT ports and cannot be switched to SPDIF optical. I looked into sourcing a convertor from SPDIF Optical to ADAT Optical but nothing with a sensible price tag came up. Then I remembered Dante Virtual Sound Card. I checked with our friends at Avid UK and Simon Sherbourne confirms it was doable as it is the solution he uses.

How To Connect My RTW TM3- Primus Hardware Audio Meters

With my Mac Pro and HD Omni setup, I split my digital optical feed from my Mac Pro to my HD Omni and through an optical splitter and optical to coaxial converter fed my TM3-Primus so I could measure the loudness of anything coming though from my Mac Pro audio.

Moving across to the MTRX Studio, with me using Dante Virtual Sound Card to route my mac audio into my monitoring, that split option is not available to me. However, there is an option within the DADman software to set up an output from the MTRX Studio to pick up a pre-fade output of whatever is routed to the monitoring so that will be how I will feed my RTW TM3-Primus hardware audio meters.

Designed For Me

It seems that (and I know it’s not really) that there have been two Avid products released in 2020 that were designed with me in mind. Firstly the Avid HDX Thunderbolt 3 Desktop Chassis and secondly the feature f this article the Avid Pro Tools MTRX Studio interface, with enough features for the smaller facility at an affordable price. Thank you Avid.