Hello everybody, just want to share a weird, unexpected experience... maybe interesting for some pt users out there.

I have a legit pt studio license, that I use for the most with a macbook pro. In studio I have an old HD native rig (PCIe), with 192 i/o and 96 i/o as converters, still working very well in a win hp z420 Xeon workstation with the old, well known AudioUtopia 12.5 HD release...

Needing to manage Logic projects sometimes, years ago I added on the studio pc a separate internal drive with mac os El Capitan (using Clover as boot loader), turning the workstation in a multi boot win10 / hackintosh machine.

On mac side latest "free" PT HD version available is 10, very old and glitchy on El Capitan (basically unsupported), so usually on that side, when a full working pt was necessary, I used my PT Studio license with an usb audio interface - cause you know PT studio cannot work with HD hardware... (since many years you can use HD hardware as core audio with other DAWs, but not with PT studio, you need HD/Ultimate license).

But... recently I updated the hackintosh side to Big Sur, using OpenCore method (by the way, I felt that route very clean and effective in order to get Mac Os working on win pc!). Later I migrated app, data and settings from my macbook in the new hackintosh build.

Long story short: in this specific setup (PT Studio 2022.4, Avid Hd Driver 2023.3, OS 11.7.10 Big Sur hackintosh) my legit PT Studio is able to access HD hardware (i mean HD native PCIe), if this is previously included in an "Aggregate" audio device (stock Mac OS feature)!

I'm pretty sure I already tried that "workaround" in El Capitan, with older pt studio release and avid hd drivers, without success: launching PT studio always resulting in lose of HD native core audio as aggregate. Now, this is not the case: my legit Pt Studio is able to playback audio to 192 i/o! Granted, no HD/Ultimate license at all here! I just made an aggregate device, with only HD driver, just this.

I have to admit that performances seem not perfect: in my first tests i had some drop outs and still didn't try recording on there (i will do soon)... while on the win side the good old 12.5 release is solid, offering very low latency and really is able to manage large recording and mixing sessions.

I'm just curious if someone else got any success using Avid HDN / HDX hardware as aggregate device with PT studio on Mac or Hackintosh... also i'd like to know if there is some optimization to improve performances with Avid hd driver 2023.3, in this scenario or in general.

My first attempt was with HD driver 2023.9, but nothing worked... then I discovered that 2023.9 it seem a buggy release for many pt users, so I uninstalled and installed 2023.3... and the magic happened! I think it's a sort of bug.

Bye

 

Last edited: Jan 29, 2024

...so no one else found the possibility of using HD peripherals with a PT Studio license?

 

well that's nothing new really,
nowadays you can use any DAW with AVID HDN/HDX, no need for digilink license or protools license, I think limit remains 64 channels still,
if you trick PT into thinking they're using non-AVID interface, then you don't need PT Ultimate - but in that case you basically loose all that meaningful features of HDX

 

Thank you for reply. You know, I dont't think things work exactly that way "by default". Of course I know pt studio doesn't need avid hardware since a long time... and core audio drivers for Hdx/Hdn stuff are out there from years. But avid hd core audio always worked ONLY with other daw: I often used that hdn system with Ableton, Logic, Wavelab, while usually hd hardware is automatic disabled and unavaible in pt studio. In my experience even aggregate device "trick" didn't helpfor this limit. Tried several times... just this hackintosh build allowed me this.

I also know I can't have full hd/ultimate features with just a studio licence, but in my specific setup, is just useful for me to get i/o signals through my hd interfaces cause i can at least open and edit sessions made with the latest pt releases, including improved features that the old Audioutopia release doesn't have at all (clip fx and others), without an ultimate license and without to add usb interfaces in my studio routing and monitoring path.

So I just was curious about other similar experiences, being a behaviour new to my ears, but I understand is a very specific scenario.

 

Last edited: Feb 23, 2024