This week, Avid announced that the new Mac Mini with Magma Express Box 3 (EB3T) is compatible with Pro Tools|HDX support and/or HD Native.
The Magma Express Box 3 (EB3T) provides an ‘outside-the-box’ solution for using PCIe cards with Thunderbolt-equipped computers. High-performance work flows are possible by connecting a Thunderbolt equipped computer to a Thunderbolt expansion chassis containing PCIe cards such as video capture, media transcoding, audio processing, and fast data storage.
Pro Tools 11 and Pro Tools HD 11 are available in the online Avid Store and at Avid resellers worldwide, and are compatible with the new Mac Mini machines now.
I have a Netstor 3 slot chassis that works perfect and costs about 2/3 or the price of the Magma chassis.
http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/03_02.php?MTEy
George
I hereby declare the new Mac Pro (MacTube) a failure based solely on its inability to use PCI-e cards! oh….wait….what?! what’s this then?! Could I be a dinosaur clinging to old world ideas?! Me?! But I’m so progressive! Nooooooooooo!!!!
The new Mac Pro : because you love having all your peripherals like optical readers and sounds card and extra hard drives outside of the computer’s casing with all the wires hanging on your desk.
Didn’t it used to be Apple’s pride to have all the wires hidden inside the case? Who else remembers this ad? http://www.techfresh.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/pc_vs_mac.jpg
Apple’s new deal it seems to me is to not force you to buy any of the shit you don’t need. And I personally love it. I dont want those giant pci ports built into my computer thats never going to use pci. Apple doesn’t want to force people who to buy specific legacy features like PCI. At the same time they dont want to alienate their previous customers so they give us expandability and you can use pci cards if you want! Everyones hating but it seems that its just a bunch of people who where never going to buy macs anyway, using that fact that they don’t have a pci slot to reinforce why they love their PC.
We are in a transitionary phase, but PCIe is on its way out as an external peripheral, It’s too big and slow for 2013. People should be excited for the future with ports half the size of USB but with 10-20gbps connection speeds, not cling on to old PCIe systems as a future solution. Pretty soon lynx, apogee and maybe MOTU will all have thunderbolt plugs and RME already has a better system on USB 3. Why would you want them to keep making PCI?
its not about PCI or PCIe, there are ways to use usb3 and thunderbolt all while keeping everything inside a box, but Apple designed the new mac pro in a way where everything has to be outside of the box, and be all over the place.
Apple’s new deal seems to be about forcing you to buy all the shit you need instead of providing it as the base model like they used to.
The Mac Mini : because you just are incapable of working with any computers except the ones built by Apple and you cannot afford getting a real one.
I think you might have made a typo here let me correct you, The Mac Mini: when you want a 2.6ghz quad core i7 ivy bridge processor, a solid state or hybrid drive and 16gb or memory and you never want it to break.
Having talked extensively with Apple technicians and engineers before buying my Mac,, and having a very limited budget, I was left with the impression that the Mac Mini with the 2.6 GHz Quad Core with a 6 MB shared level 3 cache, plenty of graphics for audio guys like me, I felt I had walked away a winner with out having to blow my whole load on a Mac Pro. Yes I realized that sounded awful after I wrote it but, I hope, we’re all adults here, si? Anyways I just finished building a very basic studio for under $2000.
When you can have all of that with better upgrade options for half the price on a Windows system.
Apple has not released a new Mac Mini since 2012. Did you mean Mac Pro?
I think this really means that it’s thunderbolt compatible, which would apply to the mac pro too but seing as its not released yet they’re just advertising the mini. I could be wrong but I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t work with any thunderbolt mac.
I’ll hold off final judgment on the new Mac Pro until I see the pricing. That Magma thingy is just a hair under $1000.00. Forking over that kind of money on top of a fully priced computer would–and should–leave anyone feeling like a chump.
Avid .. Overpriced crap to use with other overpriced crap.
presumably you feel the same way about media composer, the overwhelming installed base of which is using windows? or are you saying that by far the best software in the world for editing video is being mistakenly used by people who just dont know any better and just have to have the overpriced crap on their underpriced windows hardware?
perhaps, just perhaps, the people whose livelihoods depend on the technology they use know just a bit better than you which is the best software / hardware to use
it’s a funny thing, hatred of apple. as a “fanboy” i am totally capable of seeing that in audio mastering, 3D, video work, architecture, CAD / CAM, etc, windows is the superior platform (mainly because it has the best software for those particular roles), but it never works the other way.
perhaps we need a new word for the opposite of a fanboy – someone with an irrational hatred of anything made by apple.
Avid still make good professional products, but their handling of consumer product is not that great. Look at what happened to M-audio and Protools after they have been aquired by Avid. They are a company which has lost its focus by trying to go in every direction at the same time.
So by ditching consumer products and focussing on professional products, they’ve become less focused?
Since when have Avid abandonned the consumer market? if they truly did they would’ve sold m-audio entirely instead of splitting the company in two and selling only one half.
“… boxes of air… ” – Rich Hilton
wait so avid found another company that makes a product that makes their product work with other products…. and they are proud to announce it as if they had something to do with it?
also, this is PT HD they are plugging, money is not an object.