Appendix A: DSP Requirements for TDM Plug-ins 59
appendix a
DSP Requirements for TDM Plug-ins
The number of TDM plug-ins you can use at one
time depends on how much DSP power is avail-
able in your system. Since the TDM hardware on
Pro Tools cards provide dedicated DSP for plug-
ins, plug-in performance is not limited by CPU
processing power.
The DSP tables on the following pages show the
theoretical number of instances of each plug-in
that can be powered by a single DSP chip on
Pro Tools|HD cards. DSP usage differs according
to card type.
There are a total of nine DSP chips on a
Pro Tools|HD card (HD Core™, HD Process™,
and HD Accel). HD Core and HD Process cards
provide identical chip sets. HD Accel cards pro-
vide newer, more powerful DSP chips (making
the HD Accel card ideal for DSP-intensive plug-
ins, and for high sample rate sessions).
Not all plug-ins are supported on all types of
chips. The following tables indicate the number
of compatible chips per card.
Using Multi-Mono Plug-ins on Greater-
Than-Stereo Tracks
Plug-ins used in multi-mono format on greater-
than-stereo tracks require one mono instance
per channel of the multi-channel audio format.
For example, a multi-mono plug-in used on a
5.1 format track, requires six mono instances
since there are six audio channels in the 5.1 for-
mat.
DSP tables show the theoretical maximum
performance when no other plug-ins or sys-
tem tasks (such as I/O) are sharing avail-
able DSP resources. You will typically use
more than one type of plug-in simulta-
neously. The data in these tables are pro-
vided as guidelines to help you gauge the
relative efficiency of different plug-ins on
your system. They are not guaranteed per-
formance counts that you should expect to
see in typical real-world sessions and usage.