hi, I`m wondering why there is still no tdm sampler plugin... I think this would be a must for every studio on this world... I checked all soft samplers believe me - all of them got their problems - but I would pay the double for a tdm version of kontakt - its a great sampler I think, but its direct connect (....) and you always have to load your stuff into the sampler if you open your session... any soft programmers out there?

Not sure but it may be a DSP problem related to a plug-in only being able access one DSP chip. Maybe if plug-ins can ever span DSP chips then it will work?

HTDM would be fine.

Kontakt will be RTAS by early 2Q, i believe. jh

`Kontakt will be RTAS by early 2Q, i believe.` ...this is good news!!!! sure?

hmmm, I'm not to clear on this, but the EXS24 utlizes the TDM's dsps with the emagic ESB bridge. (of course this is only if you are running logic audio). This is cut and pasted directly from emagic's site: "EXS24 TDM ESB TDM allows the insertion of up to 32 instances of Emagic's Xtreme Sampler 24 Bit* within the Aux channels of Logic Audio's TDM mixer. The output signals of inserted EXS24 instances can be further treated, utilizing all of the possibilities of the TDM DSP environment. Each EXS24 instance is calculated by the computer's CPU and the ESB TDM routes their output signals into the TDM DSP's. EXS24 MIDI performances are recorded on TDM Auxiliary tracks and are controlled directly in Logic Audio. This eliminates the need for OMS, making playback of the EXS24 TDM sample-accurate."

OF course this doesn't mean exactly that the exs24 is a tdm plug in sampler, but I'll take it anyway. This sampler is awesome. I'm still pissed off that the latest exs24 DOES NOT support akai sample files though. Hopefully they'll update it soon.

The emagic thing just allows the sampler in logic to operate the way a HTDM plug-in will work with ProTools. The mixer environment with TDM hardware exists on the hardware chips of the cards. There's simply not enough memory on the DSP chips to allow for samples (in any quantity) to load on the chips themselves, as said by Lee. So, if you're going to have samples loading, you need to have access to a bunch of RAM, for instance, the system RAM controlled by the CPU. Now, the CPU is readily available for this type of stuff and we have facility in Protools for using it already; RTAS. The problem is that RTAS operations take place before the TDM buss has been introduced. That's one of the major reasons why RTAS plug-ins can only be used on audio tracks. Audio is streaming from the hard drive and can simply be routed to the CPU to be processed. Once the audio has been processed on the CPU, it gets routed into the TDM buss for everything else (also why RTAS plugs have to go before TDM plugs). Now it's cool that we can use the CPU for real time plugins, but the limitations are a drag on a TDM system. That's where HTDM comes in. A HTDM plug-in can be used exactly the same way as a TDM plug-in (on any track and in any position), but it draws its power from the CPU with all its access to RAM. The emagic software is simply adding this same functionality to for TDM/Logic users. I know this is a pretty well covered topic from the past, but it seems that a lot of people have forgotten about that third type of real time plugs. I'd really expect to see most of the software synths and samplers coming to the market to be ported for HTDM and for RTAS.

hi shawn, thanks for taking the time to give a thorough explanation of how this all works. Is this the same reason why Altiverb is an HTDM/RTAS plugin, instead of a straight out tdm plugin?