[PhilSchroeder]

I'd like to weigh in because this subject is near and dear to my heart. I'm a composer and have been a professional for thirty-plus years. But that's not the distinction that matters to me as much as being a musician. As a musician, there are ways of working in a DAW that I insist on, and they go back to the early days of music sequencing software (I was an Opcode guy, but there were others) where the whole point of recording MIDI events was to do it in real time and in a linear, tape machine fashion. There were two modes: replace and overdub. Seems simple enough and Digi stuck to this protocol and it has continued with Avid. I'm also big on transport simplicity; I want to plug in Bar 25 and start from bar 25 every time, until I change it. I don't want to drag my mouse to the starting point every time. With few exceptions, both of these functions and lots more are rock-freaking solid in Pro Tools. Other things, I agree, are a mess. (CPU management is a disaster but try Turbo Boost Manager, it helps a lot.) The ways that PT can fail seem endless and infinite, and Avid tech support has never, to this day, actually solved a problem for me. (Update: They have now fixed something!) They hide too much behind the "it's your plug-ins" excuse, they never seem to have seen *my* problem before, and it's pretty clear they don't read the DUC, where the best advice lives.

I spent two months with Studio One, as my audio dealer insisted it was the "new Pro Tools." It's not even close. Pretty, yes. Engine sounds good, check. But automation is a kindergarten implementation that is probably worse than Reason – if that's possible. And when recording MIDI notes, it overwrites notes I've already put in there. An impossible mess and I spend some time with a product supervisor who promised to "get right back to me," and you can guess where that went. Digital Performer isn't even worth discussing. Cubase was my last hope and the MIDI recording there is just unacceptable – and it's been that way for 20 years. So I don't think they're gonna fix it for me.

The problem is that being a composer isn't about playing your keyboard anymore, not to Presonus and Steinberg, at least. They're HUGE into chord tracks and "band in a box" stuff that makes clear they don't care about us real musicians anymore. They aren't marketing products for musicians, at least as I define the word.

Maybe your criteria are different than mine, but today, like every day, I want to hit record and start playing my keyboard. I want my notes captured as I play them. And when I trip up, I want to back up a few bars and punch back in. It's not that hard, and for me, only Pro Tools has remained true to that work flow. Other work flows in PT are still unmatched anywhere else, starting with digital editing. No one else comes close.

I agree that the subscription model is more extortion than not, but I also recall what updates used to cost ($750+) and it's at least possible that we're getting a better deal now – or close to breaking even.

Like you, I wanted desperately to leave Pro Tools for all of my grievances, but I've come to see that you have to pick your poison. I'm not a programmer, I don't know what it would really take to fix Pro Tools, but the percentage of time I spend working around the crap that sucks is way, way less than the impossibility posed by other DAWs...for me, at least.

Good luck!