Avid's New Model Is What It Is

[noiseboyuk]

Originally Posted by upscaps

for MC, there are decent discounts that start at 20 rigs. I thought 1 MC rig was just $299/yr for support. $499/yr if you want support and avid hardware repair/replacement.

Post and hardware is where avid makes their splash. The Post market dwarfs the music market and is a market with very high budgets here in usa and internationally.

The masses is native Pro Tools. Avid has been there and lost it's shirt. They are shifting back to the pro market. Post and high end gaming studios are the only markets that can purchase multiple hdx, S6, symphony systems, and ISIS storage systems. Any lot that has 100 MC rigs has budgets high enough to easily fold their yearly support subscriptions into a budget or two. Or just take the tax right off as a cost of doing business. Or most likely not get a support subscription since just about all are still on 10 HD (the end of the line) and have techs on staff.

Avid bowed to the masses pressure on PT and went 64bit. But to do that they had to create entirely new PT software and an AAX format incompatible with their professional systems that have been running for decades. The only thing 64bit did for PT was let you use more RAM for VI's. I don't know one professional or aspiring composer who switched from Logic, Performer, or Cubase. It was a fools run. They should have just given us more powerful compatible dsp cards, gave us the new software functions like they did in PT 10, and they would have sold more hardware like hot cakes.

Rant over Time for Sons of Anarchy.

We're long into circular argument territory here. People confidently proclaim that Avid's only interested in post now, as if stating it as a bald fact makes it true.

Ahem - it doesn't.

If it were true that Avid genuinely was only interested in post, they'd stop development, sales and support of vanilla altogether. As it is, they're selling subs at the exciting low low low price of $199 a year. My view is that Avid have convinced themselves that this is quite the bargain.

The idea that Avid went 64 bit in order to lure across professional composers is kinda laughable. That market is tiny anyway, and yes PT barely registers in it, and that's highly unlikely to change. Instead, 64 bit benefits the rest of the music sector (and actually post too) - PT was the last platform to migrate. It's the logical continuation of what they started when they introduced midi years ago. Even Pyramix, which has no midi, went 64 bit a couple of years ago (Masscore is now 64 bit too - well worth looking at if you need that horsepower). It won't be long til 32 bit support is dropped altogether for DAWs and plugin manufacturers. 64 bit was a painful but totally necessarily step.

The market that Avid have sought for a long time now is the far broader music market, from the bedroom brigade upwards. PT applies to the whole ecosystem - ultralight versions bundled with hardware right up to top facilities with racks of kit. Pretty much every pop / rock music mixer works on PT. Ever see a non-PT screenshot in SOS's monthly feature looking at contemporary tracks? The bedroom music set reads that, know that if they aspire to the big time then PT is the platform. Of course that's exactly how Avid likes it - why wouldn't they?

So the notion that somewhere in the boardrooms they've said "sorry guys, the games up, forget everything else it's all in post now" is pretty silly. Avid want it all. Of course they do. The problem is their huge disconnect between their financial situation, their marketing department, their development team and the real world - four circles in a Venn diagram which at times look like they do not intersect at any point.

[RaySoul]

Originally Posted by nigelpry

I'm sorry you felt the need to compare my contributions to that of a Peanuts adult, but at least that appears to make me an adult.

Are you familiar with the Peanuts Adults?... Anyway, perhaps that was a little more harsh than I meant it. My point was, there's no good, as far as I can see, in Avid's approach(and there's probably NO ONE willing to pay the $200 million(or more?) that Avid would want if they were even willing to part with PT. So, they've gotta make money, right?). It's another in a long line of terrible decisions, kinda like the whole CPTK debacle(where everyone complained so much that they reversed themselves, a little). I just hate to see PT suffer because of Avid's apparent inability to make sound decisions...

EDIT: And further to my point: Is Avid Going To Start Locking Pro Tools HD Software To Avid HD Hardware Again?

[gtrm8kr]

Back on the "is what it is topic"...

Let's say Avid had done a better job with the launch. Say, they pitched it as wanting to move to the "release early, release often" software development model because that was the best for the software and the community ... and the licensing model for that needed to be adjusted (never mind what Reaper and Bitwig are doing...). Do we (I'm looking at the software dev types on this thread, if any) think that Avid could really adopt a RERO approach with Pro Tools? I get Reaper and Bitwig being able to do that, but doesn't Avid's past performance with PT10 and PT11 suggest that RERO isn't possible - at least not without a lot of bugginess along the way? And RERO hinges on open communications with the user base. The Bitwig devs are engaging direcly with their community (me included) and just put out an amazingly robust, free .1 release. Do we see Avid opening up a more dynamic dialog with us?

Can they really make this work is my question, I guess. I mean, the best way for them to bring in annual support fee cash from the existing PT11 base in 2014 would be to have released a must-have new feature on November 2, right?

[upscaps]

Originally Posted by noiseboyuk

We're long into circular argument territory here. People confidently proclaim that Avid's only interested in post now, as if stating it as a bald fact makes it true.

Ahem - it doesn't.

If it were true that Avid genuinely was only interested in post, they'd stop development, sales and support of vanilla altogether. As it is, they're selling subs at the exciting low low low price of $199 a year. My view is that Avid have convinced themselves that this is quite the bargain.

The idea that Avid went 64 bit in order to lure across professional composers is kinda laughable. That market is tiny anyway, and yes PT barely registers in it, and that's highly unlikely to change. Instead, 64 bit benefits the rest of the music sector (and actually post too) - PT was the last platform to migrate. It's the logical continuation of what they started when they introduced midi years ago. Even Pyramix, which has no midi, went 64 bit a couple of years ago (Masscore is now 64 bit too - well worth looking at if you need that horsepower). It won't be long til 32 bit support is dropped altogether for DAWs and plugin manufacturers. 64 bit was a painful but totally necessarily step.

The market that Avid have sought for a long time now is the far broader music market, from the bedroom brigade upwards. PT applies to the whole ecosystem - ultralight versions bundled with hardware right up to top facilities with racks of kit. Pretty much every pop / rock music mixer works on PT. Ever see a non-PT screenshot in SOS's monthly feature looking at contemporary tracks? The bedroom music set reads that, know that if they aspire to the big time then PT is the platform. Of course that's exactly how Avid likes it - why wouldn't they?

So the notion that somewhere in the boardrooms they've said "sorry guys, the games up, forget everything else it's all in post now" is pretty silly. Avid want it all. Of course they do. The problem is their huge disconnect between their financial situation, their marketing department, their development team and the real world - four circles in a Venn diagram which at times look like they do not intersect at any point.

avid has always been a hardware company and there is only one or two sectors that can support that. You cant just look through the prism of pro tools software, which is the smallest part of avid's operation. look at avid's latest products going back two/three years. all high end hardware. they sold off consumer m-audio and the other consumer division. signalling some sort of board room decision.

64bit pro tools software has yet to help the post industry, as 90%, are still on 10hd tied to their hardware. you misrepresented my position on 64bit only for composers. my position on pt 11 was that the move created incompatibility issues with decades of professional sessions n plugins. hd accel users have been reluctant to upgrade their systems n give avid the high end hardware sales they need. only practical, daily use, advantage is access to more ram for vi's and a buggy bounce to disk. full backwards compatibility should have been more of a concern. they even changed to a ptx incompatible session file.

in regards to magazines. those screenshots of pro tools in facilities are attached to high end avid hardware (hd, hdx, icon, s6, etc.). thats what they want to sell you. when avid was most profitable is when they had those large amounts of hardware sales.

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by propower

For Native processing I put PT11 a huge step above 10 - huge.

Only if you the user uses a lot of virtual instruments. I saw marginal increases in performance and I'm being kind saying that.

[propower]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

Only if you the user uses a lot of virtual instruments. I saw marginal increases in performance and I'm being kind saying that.

EDIT: Mistaken memory - turns out very little gains PT10 to PT11 native DSP audio processing



I use very few VI's in general.

My statement was based on running almost entirely audio sessions all the way to final overdubs at 96k/64. Now - where I will back down a little is that this is my recollection when I committed to PT11 more than a year ago. Sessions I created in the early days of Pt11 would barely run (and at times didn't) when I went back to PT10 for a plug in experiment. Having not booted or installed PT10 in at least a year - I will bow out at this time and defer to anyone who more recently has compared these ....

[roberts]

Originally Posted by propower

I use very few VI's in general.

My statement was based on running almost entirely audio sessions all the way to final overdubs at 96k/64. Now - where I will back down a little is that this is my recollection when I committed to PT11 more than a year ago. Sessions I created in the early days of Pt11 would barely run (and at times didn't) when I went back to PT10 for a plug in experiment. Having not booted or installed PT10 in at least a year - I will bow out at this time and defer to anyone who more recently has compared these ....

simply not correct I switch back and forth between HD 10 and HD 11 @ 96 near every day almost no native DSP difference at all - the ONLY thing that comes into play in PT 11 is dynamic processing.

[propower]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

I saw marginal increases in performance and I'm being kind saying that.

Originally Posted by roberts

simply not correct I switch back and forth between HD 10 and HD 11 @ 96 near every day almost no native DSP difference at all - the ONLY thing that comes into play in PT 11 is dynamic processing.

Hey thanks for this - totally on point and I stand corrected! Probably should have considered whether my memories from back then were correct or still relevant.

Carry on....

[ronwasserman]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

Only if you the user uses a lot of virtual instruments. I saw marginal increases in performance and I'm being kind saying that.

VI performance in 11 is horrible. I bought a Mac Pro and run everything using VEP now as a slave. In PT I can maybe load up two instruments tracks before having some sort of issue.

VEP in the box was working well, but my templates were growing per show so I needed another solution.

PT just sucks for composers. Always has, always will. BUT nothing beats it (yet) for scoring to picture (for me) and all the stages use PT.

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by ronwasserman

VI performance in 11 is horrible. I can maybe load up two instruments tracks on PT INB before having some sort of issue and yet in Live I can open 20 or more instrument tracks and is works perfect ..

I don't know what you do but we are definately composers and have atleat 20-25 VI MINIMUM on each session and we have no issues what so ever.

All this on a MacBook Pro so that statement of only having two VI and your computer craps out must be down to something else.

We produce and compose many songs for postars on our midi studio before we record vocals and some guitars in our larger studio but never have we had those issues you desscribe. Not trying to say you are wrong but maybe something else isn't correctly setup if thats your experience..

Christopher