Dear AVID employee

[Vercingetorix]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

There have been many updates to "Pro Tools 10" in the last year. All of them free.

I think you'll find that this is a reference to the upgrade between the numbered updates be it M-Powered or LE to 9 or 10 and the forthcoming PT11.

I haven't bothered to upgrade from PT8LE because the price of me being able to join the PT10 club is $399. I like ProTools however my bank account doesn't. I might upgrade to PT10 but not until Avid release PT11 when people are trying to offload their PT10 licenses or move onto Reaper it's only $58.

[Emcha_audio]

IF I remember right, Chris was with AVID in a consultant capacity to work on the 11R, once his contract was finished, he moved to others.

[PBGas]

I've been around Avid stuff for a long time and you think I would have known better.

Fool me once 11R plug-in

Fool me twice 11R - the product is great and had so much potential if they kept working with it.

Not a third time. I bought a Kemper and haven't looked back, since.

Next up......leaving Pro Tools for good this time. Not going to get sucked into the next $300 upgrade.

Enough is enough. This is how you lose good customers, Avid.

[sorcerer27]

+1
Avid is going to concentrate only on the high end market for their survival since they have less competition in that market segment! Why they even retained the Eleven Rack is still puzzling! Plain and simple, low end products like the 11R are just not part of that plan!

[Ciscokid]

Originally Posted by sorcerer27

+1
Avid is going to concentrate only on the high end market for their survival since they have less competition in that market segment! Why they even retained the Eleven Rack is still puzzling! Plain and simple, low end products like the 11R are just not part of that plan!

A good point well made.

It's a shame Avid made the 11R, any other company would have seen it's potential and run with it. Now it's just left more and more folks jumping ship and not because they don't like the unit, but because they don't like the company that made it.
Very strange indeed.

[tomc3084]

Originally Posted by Ciscokid

A good point well made.

It's a shame Avid made the 11R, any other company would have seen it's potential and run with it. Now it's just left more and more folks jumping ship and not because they don't like the unit, but because they don't like the company that made it.
Very strange indeed.

I could have not said this any better. Its crazy cause I think they could make a ton of money with the eleven still. If they had a standalone and IR slots it would kill. I mean who's going to buy a gsp 1101 when they could save up a little more for an eleven that does the same things way better. Same goes for the pod hd's. They would blow away everything sub kemper/axe fx. Using common sense it seems like a no brainer to me. Oh well the eleven is still great but when I do save up enough money I will get a kemper for sure.

[Benoni]

Originally Posted by TOM@METRO

Hi Benoni,

I was referring to the statement regarding bug fixes. These and minor feature tweaks have historically been free, and even as AVID moves away from the consumer segment this continues to be the case, even on the professional side of things. And yes, if we are speaking of major version upgrades, everybody charges for those. No argument there.

Yep, that is correct. I just wanted to make sure we were responding to the spirit of the post in good faith. If someone does not think it is a valid point that's fine, but I don't think we should dismiss the post because it is a point many have raised.

I could not justify the upgrade price when PT10 came out because I had just bought PT9 a few months before and I had not made back my investment yet. I also had several other things I needed to buy first, but now that I have the plugins I needed and PT9 has made me money, I can upgrade to PT10, so hopefully in the next few months when I get another check I can upgrade.

If the upgrade from 9 to 10 had been $199 I would have bought it right then, but I just spend $250 on PT9 and could not spend another $300 for PT10 at the time.

Avid adjusted its price for the upgrade from 8 to 10 from $499 to $399, so they are listening to customers.

Your point about Avid moving away from the consumer market is a dichotomy. It seemed that way after they got rid of LE, but now they are making Pro Tools Xpress. They also have a deal with InMusic who purchased the M-Audio line (and AIR) to include Pro Tools Xpress with their interfaces which is the first time Pro Tools has been included with a 3rd party interface.

So on one hand it seems they are wanting to target the mid-high and higher end as evident by the higher upgrade prices, but they are still after the low and pro-sumer market with PT Xpress and the Mbox, Mbox Mini and the M-Audio interfaces.

All that said, I don't think the 11R is dead. There will be something new for it IMO. Avid is just really busy with AAX and the 64 bit conversion.

[sunburst79]

Originally Posted by Benoni

All that said, I don't think the 11R is dead. There will be something new for it IMO. Avid is just really busy with AAX and the 64 bit conversion.

This is my opinion also. I suspect its all hands on deck for the PT11 recode, plugin updates, driver updates etc. This has got to be one of the biggest projects in the company's history. Its disappointing that Eleven updates and expansion hasn't gone faster. My hope is that once PT11 is finished they can get back to adding features. If they were intent on killing the product they could have sold it with MAudio. Presumably they kept it for a reason.

[nst7]

Benoni,

Since you've waited this long on PT9, have you considered just waiting for PT11 to come out and jumping straight to that? I would assume it will be out some time this year. I would hate to see you go through the same thing again (buying PT10, only to have 11 come out soon after).

[Emcha_audio]

Originally Posted by Benoni

Yep, that is correct. I just wanted to make sure we were responding to the spirit of the post in good faith. If someone does not think it is a valid point that's fine, but I don't think we should dismiss the post because it is a point many have raised.

I could not justify the upgrade price when PT10 came out because I had just bought PT9 a few months before and I had not made back my investment yet. I also had several other things I needed to buy first, but now that I have the plugins I needed and PT9 has made me money, I can upgrade to PT10, so hopefully in the next few months when I get another check I can upgrade.

If the upgrade from 9 to 10 had been $199 I would have bought it right then, but I just spend $250 on PT9 and could not spend another $300 for PT10 at the time.

Avid adjusted its price for the upgrade from 8 to 10 from $499 to $399, so they are listening to customers.

Your point about Avid moving away from the consumer market is a dichotomy. It seemed that way after they got rid of LE, but now they are making Pro Tools Xpress. They also have a deal with InMusic who purchased the M-Audio line (and AIR) to include Pro Tools Xpress with their interfaces which is the first time Pro Tools has been included with a 3rd party interface.

So on one hand it seems they are wanting to target the mid-high and higher end as evident by the higher upgrade prices, but they are still after the low and pro-sumer market with PT Xpress and the Mbox, Mbox Mini and the M-Audio interfaces.

All that said, I don't think the 11R is dead. There will be something new for it IMO. Avid is just really busy with AAX and the 64 bit conversion.

The difference there is an exchange of services. They offer iNMusic a daw for pennies, while at the same time Avid gets plugins back from Air for pennies. It's a good arrangement. It still places Pro tools in the eyes of those starting up, because eventually some of them might become pro's. Avid is not spending any money making the low end hardware anymore, that's a lot save not counting the fact that they don't have to pay those that were making it either anymore. And iNMusic don't have to worry about writing a daw, since they get one to use and distribute already, time and money saved there too.