Improvements and Enhancements - 2020 Year in Review

[ejinbc]

Well, 2020.11 dropped and it’s time to renew my perpetual licence, or is it ?

I think it’s always a good idea to review what you got for your money; in my case $200 for a Native Perpetual Renewal. I run ProTools 2020.11, Windows 10, MOTU 1248, Waves, and Native Instruments on an 8700K system. So, I went through the years’ worth of release notes and summarized all of the enhancements: 2019.12 - Initial support for macOS Catalina; 2020.3 - Folder Tracks, QuickTime Video (Only) Import/Playback Support for macOS Catalina, H.264 Performance Improvement; 2020.5 -EuControl Softkey Updates Cloud Storage Services Preferences; 2020.9 Ableton Link Support, New Option for Cancelling Track Record-Enables, Convert SDII Files to Session File Format on Import, Cloud Collaboration, BWF WAV BF64 Audio Import Support; 2020.11 - Dark Theme, Audio to MIDI (Melodyne Essential from Celemony), Space Clips, Bounce Mix Window Reformat, Dolby Atmos ADM BWF Export, QuickTime Export (Public Beta), Performance Improvements macOS.

So I am a Windows user with a small studio that routinely records 16 audio and 8 VI tracks at 24/96 with monitoring (~3.5 ms RTL) of vocals and VIs during recording. I then typically mix down with another 16 Aux tracks and maybe a few touch-up overdubs for vocals and solos. It is great we got 5 Bug fix updates, but those should be free. So what meaningful Enhancements and Improvements did I get for my money ?


Folder Tracks – Unusable (for me) because you can’t change the view while tracking. You only have to stop recording once to open a folder during tracking to stop using folders. There is a good Sticky summarizing all of the issues and many suggestions for improving the implementation.
Ableton Link – Huh ? I posted a thread several weeks ago asking if anyone had any cool uses for this. No replies. In 3 years on this forum I never once saw anyone ask for this (maybe I missed the thread).
Dark Theme – Huh ? Sorry, but there are some major usability issues here with certain operations and icons. Unusable (for me). Who Beta tested this and on what monitor settings ?
Audio to Midi – A new free entry level plugin ? OK I guess, and the drag and drop functionality is cool. So ARA lite ? If you do this kind of operation regularly, I think you still want the full version of Melodyne.
Space Clips – This might be useful.

So for a Windows user with a small studio (a common customer ?) I got bug fixes for my $200. Well OK. So PT 2020.11 is pretty stable and efficient. What benefits would I get for another $200 ? I fully expect I will be able to run Pro Tools 2020.11 on Windows 10 for at least the next 3 years even if I upgrade my computer Hardware. One week to go on my annual perpetual licence.

Interested in any thoughts. Apologise for any omissions.

Cheers and Stay Safe
ejinbc

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

Well, 2020.11 dropped and it’s time to renew my perpetual licence, or is it ?

I think it’s always a good idea to review what you got for your money; in my case $200 for a Native Perpetual Renewal. I run ProTools 2020.11, Windows 10, MOTU 1248, Waves, and Native Instruments on an 8700K system. So, I went through the years’ worth of release notes and summarized all of the enhancements: 2019.12 - Initial support for macOS Catalina; 2020.3 - Folder Tracks, QuickTime Video (Only) Import/Playback Support for macOS Catalina, H.264 Performance Improvement; 2020.5 -EuControl Softkey Updates Cloud Storage Services Preferences; 2020.9 Ableton Link Support, New Option for Cancelling Track Record-Enables, Convert SDII Files to Session File Format on Import, Cloud Collaboration, BWF WAV BF64 Audio Import Support; 2020.11 - Dark Theme, Audio to MIDI (Melodyne Essential from Celemony), Space Clips, Bounce Mix Window Reformat, Dolby Atmos ADM BWF Export, QuickTime Export (Public Beta), Performance Improvements macOS.

So I am a Windows user with a small studio that routinely records 16 audio and 8 VI tracks at 24/96 with monitoring (~3.5 ms RTL) of vocals and VIs during recording. I then typically mix down with another 16 Aux tracks and maybe a few touch-up overdubs for vocals and solos. It is great we got 5 Bug fix updates, but those should be free. So what meaningful Enhancements and Improvements did I get for my money ?


Folder Tracks – Unusable (for me) because you can’t change the view while tracking. You only have to stop recording once to open a folder during tracking to stop using folders. There is a good Sticky summarizing all of the issues and many suggestions for improving the implementation.
Ableton Link – Huh ? I posted a thread several weeks ago asking if anyone had any cool uses for this. No replies. In 3 years on this forum I never once saw anyone ask for this (maybe I missed the thread).
Dark Theme – Huh ? Sorry, but there are some major usability issues here with certain operations and icons. Unusable (for me). Who Beta tested this and on what monitor settings ?
Audio to Midi – A new free entry level plugin ? OK I guess, and the drag and drop functionality is cool. So ARA lite ? If you do this kind of operation regularly, I think you still want the full version of Melodyne.
Space Clips – This might be useful.

So for a Windows user with a small studio (a common customer ?) I got bug fixes for my $200. Well OK. So PT 2020.11 is pretty stable and efficient. What benefits would I get for another $200 ? I fully expect I will be able to run Pro Tools 2020.11 on Windows 10 for at least the next 3 years even if I upgrade my computer Hardware. One week to go on my annual perpetual licence.

Interested in any thoughts. Apologise for any omissions.

Cheers and Stay Safe
ejinbc

Folder Tracks: Doesn’t bother me they can’t be opened when recording. They made managing a large composing template much easier though so I’m happy.
Abelton Link: Love it. It works really well for integrating Live’s clip based workflow into Pro Tools. For me, Live has effectively become a super-mega VI plugin in Pro Tools and Link is a big part of this.
Dark Theme: Room for improvement, but it’s working well for me. I personally find it much easier on the eyes.
Audio to MIDI: I used this in Logic which has had it for decades so happy to see it in PT. Hopefully it’s a first step to full ARA support.
Space Clips: Thumbs up from me.

Also the new Eucon update is very welcome.

So I’m happy this year but wasn’t last year! But then I see the annual payment as a software subscription and business expense. Any new features are a bonus. I‘ve long since given up on the idea that Pro Tools will have massive feature packed upgrades like Logic, Cubase and Live. It is what it is and a year of disappointing updates comes with the territory.

[xrekcor]

Thread title should have read “yet another gripe fest” there’s 2 minutes of my life I’ll never get back

[ejinbc]

Originally Posted by Marsdy

Folder Tracks: Doesn’t bother me they can’t be opened when recording. They made managing a large composing template much easier though so I’m happy.
Abelton Link: Love it. It works really well for integrating Live’s clip based workflow into Pro Tools. For me, Live has effectively become a super-mega VI plugin in Pro Tools and Link is a big part of this.
Dark Theme: Room for improvement, but it’s working well for me. I personally find it much easier on the eyes.
Audio to MIDI: I used this in Logic which has had it for decades so happy to see it in PT. Hopefully it’s a first step to full ARA support.
Space Clips: Thumbs up from me.

Also the new Eucon update is very welcome.

Marsdy

Thank you for you comments. Do you use Link to synchronize two machines or are you running on one machine and routing audio through a second interface ? I have used Rewire in the past to synch the 2 DAWs on one machine.

Rob

Ah, thank you for the creative input ? I will try not to waste your time replying to posts that have wasted your time in the future.

Nonetheless, I really did think a post summarizing Enhancements and Improvements over the past year was worthy. I do realize that my post came across negative - but for me, this year, not so much - I even asked the Mods to start a sticky so we could 'help' Avid fix the Folder Track feature. It was a very interesting discussion. There were lots of great ideas. Somewhere in the discussion someone mentioned that Avid was aware of the problems and planned to fix the Folder View Expansion during tracking issue soon.

At any rate no renewal for me this time round. I think Avid will have their hands full getting a M1 optimized version out the door. I would love to wait for the Folder Tracks to be updated for my workflow, but it is not critical.

Frankly, I think 2020.11 is pretty dam stable, quick and feature packed. I will park here (on Windows 10) for 3 years and then reevaluate.

Stay Safe.

ejinbc

[Marsdy]

Originally Posted by ejinbc

Marsdy

Thank you for you comments. Do you use Link to synchronize two machines or are you running on one machine and routing audio through a second interface ? I have used Rewire in the past to synch the 2 DAWs on one machine.

Stay Safe.

ejinbc

Live is running on the same Mac as Pro Tools. Audio is piped out of Live via a Focusrite Red Dante PCIe card then into Pro Tools through a MTRX Studio.

Link works well for my workflow and I much prefer it to syncing with MTC. Rewire I considered but I worry about it’s long term future nowit’s no longer supported by Propellerheads and have had issues with CPU core overloads in the past.

Stay safe yourself!