Why aren't hardware devs taking AAX seriously?

[TNM]

This is the most frustrating thing about PT to me.. Believe me, after testing and many years of actually using all the crapternatives out there like creeper and digital unperformer, as well as illogic and Poobase, Pro tools is the Godsend of daws I was waiting for.

But no matter what, synth devs don't seem to care less about it. I have seen so many topics at access asking for the virus plugin to be AAX, spanning back 5 years and they just don't care. Midi quest who makes the only all purpose "for any hardware synth" midi editor PLUGIN, is still on 32 bit but only AU and VST.
The editors for the Dave smith stuff.. AU and VST...
Roland's official integra editor - AU and VST.
Heck even roland's cloud with their official hardware emus of their own gear - au and vst.(this one actually tempts me to use logic from time to time for the D50).

Third party editors for various synths.. almost all are vst and au only.

What is the deal? Is the pro tools userbase that small to them, or are these people actually stupid? I think the latter is the answer here, they just don't get it. Pro Tools users PAY for their daw and PAY for their plugins. We ALL want to avoid using blu cat patchwork as a workaround.

And don't get me wrong, all i can do IS use patchwork, so i can get the virus control and integra editor into Pro tools. But there are some pretty severe workarounds.. a lot of gui space is wasted cause 2 guis must always be open. Automation has no descriptions for the parameters assigned, you just set control numbers. How to know what each control number relates to on the fly, in my memory, when automating a bunch of parameters.. well.. not so easy.. especially if going back to a song after a hiatus.

But the worst of all, i have a persistent nasty bug with patchwork where automation sometimes just doesn't catch when loading a song and playing back. I literally have to open patchworx, and un-assign and reassign each control. All the automation that is already there in the pro tools timeline, suddenly then starts working to perfection. So it HAS to be a patchwork issue, since it only happens with, um, stuff being automated in patchwork (or MB-7 from the same company).

It absolutely amazes me, that i have 15 hardware synths that have editors, and not ONE of them is native AAX. Not one.
I have written to each and every developer and posted on their forums where available and never gotten one positive result.
What gives? Are we that meaningless to these fools?

Discuss if interested.. i find this quite fascinating personally, but understand those who don't.

peace.

[Sardi]

Originally Posted by TNM

What gives? Are we that meaningless to these fools?

Unfortunately, yes.

It's simply a game of numbers and we Pro Tools users are unfortunately a small number when it comes to music composition in the Electronic Music world who are the predominant target audience for these devs.

It sucks, but Pro Tools is not the platform of choice for these producers.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[moshuajusic]

Originally Posted by TNM

I have written to each and every developer and posted on their forums where available and never gotten one positive result.

What were their answers? Any common thread?

[TNM]

Originally Posted by jscomposer

What were their answers? Any common thread?

Almost unanimous 100% completely not answering at all, except for a couple that said they were definitely going to aax "soon".. midiquest for example.. but nothing has happened and they have stopped answering anything about it completely.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Sardi

Unfortunately, yes.

It's simply a game of numbers and we Pro Tools users are unfortunately a small number when it comes to music composition in the Electronic Music world who are the predominant target audience for these devs.

It sucks, but Pro Tools is not the platform of choice for these producers.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That doesn't make sense.. Pro tools is fantastic for EDM composition, i would know, i've been composing EDM since i was 18 (now 45 in a few days), started on cakewalk DOTS lol, went to logic, cubase, sonar, used them all, even learned DP9 for 30 days.. All i did for the 30 day demo was spend 8 hours a day on it learning it backwards.. and Pro tools midi ROCKS and is totally unfairly bashed..

I don't think our user base is that small...I think it's actually a lot bigger than people realise. almost every video of even a plugin review i see on the tube is using pro tools.. it has more free tutorial videos than anything else..
I think we are many in number. Lastly.. i don't see how things like an integra are only suited to electronic music.. that's a rompler with some very realistic sounds for acoustic stuff.

The problem is, because of these fools, many DO use another DAW.. that part is true! just so they can use all this gear natively..

And even me, who is happiest with my daw now than i have been since 1997, came close to leaving because of what is being discussed in this very topic..
I wanted to use my virus and integra and dave smith editors natively as plugins.. And i am *really* irritated about the lack of AAX support, and i get tempted every other day.. but ultimately, i perform some task in pro tools and i say, "that's how it's done", and stay. Because the whole workflow of the darn thing makes more sense than any other DAW.. not to mention ease of use and gorgeous UI one can look at all day without any eye strain.

This topic is pretty much exclusive.. What I mean is, it really is ONLY plugins that control hardware synths that aren't in AAX.. all other major players have aax.. all of them.. there is not one effect or virtual instrument that needs to be ported to AAX.. we have everything and even some aax only stuff to truly balance out the stuff that might be, say, AU only. On windows it's different cause of the huge vst scene, but on mac, where the majority of pro tools users are (according to surveys), we have aax of almost everything BUT hardware plugin controllers.

So no, i don't buy your reasoning.. otherwise people like plugin boutique would not be making aax versions of everything, for example, and many other devs that focus totally on EDM plugins only, would not port to AAX, if it was a waste of time vs return on investment to do so. These bountiful amount pf AAX plugins simply wouldn't exist.

It's something else.. it's the people who CAN afford to do it who SHOULD be doing it and aren't. Korg making gadget AAX is a perfect example of how important aax is now. They never made a legacy cell AAX! So again, why bother if not enough users?

Midi hardware control in pro tools is literally the best of all the DAW's and the only one where you can do positive or negative delays at the sample level for each individual midi port. Others are in ticks or milliseconds. Therefore, one can get hardware midi timing tighter in pro tools than in any other DAW.. that's a fact. Every synth is different and all of mine have been tuned to be as close as possible, and everything is so tight.. much tighter than it was in Logic or Cubase..
Again, pro tools is ideal for midi hardware.
perhaps if a DEV jumped in, and told us real world AAX demand vs AU for example, say of a very well known and very famous plugin, then we could get some more insight into the issue.

[Sardi]

Originally Posted by TNM

That doesn't make sense.. Pro tools is fantastic for EDM composition, i would know, i've been composing EDM since i was 18 (now 45 in a few days), started on cakewalk DOTS lol, went to logic, cubase, sonar, used them all, even learned DP9 for 30 days.. All i did for the 30 day demo was spend 8 hours a day on it learning it backwards.. and Pro tools midi ROCKS and is totally unfairly bashed..

I don't think our user base is that small...I think it's actually a lot bigger than people realise. almost every video of even a plugin review i see on the tube is using pro tools.. it has more free tutorial videos than anything else..
I think we are many in number. Lastly.. i don't see how things like an integra are only suited to electronic music.. that's a rompler with some very realistic sounds for acoustic stuff.

Firstly, my generalisation that synths were only for Electronic Music was simply that - a generalisation. Obviously other forms of music incorporate synths, samplers, drum machines etc.

I too have been composing Electronic Music since my teens (now 39). Heck, my first release came out when I was 18!!

The reason I said what I did, is because of real world experience from talking to people in my industry. Hardly any of them use Pro Tools for composition. I regularly do lectures at SAE and the looks I get from them when I open up a Pro Tools session to deconstruct a song is priceless. It usually spurs a 15 minute conversation as to why I use it over Ableton, Logic etc.

Also, please note that I NEVER said Pro Tools was not great for Electronic Music production. You asked for a discussion and I gave you a very valid reason as to why these devs aren't providing AAX support - the user base isn't there for them to justify the time and resources. Couple that with the fact you have to pay to develop AAX plugins which AFAIK is not the case with AU/VST and you've pretty much got the answer you seek.

One thing to note though is that there are a LOT more AAX plugins than there were RTAS. So many smaller developers are now supporting AAX when they NEVER supported RTAS. Perhaps in the future some of what you seek will come.

[TNM]

I take your discussion on board and i assumed i was simply having a productive debate with you, and a polite one at that.. Sorry as it seemed i may have offended you, which was not even the smallest bit my intention.

You are pretty much right with this post just now anyway, in what you say.

[Sardi]

NP. No offence taken.

You're obviously passionate about the issue and justifiably so. Hopefully some of them come to the party soon.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Sardi

NP. No offence taken.

You're obviously passionate about the issue and justifiably so. Hopefully some of them come to the party soon.

I indeed am passionate about it... all of that passion comes from the fact of how much I love PT, truly. It was like, "where have you been all my life".. It's the closest I have ever been to DAW nirvana, ever.
With every other DAW i pick them apart with wishes.. with PT i literally have put my entire wish list into something this simple:

- a few more midi editing features like select all notes of equal pitch, eual subdivision etc like logic and cubase, and keyboard shortcuts when resizing to equalize velocities and length of selected notes.

- Integrated melodyne style pitch

- Track folders.

- Double the length of ADC and sidechain ADC...

that's it! anything else Avid think of would only be a surprise.. like their brilliant interpretation of offline bounce in place/commit/freeze..

BUT.. because of pro tools neat GUI, melodyne working perfectly as a plugin in it, and the PDC being long enough for most my projects.. none of these are actually deal breakers. If i had to pick, i'd choose folder and pitch and then leave every other aspect of PT the same for eternity, and i'd be happy. Just bug fixes would be good, as i've uncovered some serious bugs the last couple weeks myself.. but it's still way more stable than DP/Logic.

So yeah i get annoyed I guess, as you have said, that people refuse to give it a chance or even flat out rip us a new one just for *being* PT users!.. to me they are the alien ones.. They bitch about 128 audio tracks limitation, yeah, like they need more than that for their EDM LOL! They bitch about price yet 99 a year works out cheaper than *most* other DAWS with a few exceptions.. They bitch about the midi, one guy ripped me apart and told me he hated it cause notes couldn't be glued, or split, and i showed him a video a minute later of how easy it was to do just that and i got abused for my troubles even more LOL.. so they bitch about it without even knowing how to use it and what a great DAW it is..

but besides all that.. the only thing that makes sense, why roland for example would completely ignore AAX, is that for some reason they don't think their dev time would pay off in sales. I beg to differ.

It also makes me wonder.. DO people literally specifically NOT buy pro tools, because of lack of these sort of aax plugins? Hardware synth users in particular? Food for thought.

[YYR123]

I also would have liked more dev’s to take them up.....

But it also makes me as a customer pickey as to where I spend my money.

On dev’s that do support it

AAX-DSP specifically