PT 2018.10 is here

[zion]

Originally Posted by JFreak

We can and we should! But try to understand 64bit PT is still very young

I honestly think they should have a good handle on the 64bit by now. Let’s not give them any excuses. If you aim low you will never even come close. Let’s hold them to a higher standard. I also must add that Pro Tools 2018.7 has been my most stable PT yet on my system! I’m staying right here until I have a good reason to move up. Right now I’m very happy with Pro Tools.

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by JFreak

We can and we should! But try to understand 64bit PT is still very young

PT has been a 64-bit DAW for over 5 years (not to mention the years of beta testing before then). In the software world that makes it a dinosaur. PT continues to struggle not because of any engineer's ineptness but because of the misguided allocation of funds (or lack thereof) from those above them and because there is no real urge to provide a bug-free DAW and in fact plenty of incentive to keep it buggy.

[skizzo]

Originally Posted by Eric Lambert

PT has been a 64-bit DAW for over 5 years (not to mention the years of beta testing before then). In the software world that makes it a dinosaur. PT continues to struggle not because of any engineer's ineptness but because of the misguided allocation of funds (or lack thereof) from those above them and because there is no real urge to provide a bug-free DAW and in fact plenty of incentive to keep it buggy.

please explain how a company could benefit from their users and their community thinking or knowing their software/products are buggy?

[coolbass]

Originally Posted by JFreak

We can and we should! But try to understand 64bit PT is still very young

Seriously?

[TNM]

Originally Posted by ~ufo~

it's not unrealistic to assume there will be a 2018.11 or 2018.12, certainly since .10 was pretty much just a minor bug fix update.

Folder tracks could still arrive this year.

Thanks for the heads up on pre render (pre-gen) in DP. I wasn't aware it already existed!
And there some folks on different forums ripping my idea to shreds as stupid, not even possible etc. Ahhh... the interwebs. :)

I'm not familiar with the way track transform works in S1, I haven't used it yet. I have yet to really produce a track in S1 and since I came across the small print that says the Quantum owners upgrade price to S1 pro doesn't count for Q2 owners, I feel ill inclined to give them any more of my money, just at the moment.

we're in full agreement on your other points by the way.

On a Vi track in S1, you right click track transform. it turns it into an audio file. You copy and paste as you like, and when you transform again, it will turn back to midi if needed BUT with all your edits and vice versa. That's what makes it so unique. You can still adjust your song arrangement whilst everything is frozen, BUT you can also turn those audio files back to midi, even if you have put them in say 50 other places in the project. It's the best freeze system on the planet, followed by PT's which is easily second.

DP doesn't have any dual buffering so it really needs the pre render otherwise the performance would be unbearably bad. It's automatic now, it used to be optional but it just does it now as of V9. I demoed 9.5 extensively, it's an interesting DAW, but I could never deal with a daw having no browser at all, no arrange page, and the worst time stretching I have ever heard, period. It makes X form sound like a work of art. Motu were bragging about their "state of the art" ircam TS in 9.5, and it's SO bad.. even on their own youtube videos bragging about it, just a slight tempo change on anything transient and it's *completely* destroyed.. and the video had like 98% up votes at the time. I swear, some people just believe everything they read LOL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI6YBvn1rzQ

OT but wanted to link to it as it's funny.

PT could quite easily add track transform as already you can drag and drop midi to audio and the audio and midi is displayed when things are frozen. All they have to do is add ability to copy and/or move audio parts whilst frozen, basically. This is doable.

Pre gen is a much bigger coding job and requires low level changes to the engine. I doubt we'll see it anytime soon. AFAIK DP is THE only daw that does it.

Reaper has a mutated baby version, where it can "look ahead" so to speak to smooth out performance. Problem is, by the time you set it to a number that really helps and matches the performance of PT/Logic/Cubase, it's like 3 seconds, so every time you start playback or move the cursor, 3 second delay. No thanks.

Other than those, pre gen is a pretty unique feature and Motu thought of it first, years back.

[Dizzi45Z]

Transform sounds sweet. I love Pro Tools freeze except when it comes down to stupid things like when I need to make a tempo change that wouldn't have any effect on the frozen tracks content, but I have to unfreeze all tracks anyways since Pro Tools requires all tracks to be unfrozen for tempo changes.

I would love it if Pro Tools was smarter to realize that a frozen sample based track isn't going to be effected by tempo changes. Also, if the tempo change doesn't effect frozen tracks because there are no clips in the area I am creating the tempo change.

It would be really awesome to see Avid look into finding ways to allow Frozen clips to still be moved around and duplicated, etc. Yet still unfrozen and the MIDI underneath followed the frozen audio edits.

[QTM]

Originally Posted by skizzo

please explain how a company could benefit from their users and their community thinking or knowing their software/products are buggy?

@skizzo

This is the the primary business model for Pro Tools with it’s licensing system. They want users to buy in every year. They do this through new features (which are growing fewer and fewer) but, especially, the PROMISE OF BUG FIXES.
That’s how they benefit.

Until Avid moves to the very unpopular subscription system whereby the user has to subscribe just to use the application, there is no incentive to make PT completely rock solid. If they did (accidentally, no doubt) everyone would stay on that version and let their subscriptions lapse.

[Dizzi45Z]

Contrary to a lot of opinions here, I feel like I have got a lot of value from my subscription this year. My favorite list of new features have been: Track Presets, New comping, Retrospect Record, Midi hotkeys including moving notes in relation to key, and the ability to switch playback preferences during playback.There are more features than that, but these ones have been game changers to my workflow and have been worth it for me. But I can see where they may not have been amazing features for other users and I can see where it is frustrating that they haven't addressed other top requested features and bug fixes.

I admit I think this latest update (although it does address laginess with my S3) is very skimpy. My hope is that they are working on something big that will be released in the next update. Maybe with pressure to release something for 3rd quarter and AES, they released a small portion of what they have been working on. At least I hope that is what it is. Otherwise they have really slowed down their progress.

In comparison to the latest Logic update, this one is embarrassing.

[JFreak]

Comparison to Logic? Well for starters Logic only works on OSX which is its advantage. PT has to work with Windows too, which I believe makes the (cross-platform) development more complicated.

The next update will be (?) all about Mojave support I think...

[~ufo~]

There is a certain element of 'Avid can't do it right either way' here.
Although the answer becomes clear as soon as you spell it out...

If they launch updates with a bunch of new features but no bug fixes, people are angry.
If they launch updates with a bunch of bug fixes but no new features, people are angry.

Obviously, they need to do both to keep most users happy.
What should be clear though, is the priority level.
In the (g)olden days, they used to get that right, to the ire of some.
They prioritised stability enhancing work over feature expanding work.

One thing has become perfectly clear for me over the past few years in dealing with Avid directly.
Substantial engineering resources have been allocated to getting new functions out of the door before they are are allocated to bug fixes.
Now if this is a short term 'patch', then that is forgivable. Dynamically allocating company resources is a normal thing and good practice in a lot of situations.
However, if this is a systematically reoccurring thing that is more the rule than the exception (which I feel it has been for the last few years), then your company has a management issue, an engineering resources issue or both.

It must be frustrating for Avid to see that when they finally tackle HUGE crippling bugs, people are still angry, for a lack of promised features.

Avid has to deliver both though, but I say it's better to let your clients wait for features than for stability. I think few professional engineers will contest me on that statement.

Perhaps some of the reasons why a lot of us preferred Apple and PT over Windows and other DAWs are similar. They both prioritised quality of function(s) over quantity and only added functionality when they felt it was solid. (which is not to say that other DAWs didn't).
I don't know about you, but I feel that frustrations concerning Avid and Apple have some similarities.
They are too distracted by the quantities of options to be able to focus enough on the quality of their current products.

I feel Avid are slowly doing better, so I for one will be cheering them on and not complaining about an .x update without significant features but mainly bug fixes. This should be no surprise to anyone and should in fact be welcomed.

I for one welcome the recent restoration of usability along with a few seemingly minor, but very handy workflow enhancing new features.

Today I'll test 2018.10 against 2018.7 on my MBP using the Quantum 2.
let's see how it fares.