"A game changer"

[AxeDye]

other daws have had the ability to go beyond pro tools for a while, personally for me the only daw worth considering over pro tools was Logic. I never was a huge Cubase or Sonar fan. Live seems to be about preference really, and as easy as Reason is to record people now, no VST or AU support hurts that DAW. But I will add a third DAW, Between pro tools and Logic the only other DAW I could recommend is Reaper. This is mainly because of their support.

[spenner]

Originally Posted by AxeDye

other daws have had the ability to go beyond pro tools for a while, personally for me the only daw worth considering over pro tools was Logic. I never was a huge Cubase or Sonar fan. Live seems to be about preference really, and as easy as Reason is to record people now, no VST or AU support hurts that DAW. But I will add a third DAW, Between pro tools and Logic the only other DAW I could recommend is Reaper. This is mainly because of their support.

Overall, PT is to audio engineers what Cubase and Logic are to composers. It's been that way since the beginning. PT is eched in stone in the pro audio recording studio. I dont know anyone sequencing tracks in PT and mixing the audio in another DAW. Many are doing the opposite with PT.

As I like to say, here is the kicker (for other companies):

Heavy VI users, that prefer PT for audio but another DAW for composing, will be very interested in PT 11 64 bit, along with the other features like instrument freeze (that they are already familiar with) that will accompany it. Aside from all the unfortunate recent events, PT is in a very good position right now.

[airon]

Originally Posted by PT Lover

Out of curiosity; which features are your friends missing in PT 10?

Also, what I do when dragging regions around, is to watch the thin, vertical line up in the timeline ruler. It is level with the grabber tool at all times, so I use that as a reference. So, I just click on, say, the loudest part of a region, and can easily drag it to where I want it.

IHTH.

I have to agree with Eric.

I say this as a dialogue and effects editor with way over 20000 hours of Protools experience.

The Protools method of not displaying the waveform when dragging is useless for lining up audio, compared to those DAWs that do display the waveform when dragging audio clips.

It's an impediment to my work, it slows me down just a little, but since I may do this hundreds of times a day, it adds up, and the ladies and gentlemen at Avid who do not appreciate the importance of this small potential time-saving feature would do well to reevaluate their own idea of how Protools could be improved.

This is defnitely an instance where you can trust the veterans.

[EricWillhelm]

Originally Posted by spenner

Heavy VI users, that prefer PT for audio but another DAW for composing, will be very interested in PT 11 64 bit, along with the other features like instrument freeze (that they are already familiar with) that will accompany it. Aside from all the unfortunate recent events, PT is in a very good position right now.

As someone who, for better or worse, is a heavy VI user AND does so in ProTools, I am VERY interested in those three advances (64-bit, track freeze, and faster-than-realtime bounce). Even tough it will surely mean another huge gouge in my wallet, I'll laugh at myself as I use it as a means to justify not having to learn a whole new DAW.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by airon

The Protools method of not displaying the waveform when dragging is useless for lining up audio, compared to those DAWs that do display the waveform when dragging audio clips.

+1 Billion!!!

Why is such a simple thing not implemented yet? The days of the sluggish screen redraws from the 90's are long gone, so there is no need to have a blank empty clip when moving. Not only that, this is something we can currently do when EA is turned on with a few work arounds. Does anyone at Avid truly use PT for long periods of time and not just a hobby? If so, you'd know the value of this.

Shane

[guitardom]

Originally Posted by Shan

+1 Billion!!!

Why is such a simple thing not implemented yet? The days of the sluggish screen redraws from the 90's are long gone, so there is no need to have a blank empty clip when moving. Not only that, this is something we can currently do when EA is turned on with a few work arounds. Does anyone at Avid truly use PT for long periods of time and not just a hobby? If so, you'd know the value of this.

Shane

any time spent editing you know this is a constant nuisance and a total work flow killer.

[spenner]

Originally Posted by EricWillhelm

As someone who, for better or worse, is a heavy VI user AND does so in ProTools, I am VERY interested in those three advances (64-bit, track freeze, and faster-than-realtime bounce).

+1. Tell me about it. Regarding 64 bit, I wanna do it all in PT but could not wait. Can I deduct the cost for Reaper from the PT 64 bit upgrade? ... Kidding.

Even tough it will surely mean another huge gouge in my wallet, I'll laugh at myself as I use it as a means to justify not having to learn a whole new DAW.

Maybe it will, maybe it won't. With PT 11, I guess we'll see how Avid responds to the upgrade complaints.

[God_made_me_do_it]

I think what's always an issue with this is that different people can have very different workflows. One man's meat is another man's poison, so to speak. I had a friend at uni who moved over to Pro Tools 9 from Cubase 5 and had nothing but good things to say about it - I did the same thing around the same time and found it to kill my workflow quite a bit - to him tab-to-transient was a killer feature whereas for me it was a minor convenience compared to the lack of things like folder tracks, drum maps and offline bounce.

I've already moved a major project over to cubase 5 for these very reasons - we recorded a live session in pro tools and used beat detection/elastic audio to average out the speeds of various sections to generate a click track and basic backing for the songs while preserving more 'organic' tempo changes that match their natural flow. Pro Tools was fine for this as Cubase 5 doesn't really have those features (C6 however, does). But the fact is we're using an electric kit via Superior Drummer, the songs are 10min+ on average, and I need logical access to both basic beat layouts and complex articulations at the click of a mouse - this literally saved us hours and hours of editing drums due to the workflow being so fast and all the notes being labelled.

My friend really didn't get this at all until he actually saw me editing drums and tracks my way and it really became apparent how different our workflows were. But anyway, there's an example of how a comparitivel minor feature might not even be used by you, but someone else completely depends on it.

So what's the answer? Get the DAW with ALL those features! Currently for me personally that's Cubase 6 - however if Avid do 64bit, realtime bounce, drum maps and a more advanced beat detective, things would rapidly start to shift in Avid's favour for me.

[pasanta]

Originally Posted by Chris Lambrechts

Well ... I guess it depends on what stuff you look at and how much importance you attach to it and on which end of the food chain you stand.

Most people I deal with couldn't care less for an offline bounce or a graphical gadget that would allow them to see a waveform while you drag a region around in the timeline.

They do care about sample accurately locking up a bunch of Pro Tools satellites and video satellites whilst not loosing any performance or speed as opposed to working on a single system.

They care about the speed their dedicated controllers will allow them to bank through channels or switch from one system to the other.

They care about having an automation system that will virtually allow them to do what their creative mind can think off

They care about elastic audio manipulation handles that will allow them to forensically go in and edit things we did not deem possible 5 years ago

<snip>

Me, I prefer the fine belgian cuisine with 6 courses well served in tiny portions but with high quality ingredients and a very nice bottle of fine whine.

I've stayed out of all the whining and bashing so far because of 3 main reasons:
1. Most anything I have to say, either pro or con is being said already.
2. My opinion is somewhat in line with the original poster of this thread. I just simply don't have time to get off the PT bandwagon and work in something else.
2. I don't have the time to constantly post and debate so I generally prefer to not just post hit and run opinions.

However, I can't let this load of BS go by without my 2 cents. Since this statement was made by an Avid field rep, it's apparent that Avid does indeed NOT operate in the real world. If Avid's impression of what users want and care about is like Chris seems to think, then yes, it is most certainly time to learn a different DAW. Chris seems to suggest that it's all about which end of the food chain you're on. While I'm truly happy that Chris gets to listen to the high end of the food chain, if Avid as a whole really does base their plans from the perspective of "the big boys want satellite systems but the masses want offline bounce......damn the masses, we better keep the big boys happy", then it will barely make it past PT 11 before going bust. And if it does, the pricing for the "normal" lower end PT user will have to be priced to take up the slack for the high end market everytime they don't upgrade and keep the cashflow coming in.

I'm sorry Chris. You sound like the snobby poster child for "We're Avid. And we're really only interested in what Skywalker Sound wants." I really think if your opinion is truly that of Avid, I'm gonna have to side with the users screaming it's time to get off the Titanic before the iceberg.

Just like the OP, It's my fault I don't switch to a different platform. I'm just too busy. But before you bring your nose out of the high end clouds you seem to cater to long enough to suggest it, the stability or ease of use of PT has NOTHING to do with my workload. Given the time, there's no reason I wouldn't be just as good,just as efficient and just as busy on another DAW. Couple that with the newbies nipping at my heels just coming into the business who feel no loyalty and can use anything they choose...........well, if you don't get my meaning, then you truly are out of touch.


(Please read my next post for some added info)

[TimNielsen]

Hmm, as someone who does a lot of my work at Skywalker, let me just assure you that plenty of us there want all the things that you want too! I for one still want bins.

I guess I should also make clear that anything I post here is simply MY opinion, I certainly don't speak for Skywalker Sound or any of my colleagues there.

I admit I'm somewhat underwhelmed at this release, and I'm quite in a harumph about the pricing, that's for sure.

I tend to agree, this release brings us a lot of things that are a long time coming. The DAE, if it's been rewritten, this isn't some 'new feature', it's a big 'bug fix' that should have been done years ago. I don't quite understand how a 'disk cache' is some innovative new feature. A whole lot of programs have used disk caches before. And Kontakt's memory server was an 'extended disk cache' before Avid's. Don't get me wrong, it's great. But finally having the 'engine' behind ProTools work right isn't a new feature! The old DAE has been a weight on ProTools for some time. I'm thrilled they fixed it. I'm not thrilled that they're trying to 'sell' it to me as something other than an update that we should have had many years ago.

And also, why on earth would you limit this to HD users? This isn't some extra feature. This should be core functionality. And it should be in EVERY version of ProTools.

Fade Files going away? Only about a decade too late. It's about damn time, but I certainly shouldn't be PAYING you for it.

Ability to user Interleaved Files? Again, this is not a FEATUE. This is something that every other audio editing program I have ever seen was able to do. And you're trying to charge me $1000 for it and these other things?

Clip based gain? Great. About time. Again, nothing new. You're finally catching up, that's great. But come on, 'a giant step forward'. More like a 'long time coming step from way behind the competition which gets us up to the plate again'. Maybe. There's still a lot to do!

Oooooo, 24 hour timeline. Heck, that's worth a grand :)

How about these things:

--Offline Bouncing (as about a trilliion other people have asked for).

--Pan Window follows Track Selection (as in Nuendo)

--Multiple Videos online in separate windows

--Multiple Sessions open at the same time (now that the DAE is new, this should be possible, since it's all in RAM now!)

--Um, BINS.

--VST plugin support. Without some 'wrapper'. Why on earth can't you use VST plugins. Insane.

--Export Region group with embedded media. Until you do this, exporting region grouping is still relatively worthless to me.

Some of those would actually change my workflow. Sorry to be 'snarky' but the truth is, PT10 would have been a fine update at $350. I would have bought it right away.

The real bummer in all of this is that Avid is really shooting themselves in the foot I think. I have an HD3 setup. But at this point, rather than spend a thousand dollars upgrading the software, I'm going to sell it, and go to an HD Native card. More tracks, better math, and once I go that route, there's pretty much no chance I'll be going to back an HDX setup. Had they priced HD10 better, I may very well have, at least I would have bought the HD10 software and waited a bit to decide about HDX. And I don't think I'm alone.

I suspect this will simply push quite a few HD users to the Native world, with or without Digi's hardware. I know someone selling his entire HD rig, cards, I/O, etc and going Native on a MOTU 828 Firewire interface. How is THAT in Digi's interest, to drive away those of us who would have been the ones to spend $10k on a new HDX system. But now that they've announced that all their Blue I/Os aren't going to work past PT10, I suspect a lot more people will be buying the MOTU type interfaces. By the way, I saw it, and it's very slick. Much more functional than any Digi interface a much lower price point.

So really I just wonder how many HDX cards they can sell. I won't be buying one. If I didn't already have and love my HD Omni, I wouldn't even bother with the HD Native card honestly, I'd buy the MOTU as well.

Just my .02