10 Years since 7.3.1 / Have we really come that far?

[ilovemyssl]

It will be 10 years this week since 7.3.1 was released, and I still feel like it was the most stable version of Pro Tools to date.

10 years later, it's hard to believe that many of us paid so much money for updates over the past decade, especially when you look at HOW LITTLE Pro Tools has actually progressed in that time.

Here's a brief overview of the past 10 years worth of updates:


V8

• New GUI interface
• Elastic Pitch
• Issues with MIDI timing
• Bugs

V9

• Ability to run 3rd-party interfaces (welcome to EVERY OTHER DAW)
• Delay Compensation
• Issues with MIDI timing still not resolved
• 
More bugs

V10


• HDX hardware
• AAX plugins
• Clip gain
• Real-time fades
• Issues with MIDI timing still not resolved
• The same bugs… and more bugs

V11

• 64-bit (how many years after the competition!)
• Offline bounce! (Welcome to the 90’s Avid)
• Lots of promises of "3rd party AAX-DSP plugin partners" but very few ever eventuated
• Issues with MIDI timing still not resolved
• Still full of bugs

V12

• Track freeze (welcome to the early 2000’s Avid)
• Clip effects
• Issues with MIDI timing STILL not resolved!
• PIA Subscription pricing that NOBODY ASKED FOR
• Cloud collaboration that a handful of people asked for… and also costs a monthly fee
• Forced Malware AKA Avid Application Manager
• Many of v11’s bugs, and now.. new bugs!

v12.7

• Project Revision History
• Some POSSIBLE progress with MIDI timing issues

I have spent over $100k on Digi / Avid hardware and software over the past decade. Mind-blowing considering how little progress Avid has made over that time.

I'm not saying my system hasn't paid for itself - it definitely has... It's just incredible to me that after 10 years, and how much technology has developed in that time - yet we're still dealing with some of the SAME ISSUES we were a DECADE AGO!! Absolute craziness...

[ShiftStudios]

Something I've come to realize is that AVID are currently in a very tricky space. They owned the big studio space for some time (first in best dressed). Then all the home studios popped up, and they were using whatever they could get their hands on. There were a lot of options starting as early as the late 80's early 90's for producing at home.

As equipment became more affordable and compact, hobby and home/small studio owners more and more wanted to start working with (at the time) Industry Standard stuff (eg. Pro Tools). But then those same studio owners also had the flexibility of being able to experiment with other software, and in comparison, Pro Tools was very Spartan compared to some of the others, which had some studio users crying foul.

So AVID now have to find a way to provide the features that people in this new market segment are asking for, without completely destroying the relationship they already have with Post Production facilities. Since they don't do in-house development, that means having to manage external development on as few things as possible to minimize cost/bugs.

Now, don't take this as me defending AVIDs questionable business practices and misleading advertising, because there is no denying that. I just think, in this instance, AVID own something they don't fully understand. They were first in the door, so they have a cash-cow they need to keep feeding. However, they also see these new cash opportunities cropping up and want to capitalize on them, but since the original vision wasn't theirs, they don't really know how to capitalize on it, because they don't fully understand what they have or how it's used by actual professionals and hobbyists alike.

Just my 2c.