Is Pro Tools behind the curve?

[Cutlerbri]

Oh no, Janne, I didn't mean to imply that. And I'm grateful to you, Jack, and Darryl for helping me through that time. My troubles were largely due to pilot error. But right now I'm enjoying the plug-and-play nature of Logic.

My big challenge now is to try and train it to act more like Pro Tools!

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Cutlerbri

Oh no, Janne, I didn't mean to imply that. And I'm grateful to you, Jack, and Darryl for helping me through that time. My troubles were largely due to pilot error. But right now I'm enjoying the plug-and-play nature of Logic.

My big challenge now is to try and train it to act more like Pro Tools!

Ha good luck with that. Logic is a lovely but weird beast, maybe with some German engineering aesthetic.

Pro Tools does win with it's beautiful physical console like design/workflow.

As somebody who likes both Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Logic Pro has been much more stable that Pro Tools for a long long time. But sure Logic went through pain with say plugin transitions/stability in the past. Avid seems fairly stuck with Pro Tools, a very complex system, with huge technical debt, lots of legacy components and compatibility issues, in perpetual needs of rewrites/updating stuff. Being cross platform makes it harder to do stuff. And being a small financially struggling public company makes everything hard, hard to attract top developers, hard to stay focused on doing stuff outside of quarterly results, hard to just throw money at things (like third party software developers), etc.

One of the things that frustrate me so much with Pro Tools is there are so many sloppy half assed things done. Useless error messages, failure of the software to check basic stuff, poor packaging, layers of new bloatware, some stuff so basic that I cannot understand how a team would be happy to ship stuff like that. And then instead of fixing that Avid are frittering away resources around the edge doing stuff that not many folks wanted and just does not work well. Like App Manager, cloud storage etc. Maybe Avid effectively just gave up when they outsourced a chunk of their development. How Avid handles the Mac transition to ARM is is going to be critical. If they still have an A team I hope they are on that.

Now compare that to UAD Luna. Luna is one of the best thing I've seen happening in ages, I've looked at it. But don't own a UAD interface today. UAD seem to have a kick ass development team. That team does not need to be huge to get a lot of stuff done, but it's got to be good. Smart/obvious move on doing Mac only for now, nice they support AU native plugins. Nice UI. Like much of UA stuff it just shows some nice engineering. They already have lots of experience from doing their Console. And as for "looks analog" yep, and that will only get better. They built in basic product feedback stuff (doh), something Avid has struggled through multiple different ways of trying to do, and still can't seem able to do well. And ultimately Avid does not have a lot of places to go.. it's a slow moving public company with legacy customer base, and UAD has everywhere to go with Luna, they have all the time in the world to take away the Pro Tools and other installed base. It's interesting that UAD may end up rebuilding themselves as a "Digidesign". An integrated DAW and hardware company. But stuff liek that happense over timeframes of many years/decade not one or two. And for quite a long time I suspect it is important that UAD don't try to "go sideways" for a long while.. like adding control surface support... that's another whole mess for them to get into and I would worry it would slow down more core innovation in Luna, the stuff that more users will need and stuff not dependent on third parties (like Avid Eucon). And if UAD ever swallowed the red pill and port their plugins to native I'd be willing to pay even more attention to them.

[deanrichard]

When the solution to every problem that creeps up is to completely rebuild your computer from scratch in the *hope* that it will fix errors, there is something very, very wrong with the software. And if your answer is to blame plugins, that is even more wrong. AAX is Avid's platform, there should never be compatibility issues. If a plugin works in an older version of PT, it should work in a newer one. Backward compatibility testing has been a basic concept of software development since the very first upgrade.

Sorry to vent, but one of the reasons I'm no longer a PT user is that I do not consider rebuilding my computer from scratch viable. It's a long, arduous process that I undergo once every 5-7 years, not something I do as a matter of course. I do not dedicate my system to my DAW. Other products don't require you to do it, the industry standard shouldn't either. I'm astonished PT users consider it acceptable.

Originally Posted by JFreak

Most PT errors magically go away when you do a clean install of OS and install all your software manually without any migration software. Just sayin' not all errors are to be blamed at PT

[JFreak]

We can agree to disagree, but anyone can see a plugin compiled for PT11 may have problems running with current version. That is 8 different operating systems on Mac side.

[unkJE]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

.... if UAD ever swallowed the red pill and port their plugins to native ....

Perhaps the “any port in a storm” approach will be the future of plug-ins.

PreSonus made its Ampire, Channel Strip plug-in collection and Fat Channel XT plug-in available in VST, AU, and AAX format

https://www.presonus.com/press/press...deled-Plug-Ins

[unkJE]

While we're on curves:

https://twitter.com/AvidProTools/sta...59345154269184

[deanrichard]

I apologize if it seems I am unloading on you, because I know you sincerely want to help people, and this is not your doing. I appreciate the help you have given over the years, and I try to offer what I know on the rare occasions when I have something to contribute. My frustration is aimed at Avid, not you. But I simply can't abide by the notion that a piece of professional software should require a full OS install and system rebuild to test for incompatibilities. The suggestion struck a nerve. With the amount of software I use, a full rebuild can take days or more. That is not acceptable. I use my computer as a DAW (with several products installed), video workstation, graphics editing system, and as my home PC for internet and standard office uses. I have dozens of applications installed. My last system rebuild was in 2013, despite that I upgraded my system from Win 7 to Win 10 a few months ago with very little fanfare. To Avid's credit, I am still able to launch and use PT versions 10 and 12.8 for legacy projects.

If a PT plugin incompatibility exists, it should be found and noted in release notes. It should never be the user's responsibility to test for problems and fix them. A good software development process would have automated regression tests for every plugin on the AAX platform, at least all of the major ones. They know who they have given the development SDK, they control the development process. For comparison, on the PC side, I can still run 32-bit VST plugins from the 1990's if I choose, even though I have been running a 64-bit OS and software for a decade. I'm not sure how far back some of those plugins go, but probably to Windows NT. This, despite that VST plugin development is essentially open. Yes, I have experienced incompatibilities with VST3 and certain plugins, but in each case they were easily identified and remedied, usually within minutes.

Originally Posted by JFreak

We can agree to disagree, but anyone can see a plugin compiled for PT11 may have problems running with current version. That is 8 different operating systems on Mac side.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by deanrichard

a full rebuild can take days or more. That is not acceptable

As said, we can agree to disagree. To me stable system is worth the time, so a half week rebuild once a year is acceptable maintenance. That is 10% of the year in other words and can be mostly done during weekend. In case that computer was 100% fully booked all the time, I would just build a good stable system once and run it without updates until it is replaced with another one built properly from ground up.

[Akiz]

Originally Posted by JFreak

Just sayin' not all errors are to be blamed at PT

No, just the ones like 91xx, 61xx etc. that occur in front of the clients, when you work on their projects. I'm so cheesed off with this thing...

You always try to ignore the main issue, which is Avid being shambolic and giving ridiculous excuses like the one above for their incompetence.

ProTools is the only DAW that gives errors all the time in MacOs, Windows, in machines that are fully compatible by Avid's standards. Even on a loaded MacPro 2019, it gives -9173 error during playback. The definition of ridiculous, if you ask me.

If Avid expects from ProTools users to use only, the bog standard plugins included with their software to keep it stable, they are delusional. Who the hell works this way? Are they implicitly accept the failure of AAX as a plugin format then?

But the problem is not the AAX plugins, is how ProTools handle system resources and it is so freakin obvious, when you have the exact same project with the same plugins in ProTools and Studio One or Logic Pro, for example. ProTools occasionally will stop playback with an error, while Studio One and Logic will keep up without even sweat.
On the same machine, with the same audio device and same macOs, that being.
Things are quite clear on who to blame.

And as i wrote in another thread, Avid is in "maintenance mode", doing the minimum they can do, just to collect annual fees. Their own "ProTools Product road map" from 2017 is the proof of my argument. For example, they announced Folder Tracks on April 2017, as a 2017 release, then moved "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release" and as we all know by now, this feature released 3 months ago, in 2020! What a joke!




Cheers!

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Akiz

NProTools is the only DAW that gives errors all the time in MacOs, Windows, in machines that are fully compatible by Avid's standards. Even on a loaded MacPro 2019, it gives -9173 error during playback. The definition of ridiculous, if you ask me.

Of course, Avid Compatibility assumes you have a clean install of said system, not something that has been upgraded over and over again. Their test bed just do not have those, only clean installs. To me assume upgraded system is compatible is ridiculous but to each their own.