2016 Letter to AVID from PTHD user

[WAXLTD]

Dear Avid:

A lot of this has been shared, in various degrees of politeness, by others before. We wanted to share our perspective on a few things, our hope being it might help you to continue to have success with your customers.

We just renewed our HD annual upgrade and support plan for $399. That comes out to $33.25 / month which isn’t that bad considering the additional plugins that come with it. We don’t really use tech support, but I suppose if we needed it, it’s nice to have someone pick up the phone, and we appreciate the effort to provide great live support on the phone. Advanced users often don’t need tech support, just a good solid manual and a product that works.

What has been a pain for so many during the past few years has paying $599 or $999 to get to this place. Buying hardware that was more than they needed. The transition to AAX, HDX, etc. The old TDM sessions that won’t open quite right on HDX. It would seem the competitive DAW marketplace has forced Avid to move so many of the HD features to Vanilla, in order to be competitive, but it’s angered many HD users. Also, the fact that for some, the only reason for buying and upgrading an HD license is to use a piece of HD hardware you’ve already paid for.

The ONLY reason we upgraded to HDX from TDM was because in our main tracking studio, our monitoring and cue system was built around using sends routed to physical PT outputs while tracking. We do our cue mixing within PT. We have never, to this day, after countless albums tracked and mixed and released, used a single drop of AAX DSP. So for us, the chipset has been a waste. Native HD did not offer the same monitoring and latency we required. So all those fancy DSP AAX chips we paid for are worthless to us in terms of plugin usage. $7,000.00 seemed like a lot to pay for monitoring features.

There are still a lot of bugs that need to be fixed.

There is a lot of palpable resentment from the hard-core HD user base who have been loyal for YEARS and feel they haven’t been listened too, or valued as customers. They want stability, and NEW features that Vanilla doesn’t have, besides being able to work w/ Avid hardware. They expect more, because they have definitely paid more.

The HDX card core audio driver (for 3rd party apps and Mac OS ) is STILL NOT WORKING. Mind boggling, we still can’t play Quicktime in El Capitan through an HDX card!

11 and 12 have been a bit of a disaster for our friends in film and tv who have had so many complaints regarding the video engine (we don’t use it often) that they’ve actually switched DAW platforms entirely. It seems darkly humorous that Avid would have trouble with a video engine. A good friend who is a blockbuster film composer literally switched to Nuendo out of spite in the middle of a score and hasn’t looked back, he’s quite happy now. It takes a tremendous amount of anger and spite for a film composer to switch DAW mid-score, believe me!

The newest generation of DAW users love their Ableton, their Studio One, their Logic. All they need is a laptop and they are ready to make music, amazing recordings. They aspire to create and make money like the professionals they admire, many of whom still rely on Pro Tools, day-in-and-day-out to finish the records that made the kids want to buy a laptop and make music. But when that top professional tier of users goes sour on the brand, I think you lose something important. When the professional athletes go sour on a brand of kicks, the kids in high school don’t buy the shoes either.

And then you’ve got the retailers, who are grumbling about it the same way the pro users are. Again, your brand has been hurt here. I’ve been shocked at what we've heard from some big online retailers, people who moved A LOT of your product in the past. They are pushing your competitors before you in some cases where this wasn’t true before.

All of this aside, 12 has been amazing for us in many ways. Not really too many crashes on our rigs and freeze & commit have been game changers for our studios in terms of file delivery, archiving, sharing stem sessions, etc. The cloud features are young, but promising.

The 64 bit architecture that began with 11 has been GAME CHANGING in terms of processor efficiency and has allowed us to open up sessions on laptops, remotely, that used to choke a fully loaded TDM system.

I can mix a 100+ track session w/ a massive live orchestra on my laptop. That’s crazy.

Thank you for that.

We’re happy to keep paying $33.25 a month and have regular updates with new features and improved stability. THAT feels like a good value. Still love the sound of Pro Tools, the way it hustles and bends audio. Love tracking, comping takes, playlists, mixing. The audio engine sounds incredible. We’ll stay here, hoping Avid will continue to thrive and deliver the best platform and innovation for it’s customers.

Just some thoughts for Avid, if they happen to read. It’s been a Herculean transition that has happened. Great advances have occurred. Vast improvements under the hood have been made. Pro Tools is better than it’s ever been.

But you should know, GREAT damage has been done to your brand within the professional community here in Los Angeles and in other communities as well. We’re talking HD users. We hope you are listening and can discern the gratitude amidst the frustration. We’d like to see Pro Tools thrive and bring the best to it’s customers.

Focus on the Pro Tools HD crowd. Give them something AMAZING to feel special, important, exclusive. They paid for a first class ticket, pop that bottle of Cristal!

Thanks for all your efforts and innovation. We enjoy your product on a daily basis.

Our 10 cents from the peanut gallery.

[zedhed]

You've been far more generous in your praise of Avid than I think they deserve.

It's clear as day that something is seriously wrong with the way Avid is operating at present. I'd love to see them pick their game up and lead from the front once again but as the days then months go by with them seemingly falling behind in practically every way possible, my hope is diminishing rapidly.

[WAXLTD]

Originally Posted by zedhed

You've been far more generous in your praise of Avid than I think they deserve.

It's clear as day that something is seriously wrong with the way Avid is operating at present. I'd love to see them pick their game up and lead from the front once again but as the days then months go by with them seemingly falling behind in practically every way possible, my hope is diminishing rapidly.

Well, one can always hope that things get better. Would be good for all of us!

[zedhed]

IMHO, It certainly doesn't appear that Avid is doing anything for HD users even though they've rolled out the standard "coming soon" in response to requests for new HD features.

Until they actually produce something tangible, I'm locked at PTHD11 & my wallet is closed.

I will have saved the extra cost of buying back in to a new version by not paying subscription fees for PT12, which offers me no extra value.

I do agree that it would be good for all of us (including Avid) if they got their s@#t together.

I hope they read and take notice of your well written letter.

[del cosmos]

Great letter... But I don't think they are listening, they just want (need) money. That's it.


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[WAXLTD]

Originally Posted by zedhed

IMHO, It certainly doesn't appear that Avid is doing anything for HD users even though they've rolled out the standard "coming soon" in response to requests for new HD features.

Until they actually produce something tangible, I'm locked at PTHD11 & my wallet is closed.

I will have saved the extra cost of buying back in to a new version by not paying subscription fees for PT12, which offers me no extra value.

I do agree that it would be good for all of us (including Avid) if they got their s@#t together.

I hope they read and take notice of your well written letter.

Thanks for the kind words, I hope they read it too. I can genuinely understand why you've stayed on 11HD. Aside from rendering our HDX hardware non-functional, we'd be happy to be on Vanilla 12 at this point.

For many HD users, it's come down to whether they believe $1000 is worth:

-bug fixes, that may or may not materialize, for PT 11HD
-track commit, and track freeze
-use of some new plugins (Pro Compressor, Pro Limiter, etc.)
-cloud collaboration functionality
-continued compatibility of HDX hardware w/ latest version of PT
-readily available telephone tech support

Many HD license holders don't believe it's worth it.

I wonder what would happen though, if they offered PTHD for $33.25 a month, included a useable amount of cloud storage, all the bonus plugins, tech support, no requirement to buy avid hardware, and some features that separated it from Vanilla. I'd be willing to bet that subscription revenues would increase! I bet you might get some brand new Avid customers as well.

[del cosmos]

I guess they were ready to release 12.5.1 in time for the "Dock" thing but something happened in the last minute (maybe the "commit-undo" find) that stopped the release.


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[john1192]

thi si part of the issue ... nothing should hold up a FIX release ..nothing .. my .02

[Barry Johns]

Originally Posted by del cosmos

I guess they were ready to release 12.5.1 in time for the "Dock" thing but something happened in the last minute (maybe the "commit-undo" find) that stopped the release.


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Considering the fact that over the last few years there's been numerous posts like this, don't expect them to listen, or better yet, respond, even though they should. I think you did an outstanding job of really laying the general vibe of the HD community. Like others have said, a little too generous, but not horribly so.

[del cosmos]

Originally Posted by Barry Johns

Considering the fact that over the last few years there's been numerous posts like this, don't expect them to listen, or better yet, respond, even though they should. I think you did an outstanding job of really laying the general vibe of the HD community. Like others have said, a little too generous, but not horribly so.

Well, that shouldn't stop us from asking (respectfully) for the service we paid for.




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