Is Pro Tools dying?

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

...
the engineering and development teams at Global Logic are good. But they are not "audiophile DAW and DSP" experts at all. .

My experience is that it has been over a half century since the best and brightest U. S. engineers were commonly employed in the audio field. There is talent available in Russia and the former iron curtain countries that would only be affordable to the military in our country. The same is true of India and China. My point is I wouldn't write employing Global Logic off to Avid just being cheap. And we don't even know exactly what those folks are developing. It might well have little or nothing to do with Pro Tools. I do know that an old friend of mine is back at Digi/Avid after more that 10 years away. If I'm not mistaken Avid just turned their first profitable quarter in a very long time. I'm also reading about back ordered HDX cards.

That doesn't sound much like doom and gloom to me.

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by derFunkenstein

Yes, the gentleman I dealt with on the phone yesterday was very helpful and he recognized that he was forced to give me a rubbish answer. It's the folks making the decisions that need raked over the coals; the individual Avid employees have always been very helpful. It's important to distinguish.

Yes, I 100% agree. And I apologize if any of my posts seemed to say otherwise... that is why I was naming Gary Greenfield and Kirk Arnold specifically.

The people that are at Avid/Digi/M-Audio are great. The upper management are the ones who have been steering the company in the wrong direction.

I think the main problem that Gary has/had, was that when coming to Avid, he looked at (and still looks at) Avid Media Composer and the video products as the flagship. He has said so in interviews on TV shows. He will also mention music and protools but his focus is always on the Video aspect of the company.

If you were to look at profitability of Avid, Digidesign and M-Audio before Gary... you would see that each division ran separately from one another, had it's own staff, it's own profit/loss and was fully functional independent from one another. In looking at that... Avid had been losing a lot of money every quarter, Digidesign was breaking even at times and earning a profit at times, and M-Audio was making about as much profit as Avid division was losing.

If Gary was "smart" and objective, he would have told the board of directors..."look, the Video side is the gaping hole in the bottom line while the audio side is profitable. We need to cut the video side and start over, re-evaluating what works and what doesn't and borrow methods that work from Digi and M-Audio and integrate them into Avid."

It seems the board is set on video as the flagship and can't see the problems with that.

So Instead Gary kept Avid the way it was for the most part... and cleaned house with Digi and M-Audio... taking their profits and moving them over to Avid's books by now merging the three divisions into just AVID. Any redundant positions that existed in both Avid and Digi and M-Audio, the Digi and M-Audio personal were let go and the Avid person took over the responsibilities. That didn't happen in every situation, but that was the majority. And that was the biggest mistake.

And again... this has nothing to do with the employees at avid...they are great. But these decisions from the top brass don't make sense in a long term picture. It almost seems like they were hoping someone would buy them, and so they gutted the profitable side to prop up the unprofitable side as a short term way of making them look more attractive in the short term to potential buyers. But nobody bought them...

[O.G. Killa]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

And we don't even know exactly what those folks are developing. It might well have little or nothing to do with Pro Tools.

No, I know for a fact it is pro tools. They also work on Media Composer, which is why Avid thought they could cut the engineering dept down and send the work to global logic. But the problem was, Avid cut Digi's engineering staff right in the middle of a huge rewrite whereas Media Composer was done and the bugs were worked out of it before GL took over the code.

[Avid]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

Really? How many people were employed at Daly City in 2007 adn what specific products did they work on? How many people were employed in Irwindale as of 2007 and what specific products did they work on? How many of them (in both places) were in the engineering and development dept?
how many people were laid off in Oct, 23 2008 and which locations were they from? How many people were laid off in 2010? Which divisions/departments were they from? how many people were laid off in 2011 and from where?

Can't provide that level of detail, but you can find some info on this topic in our annual reports. You'll see in there that your claims that cuts were all in Audio or all in Daly City or Irwindale are false, and that there were multiple Depts and locations affected for various reasons.

And to correct you, I am not saying the guys at global logic are subpar. But what I am saying is they are not specialists with years of experience in making and developing DAWS. And from my own previous experiences at software companies who also looked into outsourcing development... they cannot match the level of expertise a highly specialized and experienced team within that specific focus can achieve.

That's a valid point, but again you are assuming that all Audio Eng/Dev was let go and all of this activity is occurring somewhere else. This is not the case.

And while you can tell me there are lots of protools software and hardware developers running around the hallways at Daly City and Burlington (which I know there are not, I've seen the job listings and job descriptions for the Avid development and engineering departments come and go on Avid's website. In those job descriptions, they actually tell you a lot about the structure of the departments and what is going on internally)... the fact remains that Global Logic's target business is not software programming, but software research, design and development. All you need to do is go to their web page and see this.
http://www.globallogic.com/ideation-services.html

Job listings/descriptions do offer some insight, but that doesn't mean you know the actual structure or size of our Depts.

We can agree to disagree. But over the past 4 years about 500~600 or so people have been let go from Daly city and Irwindale. And while some were marketing, tech support, training and marketing... you can't expect me to believe that you had 300 marketing people and 300 tech support people there when I know you had around 6~10 tech support in irwindale and between 10 and 20 in Daly City... and Digi had literally 3 or 4 people in training...
So out of the 600 people let go, roughly 35 were support and training for audio products. You really think I'm going to believe digidesign and M-Audio had 465~565 marketing specialists that they let go? You and I both know very few people from Avid division actually got let go... it was mainly Digidesign and M-Audio divisions that were let go.

You are again assuming the majority were from Engineering, and from 2 locations. We have locations worldwide, as well as additional Depts. Again, check the annual reports for more info.

> More than 70% of our employees use Avid products to make their own movies, music and more.
> This makes our mission more personal and real, and our work more meaningful and fun.
> http://www.avid.com/US/careers
Are you willing to go on record to say that more than 70% of the staff at global logic uses avid products to make their own movies, music and more?

The statement on http://www.avid.com/careers relates specifically to Avid employees. We don't have this stat for contracted business partners so I won't try to guess.

And if you have so many in the engineering dept already, then why all the job posting for software engineers, Sr Software Engineers, Principle Software engineers, Sr Software Developer, Hardware Engineers, Senior hardware engineers, etc on your website? All which have been posted in the last two months?

Workforces change, especially in high tech as products are developed and brought to market. We've also had people who had left the company (for various reasons) return to similar or different roles later.

We can agree to disagree. But what is more misleading, you saying there is a large engineering and development staff for audio products, and then in the last 2 months Avid posts a bunch of job openings for engineers to work on their audio products or me saying the engineering dept for audio products is tiny to non-existent compared to what it once was? And most of the job listings I saw in the last two years were for program managers that specifically had experience in managing outsourced software development and had experience acting as liaison between the company and it's outsourcing contractor, being able to relay tech specs from marketing and product managers to the outsourced contractor... I'm glad to see Avid is finally starting to bring engineering staff in, but it's a shame because they had so many talented and specialized staff to begin with. If they hadn't let go of them all, they wouldn't be in need of them now.

Without being able to post details I suppose there isn't much we can say to convince you otherwise. Also, I didn't say "large" (which is relative anyway), I said we have a "solid and credible" team. Still that does not mean that our Dev/Eng group is tiny or non-existent. Sorry I can't provide more details.

Which brings me back to the overall theme of my first post. Avid sold the horse to pay for the carriage. And now they are in need of a horse and are trying to get one since you can't outsource your engine and expect to move forward successfully.

We have faced similar challenges as most companies have in recent years, and like others have had to make some tough choices. It's really not as dramatic as you are painting it (that said, I in no way mean to minimize the impact of these decisions on the people effected). I understand we have not always done a great job communicating and that certainly adds to the angst.

[Avid]

Originally Posted by O.G. Killa

The people that are at Avid/Digi/M-Audio are great.

I'll take that as a compliment, thanks!

[derFunkenstein]

Originally Posted by Avid

I'll take that as a compliment, thanks!

OK, now that we've established that all the Avid employees are great, would you do me a favor and answer my question about the braindead upgrade/crossgrade policy in my other thread? Unless you're the guy who came up with said policy, then I'll rake you over the coals...lol I've been kissing employee rear end for a day now and nobody will at least give me an answer.

[Avid]

Originally Posted by derFunkenstein

OK, now that we've established that all the Avid employees are great, would you do me a favor and answer my question about the braindead upgrade/crossgrade policy in my other thread? Unless you're the guy who came up with said policy, then I'll rake you over the coals...lol I've been kissing employee rear end for a day now and nobody will at least give me an answer.

Will give the CS group a nudge about your other thread...

[derFunkenstein]

Originally Posted by Avid

Will give the CS group a nudge about your other thread...

Thansk, I appreciate it.

[Barry Johns]

I think HDX is an amazing product, and should have come out several years ago, which is the first shot against Avid. No other reason to me than selfish, making the cow give milk until it drops dead!

Second shot is alienating mid level users, HD Native is ok at best!

Third, PTHD pricing strategy was deplorable at best! The reason you see so many PTHD Native cards on eBay is folks caught on to what I was screaming from the rooftops, upgrade to PTHD Native from Mix core cards, then sell the PTHD Native card with no software and keep or sell HD10! That way PTHD software is FREE!!!!!

Mbox series was amazing, other than lack of ADAT I/O!!!!!!!

No replacement for 003 controller series. MASSIVE MISTAKE!!!!!! You are kidding yourself if you think the Artist series makes sense from a cost/performance perspective along with a mBox or other I/O! New touch screen development will make the Artist series obsolete in just a couple of years! Have you seen what can be done on an iPad? Can you say 42" desktop screen! Really?

Avid simply does not have a clue about how to succeed. Yes, they are making some good products, but the in-between is vastly more important! It's about the details, ATENTION TO DETAIL!!!!!!!!

[relaxo]

Avid are not being greedy...they simply have no money. What's happening to them is the product of 2012, a time where only Apple and the bankers and CEOs have cash. It's brutal and sheer survival that's driving the new PT10 pricing scheme, outsourcing and nearly everything else complained about here. I've never felt Avid or Digidesign were particularly greedy companies. Historically, I have found them quite reasonable, fair and good-willed most of the time.