IK Multimedia?
 

....Most of my work is very IK heavy. Amplitube 3, Philharmonik, Sampletank, Ampeg etc... I have asked them and they cannot tell me anything at all about AAX format for their products...

If PT11 comes along sooner rather than later - don't laugh :o - (i.e before IK have got their act together)....then it pretty much renders me stuck at 10 and not being able to suck up the 64 bits unless I move to another host!!

Anybody know anything at all??

Thx

Tony.

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

Preface: I know very little, this is mostly speculation.

IK will go aax eventually, but they have plenty of time to do so. RTAS still works fine for right now, and PT11 probably will not be out for quite some time. I've seen at least one (maybe more, can't remember at the moment) thread on IK's message board that an employee confirmed they're at least starting work on some aax plugs. They also said that Avid have no timetable for releasing PT11, so they aren't super worried about it yet.

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

Nothing new yet.


Reply quote from IK's forum 25.07.2012:

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

Thanks anyway all - this was from the thread that I started on the IK forum way back... One can hope... :o

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

If this is truly the way IK is thinking - not apparently doing anything for AAX before PT11 comes out then they have the wrong way of doing things. Avid has AAX working in PT now - why wait?

Their thinking/excuse is likely that they do not want to go through the effort of doing a 32 bit AAX release that won't run with Pro Tools 11. The companies who did not move/commit early to do AAX face a smaller useful market life of a release on Pro Tools 10 so maybe we'll see more of these decisions.

Deciding to release, with all the productization and support costs is different than deciding to do a bring-up in engineering. It would be pretty surprising if any competent company would not at least be working on a test bring-up so they have a chance of releasing around when Pro Tools 11 gets to market and kills compatibility with their current RTAS products.

Sample based VI code may really benefit from 64 bit memory so for those products some vendors might just be focused on the Pro Tools 11 64 bit goal. The trouble is seeing behind the curtain at how much real work they are putting into AAX in development and testing now even if this won't be released.

But overall I would avoid rushing out and investing in plugins/software from IK and others playing this talk but no visible action game, at least with companies with shipping 32 bit AAX plugins today there is visible proof they have things really working and should be able to get to 64 bit support to be compatible with Pro Tools 11... (but then for expensive licenses I would like to know what the required 64 bit AAX upgrade will cost me to go to Pro Tools 11). BTW Avid folks have already noted here that the AAX SDK includes a 64 bit runtime test environment so developers can test their AAX code is ready for 64 bit.

Darryl

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

The fact that there's plenty of companies doing 32 bit AAXplugs now kind of blows your argument out of the water. And besides - who's to say 32 but plugs won't work in PT11 with a suitable bridge? Remember that one of the best bridge plugs for Sonar is not their own but jbridge (third party developer) so who's to say Avid needs to do one?

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

I'd be surprised if the current IK VI's get AAX updates. They've been out so long and the last updates, several years ago, have worked in RTAS and VST seems like just as long. Companies like NI have surpassed IK tremendously in just about every area regarding VI's. IK is long overdue for something new and there is much buzz about Sampetank 3. I'd bet that ST3 64 bit and other new endeavors are taking up a of space on the to do list. I have all of their VI's but will take ST3 upgrade/new VI's over AAX updates. Would be cool but I don't see them doing both.

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

It does not 'blow anything out of the water'. I have not said its impossible, so (many) cases of companies doing this means nothing, clearly there are companies not doing 32 bit AAX now (many of them VI vendors), and the reasons some are and some are not is what I am presenting.

I also think spenner's comments are right on the money here. Even without the specifics he mentions, VI vendors have potentially a more work to do if they want to leverage 64 bit memory (and current actual large physical memory) , and maybe do other updates as well. Personally I really want to see Superior Drummer ready for 64 bits/AAX, and i would have been reassuring to see something in 32 bit AAX now.

I think the tone that has been set by Avid is that there will not be a 32 bit bridge (at least provided by them), and techncially I think that is a good idea for long-term ecosystem evolution and overall stability. I don't know enough about the AAX infrastructure to have a feel about how bridging will work. Avid might (or might not?) also want to avoid this and have ways of preventing/discouraging this.

Darryl

Re: IK Multimedia?
 

On a more prosaic note, is anyone seeing a crash with NI Komplete on 10.2 (with all available plugins updated to AAX) where, as soon as a volume is inserted or removed, Pro Tools crashes? (It's fairly clear from the stack trace that this is the cause.)