003: PT LE is dead! Long live Pro Tools (but how?)

[DrDVD]

Wow...

Like the rest of you, i'm flummoxed by the colossal non-event embodied in the 003 release.

So many of Digi's most dedicated users made our wishes so clear in our feature requests and in threads like this 003 wish list thread over the past 2 years, and i know that some of Digi's employees who are actually musicians and producers get it, so it's clear that this was a marketing decision. But one has to wonder who they're marketing to now, because most of the potential entry-level crowd they seem to be targeting with this would probably be better served by the M-Audio hardware.

As Dubai Fox and others have observed, the 003 is little more than a bug fix for the 002, which was already several years behind the competition.

To be fair, the *controller version* of the 003 seems to have a few nice little tweaks, but the 003r seems to be nothing more than a 002r with an extra headphone jack, WC, and an alt monitor out, all of which are very welcome additions, but nowhere near the top of our wish list.

The one hope we still have, as some have suggested, is a "Digi 003 Pro" that would give us what we've been asking for:

- Ability to expand I/O channels (via linking multiple units and/or adding extra I/O cards)
- 8-16 channels of AES I/O over DB25 ports with single-wire 192KHz support
- Surround monitoring support (also requires software support for at least 5.1 surround, perhaps as pay-extra "toolkit")
- Sturdy, road-ready 2U box with a dependable power supply
- Quality converters and clock with 192KHz sample rate support
- FireWire 800 or PCIe card
- Standard DB25 balanced +4 analog I/O
- S/MUX on dual ADAT lightpipe ports, for 8 channels at 96k (like RME et al)
- Phantom power switches switchable per channel, on the front of the unit
- At least one instrument DI input on the front panel
- At least basic 4-segment metering per channel on front panel
- Talkback mic input
- Support for CoreAudio device aggregation

If a control surface version of this is made, it should include surround monitoring control room features a la the Control|24, switching between 2 sets of 5.1 monitors and 2 pair of stereo monitors.

If Digi doesn't offer such a "Digi 003 Pro," then i don't see the point of them continuing the LE line - they should just drop it and let M-Audio handle all host-based systems (and remove the senseless crippling preventing AAF/OMF import/export in PT M-Powered).

Yes, it seems clearer than ever now that, unless we get a "Digi 003 Pro" with the features we've been asking for, then word will get out that M-Audio has leapfrogged the LE line on most counts, making the LE line both overpriced and obsolete for most purposes, and then naturally the exodus of pros from the LE line will accelerate. In that case, where we migrate to will depend on whether or not Digi offers a sub-$5000 HD product.

Personally, i'm fed up with the needless crippling of LE (hardware and software) and i'd much rather have a PTHD solution without DSP that i can get for around $3k street price. I use HD in the studio, but like most of the rest of you, i refuse to drop $8k+ for an HD system to work on my mixes at home. My Mac Pro kicks royal booty and I never run out of processor power anymore, even working at 96k, so there's no way i'll drop all that extra coin for DSP i really don't need.

Digi would be very smart to release a PTHD product without DSP - just 32-64 ins and out on a PCI card, like Apogee's Symphony, with a standard HD interface port. As someone else said, forget TDM - it's great, if you need all the extra power, but many of us don't, so give us the option to skip the DSP chips and use our RTAS plug-ins on our increasingly powerful native systems.

The question remains: with M-Audio overtaking PT LE on the hardware front, what is the relevance for PT LE? It is no longer a midrange option between the M-Audio stuff and the HD/Icon products - it is a dinosaur with delusions of grandeur, and existing Pro Tools users obviously know that already, and i can't imagine that the rest of the market will take too long to figure that out.

Hopefully Digi will surprise us with a fantastic "Digi 003 Pro" that finally incorporates the features that their most dedicated user base has been requesting, along with a PT LE software update (or add-on "toolkit" package) that offers support for surround mixing and 192k sample rates, so the sessions we do on HD in the studio can be taken home for tweaking, or on the road, etc.

Otherwise, i hear a decidedly mediocre recording of trumpets playing "Taps" for the LE line.

I can't imagine i'm the only one...?