Eleven Rack Standalone Editor

[Vercingetorix]

Originally Posted by christophersad

dont be fooled by the editor guys,they were forced to release an editor to support pt 11 (their main product) and prolly they found easier and faster to program a standalone with a midi protocol than to integrate it in pt11.

Oh, I don't doubt that for a second. It reflected terribly on them to have no or limited functionality to the 11R in their flagship product.

But I like to bring up that almost finished - or finished - IR Loader by Chris Townsend whenever I can ... basically because I like stirring up trouble

[Deansy]

It's amazing how clueless companies can be to their customers' needs and potential customers. So now they release an editor that's only 64bit! That probably excludes more than half of the market!
2nd: Even though I don't care for impulse response loaders, I'm almost certain that adding that feature alone today, will make the Eleven Rack so desirable and a clear alternative to Two notes Torpedo, AXE FX etc etc and Sales will probably go through the roof, but hey, they're the big boys and they know what they're doing!

[jeffro]

Originally Posted by christophersad

dont be fooled by the editor guys,they were forced to release an editor to support pt 11 (their main product) and prolly they found easier and faster to program a standalone with a midi protocol than to integrate it in pt11.

This was actually the plan all along. Pulling the Eleven Rack Editor out of PT11 allowed us to get PT11 out sooner, and bundling PT10 with PT11 provided that functionality until a standalone app could be released. Obviously not a perfect solution, but a compromise we needed to make based on our resources and other work.

[brianiac5150]

Originally Posted by jeffro

This was actually the plan all along. Pulling the Eleven Rack Editor out of PT11 allowed us to get PT11 out sooner, and bundling PT10 with PT11 provided that functionality until a standalone app could be released. Obviously not a perfect solution, but a compromise we needed to make based on our resources and other work.

As convoluted a process as this may seem and looking at it through rose glasses; this really speaks to the importance of the Eleven Rack within the Pro Tools platform. To release a complete version with the new version platform in order to include this functionality says a lot, in my peon opinion.

Yes...the wait sucked and I would've preferred it'd been there from the get-go, however, we're all extremely aware it's in the not too distant future and I am very thankful and happy for the work and results.

I'm certain it'll work flawlessly upon download.

[jeffro]

Originally Posted by Deansy

It's amazing how clueless companies can be to their customers' needs and potential customers. So now they release an editor that's only 64bit! That probably excludes more than half of the market!

The standalone editor is based on the Pro Tools 11 code which is 64-bit. Including 32-bit support would increase the complexity of the project which would either delay the release or impact other projects. Eleven Rack owners on a 32-bit OS can still use Pro Tools 10 to access the editor.

Originally Posted by Deansy

2nd: Even though I don't care for impulse response loaders, I'm almost certain that adding that feature alone today, will make the Eleven Rack so desirable and a clear alternative to Two notes Torpedo, AXE FX etc etc and Sales will probably go through the roof, but hey, they're the big boys and they know what they're doing!

This is indeed one of the highest voted requests for Eleven Rack:
http://protools.ideascale.com/a/idea...ussionID=11273

[YYR123]

Originally Posted by jeffro

The standalone editor is based on the Pro Tools 11 code which is 64-bit. -Eleven Rack owners on a 32-bit OS can still use Pro Tools 10 to access the editor

Makes sense to me

Originally Posted by jeffro

and most Mac owners can upgrade to Mavericks for free, so we feel this is a reasonable solution.

Well I guess that cat is out of the bag - I'm still at 10.8.4

However it's not terrible but it will push me to 10.9.1 - but I could probably live at PT11 from now on with this inclusion (that and slate's expected 1qtr releases)

[bredo]

I am really, REALLY, happy that they finally releases a Stand Alone Editor. They killed two birds with one stone with this. Both for PT11 users and users of other DAW's.

I would have been mad if they only incorporated this in PT11. As said, their solution is the best of both worlds IMO

[Logichead]

Anyone at Avid consider a standalone editor / librarian for iOS devices?

REALLY NEEDS a dedicated foot controller or two...

Best…H

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Deansy

It's amazing how clueless companies can be to their customers' needs and potential customers. So now they release an editor that's only 64bit! That probably excludes more than half of the market!
2nd: Even though I don't care for impulse response loaders, I'm almost certain that adding that feature alone today, will make the Eleven Rack so desirable and a clear alternative to Two notes Torpedo, AXE FX etc etc and Sales will probably go through the roof, but hey, they're the big boys and they know what they're doing!

Really? I don't see lack of 32 bit support as that serious a deficiency, and I would be very surprised if it excluded anything like "half the market", but maybe I'm missing something. And those poor Avid folks, they actually try to give people what they want and they get slammed for it. (that and the jerkoffs here with long lists of other new features they want. ).

Avid is meeting their commitment to deliver a Eleven Rack editor for Pro Tools 11 customers, which is the only public commitment related to this they ever made AFAIK. it's a bonus that they are delivering a stand-alone editor that may be useful elsewhere.

The Eleven Rack is already a viable alternative for lots of users compared to say the Axe FX and I suspect that is based largely on price. I'm not sure that most folks who seriously want an Axe-FX II today would suddenly accept an Eleven Rack because it now has a stand-alone GUI.

I'm not sure how many users really won't have a Windows or Mac 64 bit system today. Sure it might have been nice to be able to reporpose say an old laptop for a stand-along rig editor. But if the use is purely stand-along use without a DAW then a solution is buy a low-end x86-64 laptop or similar and use that. You can get Windows 8 x86-64 laptop starting around $300. I don't know the exact requirements are for the new Eleven Rack GUI are, but I'd be surprised if you won't be able to buy a low-cost laptop just to run that if you need. I expect lots of folks who wanted a stand alone-GUI for use without a DAW might have old laptops etc. and have hoped to use them for this, but if they really want this the worse case answer is buy that dedicated cheap laptop, if it is not worth ~$300 then maybe its not really that important to the user.

If you have a computer today and are running Pro Tools you have an editor on Pro Tools 8, 9 and 10 on 64 and 32 bit systems. That's a lot of Eleven Rack users right there that can just keep using what they are if they want. Users with Pro Tools 11 will obviously be on x86-64 systems and able to use the new editor.

I assume if you are using a third party DAW with the Eleven Rack as the interface then you'll need to have the Eleven Rack GUI running on the same computer. Otherwise the DAW computer would need to tunnel MIDI traffic say over Ethernet between the GUI and the Eleven Rack, way too much complexity in my book to want to implement all that for this edge case. So that likely excludes say using the Eleven Rack as an interface on a 32 bit DAW system and running the GUI on a separate 64 bit system. So if you are running a third party DAW, on x86-32 then yep likely tough luck. But how many folks are seriously in that camp? If you are then you likely have other reasons to want to upgrade to get the latest DAW features, latest plugins, latest drivers, VI large memory support, etc. just add being able to use the Eleven Rack GUI to that list and make the decision that is right for you.

There may be some pre-Pro Tools 8 folks, say with old HD/TDM systems with an Eleven Rack hanging off an interface as an outboard processor who want a GUI... well they can join the party as well. They will be able to hook up that cheap x86-64 laptop to the Eleven Rack and manage it there. And they could never embed settings in Pro Tools etc. or talk to the Eleven Rack from Pro Tools pre-8 anyhow so they don't lose anything. If they want more capabilities, upgrade to Pro Tools 11/10.

And finally, its all what is doable at reasonable effort and cost and how much baggage you can avoid creating that just casues problems in future.

I'll wait to see how the editor is implemented but I'd assume Avid may have wanted/needed to leverage all the stuff they have already with cross-platform GUI support within the AAX plugin framework. So I suspect, but don't know, that the editor maybe impented as AAX plugins running in a AAX run-time environment, or just enough of it stripped down to provide support for GUI, MIDI and some other bits. (and that does not necessarily mean that bits of the editor software would look anything like plugins, but they might). If so that means that Avid had to productize this runtime, likely from bits they already had, had to decide whether to support a AAX-32 like environment there as well as an AAX-64 like environment, or at least only support AAX-32 and face porting to AAX-64 in future, etc. Not a decision I'd want to make when everything else is going AAX-64 only. If the editor was implemented without all this, as a native Windows or Mac or Java application, then its much easier to provide 32 bit and 64 bit support, but still requires an increased commitment to development, packaging and QA. and a commitment to possibly need make changes to the Eleven Rack driver on 32 bit systems moving forward.

EDIT: And based on Jeffro's comments above that I did not notice earlier it looks like leveraging an AAX runtime is what Avid did.

And while the editor is handy, it is hardly the end of the world to use the font-panel GUI, I think the team did a nice job of that front panel UI design. Would have been nice to have a wider screen but hey.

OK enough kissing up to Avid, now hows my list of future feature requests looking?

Oh, and please add wider front panel screen and a few more menu knobs to the next gen hardware request list please...

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by jeffro

Eleven Rack owners on a 32-bit OS can still use Pro Tools 10 to access the editor and most Mac owners can upgrade to Mavericks for free, so we feel this is a reasonable solution.
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Jeff

I am suspecting this is an unintentional implication here of needing Maverics, other information I've seen such as comments on Pro Tools Expert implied a 10.8/Mountain Lion requirement. One way of reading this is the editor needs Maverics (I hope not), the other way of reading this is that if you have a x86-64 Mac today running an old 32 bit OS then you can upgrade to Mavericks' for free to get on x86-64 OS. On the later there may be some pre-Leopard folks that need to do an intermediate paid upgrade to get to Mavericks, but that's going to be tiny minotrity.

But just to be clear are you are saying, separate from requiring a 64 bits that the GUI requires Mavericks to run on OS X? And is that to run at all/known not to work, or to be officially supported? Mountain Lion is a perfectly fine 64 bit OS. I'm just trying understated the exact the requirements here.

Thanks.

Darryl