Will PT Ever Come To iPad Pro?

[johnbarnesiii]

Hi guys,

I’m sure this has been discussed somewhere but I’m wondering... will there ever be a full version of Pro Tools that can work on an iPad Pro? Not just as a way to control Pro Tools on another Mac, but a full working standalone version for iOS that can be used to track and mix, etc. If so, any idea when?

[Darryl Ramm]

No. You need to appreciate the state of Avid. Avid has enough Problems shipping legacy software. First is a mess, all low-end Pro Tools DAW products have not done well. Why would you want an Avid DAW on a iPad... this is a crowded free space already with really hard to do consumer software like Garageband... why would Avid spend money it does not have doing that? The company is in serious debt and needs to manage to those debt covenants and repayments... which it has been doing well... but that means cutting in lots of places. Avid is a faint shell of what it used to be with many developers departed long ago and replaced by outsourced dev teams. It has no cash to spend playing around with iPad DAWs. And it now faces significant work preparing for the Apple ARM transition... that needs to be their focus. And I hope they knock that out of the park.

[dominicperry]

I know this is OT, but how did Avid end up in debt? What were they trying to do that meant it was necessary to take on debt - it has a number of well established products and is a recognised leader in its field, where is the need to do something extravagant? And what was that extravagant thing?

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

I know this is OT, but how did Avid end up in debt? What were they trying to do that meant it was necessary to take on debt - it has a number of well established products and is a recognised leader in its field, where is the need to do something extravagant? And what was that extravagant thing?

The extravagant thing was supporting years of incompetent management.

And debt can be great financial tool to help fund growth of companies with solid cash flow, is non-dillutive, etc. but it's maybe more suitable to fund more predictable growth than extravagant projects... but misapplied or when companies are struggling debt is a noose. And Avid has been struggling for years. And now Avid is pretty much financially defined by it's debt obligations.

[dominicperry]

It's interesting. I've been looking at their finances today. The top 4 members of the leadership team are paid $1m - $2m each. The top 10 board members are paid $200k each. The exception is the President who is in both lists and gets $750k. That's $5m-$6m being paid to a large group of non-technical people. The CTO comes 7th in the 'Leadership' list. To my mind it's a pretty poor structure and a lot of money spent before you get to someone who actually knows something (most likely superficially) about how the actual products work.
Earnings are about 4%. That's pathetic for a software company (I know they do some hardware but they definitely don't do anything you'd reasonably call 'services'). They are predicting 50% growth in earnings year on year, presumably to try and stave off debtors demanding money back or shareholders selling out. But it doesn't seem like a very realistic target.

Maybe they just need splitting up into a few separate, specialist companies. And lose the big board and associated heavy management structure.

[dominicperry]

I replied to this post but it appears to have gone to the Mods, and then disappeared without trace.....................

[johnbarnesiii]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

I replied to this post but it appears to have gone to the Mods, and then disappeared without trace.....................

Thanks, would be curious to hear what you had to say about it.

[dominicperry]

Originally Posted by johnbarnesiii

Thanks, would be curious to hear what you had to say about it.

My comment was eventually reinstated (now a couple of posts above).
It was about the bloated Avid management and their bloated pay packets, but not about Pro Tools coming to iPad.

To echo Darryl's comments, it doesn't make much sense that Avid would put time, effort and money into iPad development, when their core audio product on MacOS is such a mess. At the moment, the only guaranteed users of Pro Tools are studios which have a lot of money invested in Avid hardware. As far as I can tell, as much as many people love the breadth and depth of Pro Tools features and hardware integration, a combination of stability/reliability, Avid's pricing structure and their general contempt for their customer base means that most users are at least considering a move to another platform. Many will stay, because they have to or because it makes no economic sense to move, but the sheer numbers that are considering moving is a bad sign.

Of course, most of the other DAWs have a good number of disgruntled users too, and it's a bit of a merry-go-round. But there are fewer and fewer reasons to tie yourself to Pro Tools now, than even 5 years ago. And to new users, the price of admission makes no sense commpared with Logic or S1 or Ableton or Reaper. There's not even a good argument for a newbie with the sound-to-picture heritage anymore, given the QuickTime export bug when using Catalina.

[dominicperry]

.........more to the point, to address the original question, more broadly....
An ipad is a lousy platform for studio music making. Whilst it's pretty handy as an ideas sketch pad, think of the things that you might want or need to connect to a hardware platform for making music:-
1) audio interface
2) midi keyboard
3) control surface
4) disk for sample library
5) disk for backup
6) thumb drive for file hand-off
7) DSP for tracking/plug-ins
8) one or more large screens
Generally, it's hard to get more than one or two of these working with a single-port iPad.
Not to mention the ability to have plenty of memory for virtual instruments.
So, iPad seems like a bad choice of platform for this kind of work. I've used MTDaw, Nanostudio, Spire, Cubasis and Auria. They're all amazing and all so limited that I quickly gave up.
It's not to say that those with creativity and talent can't make great music on these devices, but I think that in most cases, it's an unnecessary series of limitations.
As an aside, every piece of music I've created on a iPad, I have now lost. I can't reload or recreate them. The hardware, iOS and software all moves on, and saving and moving the files is really hard. So it all gets lost, quite quickly.

[johnbarnesiii]

Originally Posted by dominicperry

.........more to the point, to address the original question, more broadly....
An ipad is a lousy platform for studio music making. Whilst it's pretty handy as an ideas sketch pad, think of the things that you might want or need to connect to a hardware platform for making music:-
1) audio interface
2) midi keyboard
3) control surface
4) disk for sample library
5) disk for backup
6) thumb drive for file hand-off
7) DSP for tracking/plug-ins
8) one or more large screens
Generally, it's hard to get more than one or two of these working with a single-port iPad.
Not to mention the ability to have plenty of memory for virtual instruments.
So, iPad seems like a bad choice of platform for this kind of work. I've used MTDaw, Nanostudio, Spire, Cubasis and Auria. They're all amazing and all so limited that I quickly gave up.
It's not to say that those with creativity and talent can't make great music on these devices, but I think that in most cases, it's an unnecessary series of limitations.
As an aside, every piece of music I've created on a iPad, I have now lost. I can't reload or recreate them. The hardware, iOS and software all moves on, and saving and moving the files is really hard. So it all gets lost, quite quickly.

Thank you. Solid points all around. So is Pro Tools no longer the industry standard then? Which software are people moving to the most, in your opinion? Logic Pro?