"Special offer" for Toolkit?

[TVPostSound]

And if the software to make that happen is available by another company at a cheaper price, why not switch to it?

Then people should switch without all the drama!!!! Did you see the post where Digidesign admitted removing the free
PTLE 7.1 upgrade "from any version" from the MPTK and DVTK 2, due to their bottom line profits. They dont care.
Protools is the DeFacto standard in high end music and post-production.

I also don't have the money!

Imagine 15 years ago, having to come up with a couple of million???

Anyway, this isn't about past prices either

Yes it is. I worked for a post-production company that spent 5 million dollars
on 3 SSL Axioms, because they needed them to keep up.
Now I see a complete room that does the same for $100,000.00

I can't believe that Digidesign doesn't seem to be able to keep up with the pack

They seem to be the leader of the pack around here.


Digital Performer, Logic Pro arent as well rounded as PT, Ive seen Nuendo come and go around here.

No offense intended to you, hope none was taken.

Not at all

[JFreak]

The price of the DV Toolkit 2 is absolutely insanely high. I too, was hoping for a special offer. I mean come on. 1300 friggin dollars! (...) I've never said this before but now it really is time to look at other DAW options. Shame on you, Digi. Right this wrong.

There's a cheaper DV toolkit available, too. It's called Logic Pro and it only costs $999 If not anything else, in my (not so humble) opinion, THAT's a clear sign of "insanely high" price point for few extra features. Surely a toolkit cannot cost more than a full-featured DAW software...

[rustle]

I have just written the following email to Digidesign Customer Services in Europe. If everyone takes a little direct action by writing to them MAYBE, just MAYBE they may see the folly of their ways:

Dear Digidesign

I wish to formerly lodge my extreme disappointment, anger and resentment at the ham-fisted approach by Digidesign
regarding the new DV Toolkit 2. I am most unhappy, as are a great number of other DV Toolkit owners, at the policy you
have decided to instigate whereby software I have already bought at great expense is being resold to me if I wish to continue
using Pro Tools software version 7.1 and up.

DV Toolkit cost me nearly £900 and now all I am going to get by having to purchase it again is 48 tracks which I don't need and
ONE reverb plug-in. All the other features offered I already have thank you.

As a loyal customer for five years or more who has diligently bought every upgrade going I find this pricing policy little short of daylight robbery.
I would not object to a standard upgrade charge of around £75 but no - that is not enough money for you.

I wish to point out that not everyone involved in audio post production for film and TV work is earning bucket-fulls of cash. There are plenty
of us such as myself who make a modest living doing sound editing work for all the low cost media that is prevalent nowadays.
If it were otherwise I'd have upgraded to an HD system by now but I can't afford the DV Toolkit 2 let alone £8000 worth of Digi hardware.

All this after the company had gone so high in my estimation after the release of the free Xpand plug-in for which I thank Digidesign.

I implore you to reconsider a more reasonable upgrade path and pricing policy to existent Pro Tools 7 and DV Toolkit owners.
Sometimes worthy ethics are more profitable in the long term than the economics of worth.

Sincerely

Russell Pay
Musician and Sound Designer

[CEGray]

You all said it much better than I could! I agree with everything said here about the "Special Offer" hipe, I even upgraded my computer ($1000.00) to dual-core to take advantage of the new 7.0 requirements along with purchasing the Pro Tools LE 7 Software Upgrade Plus ($115.17) and that's not including the initial purchase of the studio hardware to run it! I even went to Berkleemusic.com and completed their course in Studio Production using Pro Tools ($3585.00)! And now, I see how "important" it is to have a back-up plan dealing with any music software/hardware vendor... You must create choices... Have Two (2) on your computer, dual operating systems, separate partitions for each and their audio interfaces.

I'd like to thank the Digi User Conference Forum for helping me build a 64bit computer in which I will now include Windows XP Pro x64bit on it to run the only 64bit music software available (you know who they are) and run Pro Tools 7.1 on the other partition!!!!

Now, I have a CHOICE!

My solution to this madness? Let us purchase what we want "separately" and not get something we already have or don't need! Bundles, always make you feel like you got some added value for nothing and that's exactly what it turns out to be most of the time "NOTHING" because it hardly gets used during the music making process, especially after you upgraded your computer and the vendors are slow in catching up with code to make it work right.

[HotRats]

DIAFXMX: "Dissapointment?? I don't understand." [cut]

Yes, you don't understand

full (and over) featured DAWs pricelist:
Nuendo 3: $1,999.99
Logic $999.00
Samplitude Professional: $999.97
Cubase SX 3: $599.99
DP 4.6: $499.97
Sonar 5 (producer edition): $499.97

Amazing Digitoolkits...
DV Toolkit 2 $1,295 + 85$ for PT 7.0. Upgrade
Music Production Toolkit $495 + 85$ for PT 7.0. Upgrade

and still PT does not have PDC.

yes...you don't understand man.

[bassntreble]

what a bunch of whiners....everyone asked for 48 tracks, it's here and now the bellyaching will continue.



Logic Pro costs $1000. it has 3 really good softsynths (the rest might as well be free or shareware), a good convo verb, and a bunch of decent plugins (as if anyone needs 5 verbs ranging from passible to crap). You hook up a 1/8" to dual 1/4" from the headphone out of the mac and spend another $40 on a 1x1 midi audio interface. Total cost around $1060




PT 7 with an Mbox and producer pack costs $550, add $450(list, street will be lower) for MPT and $100(list) for the VST->RTAS adapter and you get 2 really good softsynths (a bunch more are available as free or shareware), a great convo verb, a bunch of decent plugins and a bunch of premium bf plugins. Total cost $1100 and you have a full fledged, zero-latency monitoring interface included.

[edit, i was posting when the previous post appeard]
even a digi002 wich comes with the producer pack already costs $1150 street. almost any other 8 channel interface of that caliber will cost about $800 so factor that into the cost of a DAW. I've done double blind listening tests in a shootout with a few other offerings from RME, MOTU,Apogee, Metric Halo and Lynx and the AD/DA is of extremely competitive quality.

I feel so cheated.....lol

[jbussey]

Don't be stupid. We have to pay $1300 for timecode.

[bassntreble]

Don't be stupid. We have to pay $1300 for timecode.

check the street prices dude...$999. What are you going to pay for logic and that new apogee interface? I've heard it and it's not a Rosetta.

Whatever, PT is still competitive no matter how you slice it. I make my living using PT and I'm glad to have these options available. I've been in the buisness for over a decade and I've used just about every DAW software out there (including Metro and Intuem) and I keep coming back to PT because it helps me get my job done more efficiently than any other app...call me a fanboy but it helps me pay my rent.

Don't get me wrong though, Digi has it's problems but just as much as any other DAW developer. Even though the level of support isn't optimal, it's still better than any other I've used (with the exception of some independent developers).

I guess YMMV. For those about to make the jump from protools, I salute you. Good luck.

[Muzoid]

This is a really HOT thread and with plenty of good reason.

I would like to just put another spin on the whole thing as I hear you guys thoroughly, but some of these posts sound a little self-defeating (i.e., like if you're doing film work at home and PT LE is making you money... hey what's the big immense deal?)

I am the LAST person to defend DIGI - on some level they piss me off to no end, but let me just tell you my story, so y'all can chill a bit...

I had a MixPlus system, which rocked. At some point, when it was clear that it's days of being supported were limited, I sold it and bought an 002 Rack. It was just OK (at times a bit frustrating) but when I upgraded my Mac to a G5 Dual 2G, it was surprisingly great. This fall I finished mixing a really great album on that system (I also had an Apogee Trak2 as my front/back end and a Command8 controller) and felt totally satisfied (for the moment) with the system - I was NOT going to upgrade until atleast summer '06, when newer Digi and Apple Hardware became available.

The next project I got was an album and the 1st song arrived - all 68 tracks of it. Holy Canolli's Batman - this sucks!!! Took me 4 days to mix 1 song - submixing the drums, deactivating those tracks, so I could then submix the BGs, then reactivate the drums to make adjustments, etc,, etc, ... you get the picture. I literally had the G5 hemorrhaging, I was pushing it so hard - luckily on the last day of the mix, PT7 arrived and I was able to print the mix without blowing up the computer.

The client loved the mix and I got the entire project, but I knew that it wasn't going to work very well this way. Because of the track limit, I was forced to upgrade to an HD2 system, upgrade plug-ins, more interfaces, etc, basically spend all the money that I was gonna make from this project.

Now, it is cool to have an HD system,. though I'm NOT in love with it, especially considering some of it's lame idiosyncracies (i.e. having small latencies in TDM that I never had in RTAS, the lame implementation of ADC, which effectively eats up massive DSP, etc, etc) and knowing that it will be obsolete in very little time. Then I see that only months later they release these "toolkits" that effectively increase track count massively well, I was more than a little upset.

Hope this puts some perspective on it for some of you - I would have loved to have spent only $500 to get that increased track count!!!

[jbussey]

check the street prices dude...$999. What are you going to pay for logic and that new apogee interface? I've heard it and it's not a Rosetta.

The $1300 is just for the DV Toolkit 2 - which gives you timecode. That's not including Pro Tools, or interface.