To update from PT Ultimate 2020.12 or no...worth it?

[holyspicoli]

Hi all,

Long time pro user since like PT 6 in '04. I would keep the software up-to-date pretty regularly until late 2020 in which I felt the 2-3 updates per year weren't worth the heavy yearly price to stay current, so I made the decision to not upgrade then and i've been parked at 2020.12 for the 3 years since. I've been pretty satisfied as it's a stable and useful version of PT on my system, but now that perpetual upgrades are back without the punishing Reinstatement fee, I was curious about upgrading. I wanted to ask music peeps what the best/most useful improvements have been within the updates from that time until now (2023.12). What are some of the features of the last 3 years that have really made a real-world impact on workflow, versatility, ease of use, etc? The work I do is all core PT-audio work - recording/writing/producing/editing/mixing - so any post, video, or Atmos updates don't really apply to me.

As a reminder 2020.12 which I've been on is the very first version with "Dark Mode" (before they improved it), and track folders which were pretty new at the time too. I'm on a Mac Pro 5,1, macOS Catalina 10.15.7, using a HDN card and Avid Omni.

Any insight is appreciated - happy holidays all!

[reflexson]

Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth it yet. I just grabbed a reinstatement in case they decide to stop selling them again, but everything that’s been introduced since folder tracks has had minimal impact on me. I’m sure it’s different if you are heavy into post workflows or surround mixing, but for stereo music creation,I havnt found anything great. The ara stuff is a mess, that new sketch thing is not useful to me, and the new marker stuff is sort of cool I guess. I would be fine with 2020.12 personally. Maybe just grab a reinstatement and sit on it? That’s what I’m doing. My plan expired last month.

[holyspicoli]

Good to get an honest read. How is ARA a mess? That’s a shame!

[reflexson]

Ara can randomly delete stuff and can sometimes slow down sessions. Seems kinda random when these things occur so I just end up using melodyne in the traditional way. I’ve been waiting on a fix for tempo synched midi instruments since like version 8. If they can fix that or implement some useful midi stuff, I’ll hop on board. None of the releases have fixed any problems for me or implemented anything that has improved my workflow since folder tracks.

[skylar_battles]

By "a fix for tempo synched midi instruments since like version 8" do you mean you are having issues with MIDI beat clock? Have you tried turning on delay compensation for it in preferences if so?