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Not renewing Pro Tools "subscription"

Daryl said:
Given that the top studios have unlimited access to Avid, regularly get asked what they want, and are generally treated very well, why do you see that changing? Which hardware/software company is going to replace Pro Tools?
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Because a lot of the upcoming youngsters will be used to other systems, and will start asking for those systems to be available - exactly what happened to Quark. Repro houses that were Quark & Mac centric were asked by their customer for other workflows, and over the space of a couple of years the market changed.

Studios are businesses, will provide customers with what they want. If a new upcoming artist wants his work done in Logic or Studio One - then the studios will soon start to offer it.
 
Michael Antrum said:
Studios are businesses, will provide customers with what they want. If a new upcoming artist wants his work done in Logic or Studio One - then the studios will soon start to offer it.
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This is true, but when it all falls apart on the session, and the software is "to blame" the youngster will never risk their money again.
 
Daryl said:
This is true, but when it all falls apart on the session, and the software is "to blame" the youngster will never risk their money again.
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100%

Things go wrong -- they do. And if you use PT it is that much less likely that the blame is laid at your doorstep. Also, in case people chime in with, "it's only because it's industry standard," I would say from my own experience it's not just that. PT is an excellent audio platform, with zero latency (close to zero) for recording. It behaves predictably and all the engineers know how it works.
 
Daryl said:
With a huge number of caveats. Opening Pro Tools projects as Pro Tools does it would require breaking the encryption, so would be illegal. FWIW one has always been able to open PT5 files in 3rd part software. It was afterwards that they encrypted the files to stop it.
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Since this encryption exists solely for the purpose of locking users out of their own data files, there's a good possibility that this would fall under the "Right to Repair."

That said, IANAL (and don't play one on the internet), and I wouldn't want to my software to be on the bleeding edge of that lawsuit. :eek:

So yes - a huge number of caveats.
 
Daryl said:
With a huge number of caveats. Opening Pro Tools projects as Pro Tools does it would require breaking the encryption, so would be illegal. FWIW one has always been able to open PT5 files in 3rd part software. It was afterwards that they encrypted the files to stop it.
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I don't think Harrison guys would want to be breaking the law. Maybe they have an agreement?
And of course not all the project opens "as it is". For me the important thing was the audio files and tracks. Arrangement was a little bit chaotic but I knew were the files belong. After years and years I could open and save again old precious projects and work with it in my new system today :)
 
Just Got back from a Stray Cats concert. God I miss the 80’s.......

I do appreciate that ProTools is the industry standard, but when you read things like these, you wonder how long that will continue.

‘I work with 3 or 4 new interns a year at one of the studios I engineer for. Not one of them in the past 4 years has any real Pro Tools experience. I couldn't leave them alone tracking even a solo vocal, or have them route anything or perform even simple edits. It's already happening, none of them own a license, and some are mid20s when they're here. But as another poster in another thread said, no it's the studio's fault for not teaching them it, it's just not 'pro' enough..... Because you can't be a 'proper' studio without HDX... The owners are Cubase/uad lovers from a dance background and the interns do all their work for them in it. I bring my own iLok to run PT (infact I installed my own boot drive to the machine, so i can mirror my home set up and plugins!) but they do have a copy of 11 for anyone else who comes in. I bought my first copy of LE 7.4 and MBOX2 Mini at 18... those were the days! Then it was PT M-Powered with ProFire2626... and etc etc.
Younger generation have no interest in Pro Tools at all. Why would they? It's buggy as ****, expensive, and badly optimised. And more and more music creation is moving away from needing PT. Everyone uses logic it seems. Any artists that come in, never want to take PT session away if it's not an end-to-end delivery. They want stems for logic....’

And...

‘It makes me wonder about my future interns. The prohibitive cost of entry for Pro Tools will preclude your average 19 year old’s accessibility. In the long term, that could mean fewer-still useful young people in professional music studios that make their way as engineers (and there are already so very few), and eventually, a phasing out of pt altogether.

I intend to start polling my current interns to find out what DAWs they and their peers use, with an eye towards switching away from exclusive pt use at my commercial room in the near future.’

There are fewer and fewer recording studios - lots of well known operations have ceased trading, and more and more people are building their own studios at home. It seems that Avid might well not have enough major studios to derive enough income from - so why do they seem hell bent on alienating the volume market - amateurs, hobbyists and students.

Anyway, I’m sure Avid know what they are doing.

Edit: oh - it seems the post I was replying to has been deleted...
 
Michael Antrum said:
Anyway, I’m sure Avid know what they are doing.
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:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Unfortunately, it is very much reminding me of Sonar right before Cakewalk went out of business. It was just fortunate Bandlab picked it up. One of the biggest problems I had as a younger person starting out with ProTools was the RTAS then AAX plugin format. There are almost no free plugins in those formats. But there are tons in vst and au. So not only is it expensive, you can't even take advantage of all the great free stuff out there. So if you are broke, you might as well use Cakewalk or Reaper to get started. Or Logic if your parents will buy your Mac.
 
Geoff Grace said:
I expect that their answer will be Ableton Live.

Platforms come and go. Remember tape?

Best,

Geoff
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That's because I bought for some months a bargain license of Ableton Live to have the upgrade path.... and there a friend of mine came with a project for radio broadcast in Ableton Live, I could deliver successfully!

So we have four DAWs + AVID, FinalCut to offer and work with :faint:
 
robgb said:
Or maybe to use forever, since it's at least as good as and probably much better than Pro Tools.
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For me, the fanboy response I usually get about Reaper really turns me off on it. And someday, I may give it a try. But until it has a chord track like Cubase, I can't see me using it any more than I do S1.
 
robgb said:
Or maybe to use forever, since it's at least as good as and probably much better than Pro Tools.
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As a Reaper user I can well relate to the Pro-Tools subscription pain. The license is good for two whole number versions, after which you have to pay again if you want to stay current.

So based on past release cycles, Reaper is costing me $60 approximately every 7 years! Highway robbery man...
 
Michael Antrum said:
‘It makes me wonder about my future interns. The prohibitive cost of entry for Pro Tools will preclude your average 19 year old’s accessibility.
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Oh my. There are so many things about this post that concern me. Interns at 19 being expected to come in and know how to run a session with ProTools? Expecting to leave interns alone to track a solo vocal? In the USA those would be kids just out of high school. That's not a place I want to be recording.
 
Quasar said:
As a Reaper user I can well relate to the Pro-Tools subscription pain. The license is good for two whole number versions, after which you have to pay again if you want to stay current.

So based on past release cycles, Reaper is costing me $60 approximately every 7 years! Highway robbery man...
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I second this. I've been using Reaper for nearly 15 years (on both platforms), and it cost me 2x $60. As version 6 is coming, I may need (or rather want) to pay $60 again. In total, that will be equivalent to $12 per year (not adjusted for inflation ;))

Note that if you don't register, Reaper is still fully functional - you just get a nagging splash box at startup. I guess some could live with that, but I feel so respected by the publisher that I am glad to pay.

A feeling of trust is also essential to rely on a tool I use everyday. I get that from Cockos (Reaper), Renoise, Ghisler (Total Commander)... Avid only elicits distrust in me: The ilok makes me feel like I'm watched in my home all day long - like there's no trust, and their ever changing pricing practices would make me feel like their hostage. Reaper never changed its price in 15 years.
 
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JJP said:
Oh my. There are so many things about this post that concern me. Interns at 19 being expected to come in and know how to run a session with ProTools? Expecting to leave interns alone to track a solo vocal? In the USA those would be kids just out of high school. That's not a place I want to be recording.
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One of the best engineers I know started this way. And yes, on ProTools. He was good from the start, and only got better over the years. Of course that was before everybody wanted to be an engineer...
 
JohnG said:
Can Reaper accommodate zero latency recording? That would be quite interesting.
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Not that I know of. Very low latencies can be achieved, with a fine-tuned system and a good interface driver (like non-USB RME's): I know someone who got it as low as 1ms, though I'm happy with my modest 6ms. But that apparently remains one of PT's strong suits - if you buy one of their $7k to $20k interfaces, right?

Also, nobody is pausing to ask whether it's fair to compare a $60 soft to a $600 (sorry, $1000 - no, wait - oh I don't know anymore) soft... I'm not saying it isn't. But I don't know.

Anyway, doesn't minimum latency depend more on the hardware (and its drivers) than on the software? How does PT fare, latency-wise, with third-party hardware?
 
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