"Industry standard"

 

AVID and UA are both on my shit list and I hope to hell their entire catalogs of stuff gets cracked asap. I use AU PT 12.5 sometimes for mixing final projects that are all ported down to audio tracks. I hardly ever track with it, especially MIDI tracking, because the PT midi support has always sucked strenuously and continues to suck to the same degree even on the latest versions. I would use both catalogs if/when they get cracked, but would never ever "subscribe" to jack shit - that goes for anything not just AVID or UA...

It's rather ironic how such a backward and cumbersome product like Pro-Tools was when it first hit the audio industry would eventually end up being the audio icon (deserved or not) we know today. The originally introduced pro-tools "DAW's" were for lack of a better word, pieces of junk. It would take hours to render edits and recordings and the interface was something right out of a Matel toy commercial. If it wasn't for fast paced advances in personal computer power and hardware the pro-audio landscape would most likely look a lot different these days.

 

Last edited: Jun 19, 2024

Well, AAX was developed for two things really, cross-platform support and of course AAX-DSP for use on the HDX cards.

 

There's the capitalist part in action ;)

 

AAX wanted a piece? I forgot or never imprinted that to memory... lol... But hey, I guess it makes sense, as at least on one platform, (and for that matter, the one ~99% used in "Hollywood"... (still never seen a major studio with a PC driving it, sure, as the occasional host, or office people using them, or an artist brings it in on occasion but.... I'm not saying I think that's right, as I don't... but hey, most of these people go with what they know and what has historically been (to their perception) 'easier'. And I guess AAX has proven to be a bit formidable to break for many on that... but... I can't imagine a world where I was limited to that format as tools to create etc myself...

The exposure argument for some can be valid, but it's generally just a dummy game to get people to do things for free, or at least more often than it should be...

Of course budgets are always tight, and these days... but as I said, the catering people don't take a penny less than their invoice ever. It's non negotiable for chips and gummy bears and turkey wraps, but not for the composers/song writers/producers of something we all kinda recognize adds a lot to a picture... .... Sure, you try and get the best deal on everything, that is a producer/executive producer/whoever's job on that.... but it's a skipping record... You can have a song that's closing the movie or end credits and whatnot, and somehow the guy who sneaker netted or transferred your files or imported your wav's into their PT that you sent for them gets paid more then you do for damn writing and recording the thing.... or you see a 96 piece orchestra playing something you wrote the night before in your home studio with a Kontakt mockup etc quickly exported to any kind of notation or paying someone else to do so, or realizing that, damn, shit, a viola can't play that note really I better... kinda thing....

It's always impressive and awesome being in a room with a large orchestra playing something you pulled out of your ass when you were sweating inspiration on a deadline etc.... but hey, if they are gonna pay the exorbitant scale for a Los Angeles orchestra to PLAY it. (and believe me, they sit there with stop watches and decisions are made by committee as to redoing another pass at a section etc etc), ... I would like to think they could toss you a few bucks to damn write it you know? ;)

But I get negotiating, it just too often happens 'after' the fact, and when it happens early or before that, that's better, as at least you aren't put in the situation of having to be a dick (which you aren't, they are, but their little clique....)

Yeah, I get that these guys have been dealing with incremental upgrades(some would say back grades) on PT for decades now.. and some 40-50-65 year old guy isn't going to want to hear how "Reaper" is going to change his/her life and be cheaper and can do 'more' and whatnot as they don't care and are usually fairly not elastic in thinking... and again, a lot of it isn't 'their' dime in the grand scheme of things so...

Yeah, but to be fair, Ableton, on release, wasn't really considered a DAW.... I bought the first version in 2001-2-3 or whenever it was, and it was an ancillary "tool" for the most part.... it was great for some people on certain things, but I would be using it, and if I would, I don't remember if it supported rewiring or I would just bounce tbh, but I could change keys and warp and fix things and manuipulate and sound design and do all sorts of things... It wasn't meant at the time to supplant Logic or Cubase or SVP etc necessarily (even if that might have been their future plans!), ... it arrived as another tool along kinda the lines of Recycle or Time Bandit or ReBirth or early Reason kinda, or any number of other tools we would shuttle to and fro back... and while it had some fx and whatnot, it certainly wasn't going to be bread and butter even with the limited options available with the others at the time other then dj/gimicky stuff.... though I imagine there were great interesting records made solely with it (like people do with limited tools like CoolEdit etc or earlier versions of stuff).... most of the people I knew, or how I used it, was as a sidecar... and it was great.

StudioVision predated ProTools. They were able (obviously in conjunction with Digi, were able to wed midi and digital audio on a Mac and create what would become known as a "daw" in the common vernacular) ((not ignoring things like the Synclavier exited etc before that but...).... and while used Digi hardware as a front end/out end AD/DA depending on whatever you used with it for those reasons... that's what we drove it with. We could play 2-4 tracks at first from a very competent midi sequencer and while plugins were on the horizon, and it didn't even have fades etc on edits, it really changed everything up. I think Digital Performer even arrived before Protools, .... as I remember getting the first "official" PT (non beta) release in the mail on a floppy and giving it a twirl with the bandleader of the band I was with at the time and it was interesting, but again, didn't have midi, didn't have much, but it did have a ~hair~ more perhaps with digital editing then Studio Vision, but certainly not enough that we ever even thought of using Protools on the record we were recording, and didn't.

(we used a lot of Turbosynth however! ;))...

I recognize that I, and I know many of us, come from a place of more tech geekery and ideas then what PT evolved into as a pretty damn good replacement for 2" tape in terms of takes and speed and not worrying about erasing tracks and whatnot, and went far beyond, and has a whole complement of tools that are great for people... and I get that... just I've never been a direct to 2" band guy myself, so it held little interest, nor was inspiring, as I couldn't use it with my Minimoog, Xpander, Microwave, Pro-1, etc or Emax/Akais/SampleCells(despite the last being made by the same damn company lol)..

So it's come a fair ways, for sure (well it better have!). But it's evolution hasn't mirrored my own personal proclivities for production, but it does have it's place if I'm tracking my drummer or a singer, or full band etc and some other things absolutely... but again, could all be done with other tools... but/and if I roll up to another studio, I know that's what's probably gonna be there... as I haven't seen anything else as their centerpiece in terms of a daw etc... and not once even since it's rash took over and spread... so I gotta know how to navigate it, and spit out my tracks to it sometimes for another mixer or engineer or whatever... and use it...

so kinda as you said... (oh) well.....

(but honestly, the guys who started Digidesign, like Evan and whatnot, were actually cool guys who you could call on the phone at home as there wasn't an installed base... so I don't dislike them or anything... just the beast it kinda grew into...)

 

Last edited: Jun 19, 2024

That's it buddy. Turbosynth was everything and a piece of good cheese on a cracker, followed by some fine wine.....

And I have some funny stories to tell you (which I will)... but that was a crucial vital tool.

THAT piece of software changed a lot for my life and what I was involved with.

That's why we took an INSTANT love to the Kurzweil K2000 upon release, as not only could it read Akai sample format, but it was like a real time Turbosynth for us.....

(edit: oh, sent you a pm on sister site...sorry)

 

Last edited: Jun 20, 2024

They should Reverse 2 Reality asap.

 

Last edited: Jun 20, 2024

Why ?
'Prestige' !

Imagine a studio who works with top people in the music industry.
"Hey, guys, i have all this gear that i paid over 100k: I'm replacingall the old connectors.... .look, the latest monitors i got, 20k eac. Ohh, i love this cable brand : and it's only 100 bucks per meter/3 feet. Ohh, this main desk, the tree was at least 7000 years old !"...
The, that guy is going to replace his Avid soft/hard, because reaper is only 60 bucks ? Or because they need to pay avid , say, 500 bucks per month ?

Just like some rich daddy girl : there's the most beautiful bag ever made, with incredible materials... from some "prashkat"..."amithab'...'xin lao xong" brands... a truly un unique bag, that took 5 years to make, but it only costs $10. Next to it, there's the ugliest, shittiest bag, which leather still reeks the old pig.... with the ugliest colors ever... but it was made by louis vuiton, and it costs $50'000.

Will she pick the most beautiful model, which, incredibly, only costs 10 bucks, but has a tag "amithab' on it ? Of course not. She will choose the ugliest bag ever, because.... 'prestige' !

That's why, even if there was a perfect daw, with all the features from cubase + live + all the others, with 10'000 different features, ultra easy to use, bundled with 100 top vstis (diva...etc..) + 100 top vst effects (plug-in alliance, tc electronic, etc), all for free... with the best tech support ever... that only cost 20 bucks (perpetual license), that could be installed on unlimited machines, etc etc...
... most guys who use avid would still not want to move to that perfect $20 daw !

The problem with reaper is.... it's not expensive enough.
People with money need to buy expensive things, in order to feel good...
That's how the planet works...

Companies don't make radical/extreme moves, without thoroughly studying the market... asking their shareholders/ admin board..... making tons of polls... etc etc.
Do people think that steinberg, one morning, the ceo woke up and said 'i no longer like the elicenser dongle"...
No, they probably spent months, or years, studying what the overall impact would be.
Ok, we have 500'000 cubase users, and we get 10'000 new buyers each year. If we remove the dongle, probably 10'000 people will download the r2r version, 5000 will use it once a month, 4000 will use it once a week, and only 1000 will use it professionally... but without the dongle, 30'000 new people will buy cubase, so... it's ok"

The same with Avid : they know their customers. They know, by increasing their prices, they might lose 5% of their customers. But at the end of the year, they will make +15% more money, thanks to the remaining 95%.
That's why they absolutely don't give a fuk about the few guys who will say 'fukavid'. At their meetings, they probably also say 'fuk those guys, who don't want to pay a few extra bucks per month...and go play with your cheap children's toys ! ".

It's all about the 'image'...

Of course, this is just my opinion, how i see things. Maybe I'm totality wrong.

 

What a load. This is how you write "we need more money" in lawyer language.
And an efficient way to alienate the rest of the customers to look for alternatives... like Reaper perhaps?

 

One word... control. Avid wants to control you from the start and developing their own plugins forces users into their vampire suck you dry scheme. Don't get me wrong their HDX and Carbon interfaces are killer overpriced unites, but their software obsession has destroyed their brand IMHO... and I'm an ex-user saying that. Hell I run Studio one but have it set to use the Pro Tools shortcuts that I have memorized, lol.
Avid can just go suck a dik IMHO, they are a leach company today with their software policies, despite having serious average software IMHO.

 

You know what's interesting? I'm much younger than 90% of you guys and always wanted to use Pro Tools when I was smaller (think 14-15), because I thought "I could be like the pros". Fast forward a few years when they released a free version, I tried it and realised how used to Logic I am.

I know "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", but I wish they adjusted the workflow for more modern standards. Some things just feel old.

Besides, I'd argue being "impenetrable" to realeasers and such isn't a good thing. Young musicians, especially from 3rd world countries, simply can't afford to buy the software, but if they do "make it" eventually, they will buy what they've used to get there. I mean, look at Reason - nobody cares. They really shot themselves in the foot and it is sad to see. I feel like if they implemented vst support earlier and didn't try to use the hardest possible protections, their market share would be bigger now.

To me Reason now is like this cool app with some unique instruments and effects, not a DAW I can use for all my purposes, even if I technically could. They themselves admitted it by releasing Reason Rack, so yeah, it's sad, but was preventable.

 

A meteor came
Down from the sky
And killed the dinosaurs
Now we've birds
And flowers still
I wonder what
That what will kill
That Avid Protools
Bitter pill

 

Yes Arctic, i think you nailed here.
I think eventually AVID will realize that they can't keep up like that forever, and will adopt vst/claps, as well as try to aim for smaller studios and bedroom producers too. That is kinda what they did with pro tools intro isn't it?

 

What do you mean it costs money now? Do you mean, if you want support, you need to pay?

 

Oh you would have been ALL over it ArticStorm... And since the gateway to entrance on it was kinda expensive in terms of what you needed to drive it (well, I guess you could run it on a MacSE30 or something, but it would take half a day to render a 1 bar sample kinda thing lol....)...

but obviously in a world before plugins and the proliferation of other tools en masse, have a waveshaper, resonator, etc etc had a lot of people seriously wondering how the f you got that sound... as there wasn't much out there that could do it... and it was a very deep rabbit hole.

But as you said, with Reaktor and it's predecessor, and while MAX existed back then, (and damn, it was complicated..only midi, and using it on Yamaha DX machines etc and programming it was an endeavor indeed....)... but yup, we've come a long way from walking uphill both ways in the snow and wind you know? ;)