Pro Tools 9 Signals Fundamental, User-friendly Change At Avid

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Jan 7, 2011 3:02 PM, By Jack Kontney

In the march of a protest of Pro Tools 9 , along with Avid's new hardware boxes, we had the chance to verbalise with a few key members of the company's Pro Tools selling team. Avid Pro Tools strategist Bobby Lombardi and pro audio portion selling executive Tony Cariddi discussed the ways in that the company's new hardware and program simulate a noteworthy change in the company's business model.

The details of Pro Tools 9 and the new HD Series hardware interfaces have been open for some time now. The new hardware boxes for Pro Tools HD provides poignant improvements in AD/DA conversion and preamps and offer significantly improved encouragement for open standards similar to MADI. The large headlines with Pro Tools 9 is the platform's pierce to capacitate software-only operation, encouragement for third-party (non-Avid) audio interfaces and encouragement is to EuCon Ethernet protocol to spread manage aspect options to add Avid Artist Series P.C. controllers and Pro Series consoles (formerly beneath the Euphonix brand). It moreover features significantly more channels.

According to Bobby Lombardi, these changes in product design are a thoughtfulness of a new draw close adopted on a corporate turn by Avid.

"It was about two years ago that the firm motionless to make a thespian change in the way we draw close the market," he said. "Everything is keyed around unequivocally listening to our customers, to unequivocally obtain close to them, find out the suffering points and compromise them."

Prior to the let go of Pro Tools 9, this new perspective was reflected in such product upgrades as Pro Tools 8.04 (a bug fix), followed by Pro Tools HD Native.

"The launch of Pro Tools 9 program was the pinnacle of all that, the thing that ties all together," Lombardi said. "What's unequivocally special is that it's a entirely open square of program that supports core audio, ASIO, and still has incredibly parsimonious formation with any Avid hardware interface. For the initial time, Pro Tools customers have a selection of what interface they wish to use, with more capability, more mobility and more adaptableness than ever before."

This thesis of sincerity may be scored equally right away to Avid's decision, voiced final year, that it would no longer use the Digidesign brand name, both in program similar to Pro Tools and in hardware similar to blending consoles. While many outward the firm saw this as a waste products of brand equity to seaside up the primogenitor company's brand, the real vigilant was to make a washed break with the closed "Digi-ecosystem" draw close of the past.

"What Avid has completed is to make a complete undertaking to our customers, and the let go of Pro Tools 9 allows us to prominence that in a deafening and outspoken way," Cariddi said. "To publicize a new brand picture is only talk, but to let go this array of products that evidently residence patron concerns in a certain and conform to way - that's the payoff. Frankly, Digidesign would never have expelled a product as extreme as Pro Tools 9, and it's the Pro Tools name that people are related to."

The other high quality that the new Avid draw close embraces is collaboration.

"That unequivocally ties in with the change from being customer-focused to customer-driven," Lombardi said. "We go out of our way to pick up what is indispensable and broach it. Things similar to check compensation, MP3 formation and a time ethics woman monarch are now integrated opposite the board, in every version. And the reason is that our customers requested it."

One outcome of this new draw close is a simplification of the Pro Tools line at the veteran level.

"There's no longer a Pro Tools SC, MP or LE in this space," he said. "There are only two products now: Pro Tools 9 and Pro Tools HD9. The disparity is the inclusion of the Complete Production Toolkit in the HD version; that's the ascent path. The HD Native chronicle assures the most appropriate opening no matter what. If you have a million plug-ins running and wish to overdub at near-zero latency, .44ms or even reduction at high sampling rates, Pro Tools HD9 is the only solution. "

This new draw close will of course gain broadcasters, not only in the inclusion of video-friendly features similar to check reward and onboard time ethics ruler, but in the well-spoken trail to the future.

"I regard one thing that will stir up HD customers, mainly broadcasters, is that when they ascent to 9, is to initial time, they will be able to lift the iLok off the principal system, cocktail it in their laptop and take their work on the thoroughfare with them," Lombardi said. "It creates mobility and portability, and it's only part of the normal ascent price. That's a unusual value."

"It's unequivocally a deliberation of what it means to be Avid," Cariddi said. "Recognizing that we are in a collaborative margin and embracing that in how our products are written - then quality. Pro Tools is a veteran product, and the high quality club had to be lifted to simulate that, both in conditions of sound high quality and underline development. It's that type of considering that led to this change, that led to Pro Tools 9 and the new hardware. It's a thoughtfulness of what it means to be Avid, and that will continue."