More than anything, a tablet resembles a piece of paper. Apple’s iPad rests easily on a music stand, and – while in this generation, it’s a bit small and low-resolution – is at least the beginning of an ideal score reader.

We took a look at Avid’s Scorch, a leading contender for your iPad score-reading needs, when it came out, and followed up with questions for Avid (like how you turn pages on a tablet – hint, it’s easier than on paper):

Not Quite Sibelius for iPad, but Avid Scorch Could Become an iTunes of Notation (“Not Quite” because, while powered by Sibelius’ notation engine, you can read but not create scores)

Tablet Scores: Avid Answers Our Scorch Questions; Bluetooth Page Turners for iPad, Android

Now, there are further developments. Most importantly, in its evolution toward what I predicted would be an iTunes of music, there’s now a huge store of notation – Hal Leonard’s Sheet Music Direct is now available, powered by the Avid Scorch platform. That’s relevant to, erm, about half of our readers, because it’s only available in the USA (or if you have a US iTunes account). But I imagine we’ll see other countries soon, as Sheet Music Direct is an international service.

If you are in the USA, you can grab the app for free and get 15 songs free of charge to get started:
Sheet Music Direct @iTunes

Daniel Spreadbury, a gifted notation and education advocate I’ve had the pleasure to know for some time, details what’s in the new release.

New Sheet Music Direct app for iPad powered by Scorch technology [Sibelius Blog]

The highlights: what differentiates this from, say, a chunk of bleached tree, are features like:

• Metronome
• Tuner
• Set lists
• Sharing
• Lighter than a tree
• Turn pages with a foot. (*Possible with paper, provided you have a human page turner and you kick them.)
• On-demand purchasing

In the favor of the flattened wood pulp with ink marks on it: higher resolution, bigger, easier to see, easier to mark up, the battery never runs out, does not cost US$499. (Not at first, anyway.) Oh, and you don’t have to wait for it to come out on the iTunes store in your country.

But that puts some significant promise on the iPad side of things.

There are also 90 improvements in Scorch 1.1, including better page turning features and page turning, but one of those 90 features to me jumps out: you get PDF support.

With PDF support, wherever you are, and whatever notation program you use to generate scores, you can now easily share your work with someone else with an iPad. Scorch itself has a separate link from the Sheet Music Direct app:

Scorch @ iTunes

I really want to hear from someone actually using these apps to read scores. What’s the experience like? Are you using it on a regular basis, or did you revert to paper scores?

Alongside its Pro Tools 10 and HDX unveiling, Avid turned some heads by recently announcing it was replacing its RTAS and TDM formats to a new format called AAX, “Avid Audio eXtension.” Now, your first reaction may not be unbridled enthusiasm, exactly: it seems the last thing users are likely saying is, “yes, please, I’d like a new plug-in format to worry about.” But I wanted to give the engineers at Avid a chance to tell us what they were thinking and why they made the move.

Avid’s product announcements have unfortunately coincided, presumably because of the financial calendar, with unpleasant restructuring and downsizing news, a topic NYC-based audio engineering site SonicScoop takes up. However, I prefer to focus here on the engineering side of what’s happening; we can look at Avid’s business and the changing business landscape another day. (For what it’s worth, I’m not as bleak as SonicScoop about the industry at large – least of all because I think the larger audio market remains healthy, even if Avid has been caught adapting to a new marketplace.)

The picture painted by Avid is one of a smooth transition to AAX. Now, of course, you’d expect them to say that, but I think they do have some specific technical reasons that, even with the change of name, the shift should be friendly to Avid developers. I’ll let them explain, though.

Bobby Lombardi, Senior Pro Tools Product Manager goes into the technical details of what AAX, and what it means for Pro Tools developers and users.

CDM: The main draw appears to be the ability to switch between native and DSP-based processing more easily, correct? From the end user perspective, can you get into specifics on what a user will see and how this will differ from RTAS/TDM?

Bobby: Visually, a user will see that the RTAS/TDM pop-up on the Pro Tools 10 Plug-in header has changed to Native/DSP. The exciting part is what they will hear. In the past, with HD Accel systems using a 24-bit fixed point processing environment, and host-based systems using 32-bit floating point processing, the gain staging could be quite different and produce significantly different results. With the introduction of AAX, sessions that migrate between host-based and DSP-accelerated HDX Pro Tools systems will sound identical.

How much work will it be for developers to migrate from RTAS/TDM to AAX?

Moving from an existing RTAS plug-in to AAX Native is relatively simple. Plus, once a developer has an AAX Native plug-in running, it will take a small amount of development effort to support AAX DSP. In comparison to TDM 56k used with the legacy HD hardware, AAX DSP is much easier to support and developers do not require specialized skills in writing 56k assembly code, so it opens up the opportunity for many developers to create DSP accelerated versions of their plug-ins.

We’ll still see parallel, separate versions of plug-ins for AAX Native and AAX DSP, correct? And some will, as with RTAS, presumably be native-only?

This is really up to the individual developer. Some developers may find it strategic to support one or the other, however Avid’s goal with this new format was to simplify plug-in development and reduce the complexity to support accelerated hardware.

RTAS and TDM are listed as “legacy” formats. Is Avid making any commitment to how long they’ll last?

The RTAS and TDM formats will continue to be supported in the 32-bit versions of Pro Tools but will not be supported once Pro Tools is released as a 64-bit application. The new AAX plug-in format is the bridge to 64-bit plug-ins for the Pro Tools and Media Composer platform.

Avid has expressed a desire to embrace open formats, but why is there still no common, industry-wide plug-in format? (Actually, there may be no good answer to that question, but I feel obligated to ask!)

We absolutely do embrace open platforms because they can open workflows that enhance the user experience. Part of the experience we need to ensure is that it’s stable, integrates well on our control surfaces, and provides a long-term commitment to the customer. For these reasons it’s important that we can design the plug-in architecture. For example, without designing AAX we could never give customers a plug-in environment that supports both DSP accelerated and native Pro Tools systems and ensure they delivered 100% sound parity. We hope that by providing a modernized AAX SDK for plug-in development, developers will find it easier not only to support Avid’s products, but also finding it easier to develop for non-Avid plug-in formats.

Any word on when we’ll see third-party plugs with AAX support?

More developers are coming online each week with their AAX offerings. We had over 25 developers showing over 60 individual AAX plug-ins at the AES tradeshow in NYC last month, and expect to see many more at the upcoming NAMM tradeshow. With the ability to provide all Avid third party developers a optimized development path to DSP-accelerated plug-ins, we do expect to see more DSP-accelerated plug-ins on the new AAX platform than the legacy TDM platform.

Thanks, Bobby. And for one other take, I happened to get to talk to Universal Audio about their transition. UA, given that they have their own DSP platform and support Avid’s rival packages, certainly aren’t dependent in their business on the Avid ecosystem (though you can be sure it makes a big part of their market). Anyway, here’s what they say; I’m guessing other third parties would say something similar, but if you’re a third party reading and wish to comment, please do so, and don’t let the fact that I only have UA here dissuade you.

Lev Perrey, Universal Audio Director of Product Development, responds to CDM:

Universal Audio intends to support AAX Native in conjunction with UAD-2 DSP accelerators ­ exactly like we have just completed with RTAS support in UAD Powered Plug-ins v6. There is no announcement as of yet as to when the transition to AAX will be complete but we are actively developing and committed to the Pro Tools platform. Pro Tools 10 does support RTAS and initial testing with UAD plug-ins shows it to work just like Pro Tools 9.

As for the significance question, for UA moving to AAX Native should be similar to our recent migration to RTAS ­ although it will be easier for us now moving to AAX since we have fully invested in direct Pro Tools development and better understand the Avid SDK.

We’ll continue to follow this story. Thanks to Avid for getting us more details; I know it’s appreciated.

More info:
AAX Audio Plug-ins @ Avid

At the AES show in New York, Avid as expected updated their flagship Pro Tools DAW to version 10, and unveiled a next-generation version of their higher-end HD line. Since it’s Friday, and perhaps not the best day for processing loads of information about new DAWs, let’s see if we can’t boil down the major points.

Pro Tools 10

Clip Gain helps you to set gain levels before you get to the mixer.
More flexible use of files: mix formats, and in a departure for Pro Tools, record and master natively in 32-bit floating points
Better performance on slow disk drives
Low-latency recording and direct monitoring at last added to third-party interfaces
New Avid Channel Strip plugs (based on the former Euphonix)
SoundCloud export (a bit surprised to see Avid beat some of its rivals to this… though, of course, you probably already know how to uplaod)

There’s also EUCON controller support, projects that now have a 24-hour timeline, and enhanced responsiveness.

This is really a Pro Tools upgrade for Pro Tools users – no splashy features, necessarily, so much as stuff their loyal user base is likely to appreciate. But I know Pro Tools users have a pretty long wish list, so PT die-hards, let us know what you think of the update, especially as you begin using it.

Pro Tools HDX

HDX is basically HD super-sized – and that makes sense, as it keeps pace with advances in technology (and particularly the vastly-expanded native processing capabilities we’ve seen over the past decade).

You get five times the DSP power per card versus the previous HD Accel, more tracks, and the new floating-point architecture.

It’s big news that Pro Tools has finally gone to a 32-bit floating-point architecture … well, anyway, if you’re into numbers. I’ll be curious to know if people can tell the difference. Sounds like we need a very controlled double-blind test, and comparing Pro Tools to Pro Tools would be perfect for the job.

Obligatory promo video. Hyperbole/marketing glasses at the ready!

And here’s a look at that new channel strip. Mmmm… channel strippy.

http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-Software

http://www.avid.com/US/products/pro-tools-hdx

Avid released Sibelius 7 yesterday. Highlights in the new version:

A new UI. The most apparent change is a new user interface with dockable, tabbed panels. The design borrows heavily from Microsoft’s Office Ribbon, though a more subdued appearance makes it look just as comfortable on the Mac. My guess is that power users may just hide the whole thing and stick to keyboard shortcuts, but it should do wonders for discoverability for new users or more casual users not comfortable with that.

There’s also a nice new inspector, which looks a lot more usable and less-clumsy than the previous version.

The best UI feature: real full-screen mode, including on the Mac. The mixer has also been redesigned.

Better sharing for text, graphics, and more: Direct PDF and EPS export is now built in, with new “publisher-quality typography and graphics import/export.” It’s the feature least likely to be immediately noticed, but it could well be the best reason to upgrade. There’s also the ability to “sync or import” notation with Pro Tools, and of course you can publish to the iPad notation tool we’ve covered previously. (Links below.)

MusicXML interchange. Speaking of sharing, full, built-in MusicXML interchange support makes it possible to share notation with other tools, including Finale. (Side note: I hope this puts some pressure on the free tool Lilypond to support MusicXML export; it’s really frustrating that that’s missing. The proprietary tools are now more compatible than the free tool.)

64-bit support. Sibelius is indeed the first major native 64-bit notation software (at least, other than open source options which can be compiled for 64-bit). I’m not sure what the real-world implications of performance would be in notation itself – Sibelius was always plenty fast – but I’ll try to find out. It’s still a no-brainer. As for anyone using samples, this should provide 64-bit sample hosting, which is a very important feature for larger sample libraries / memory usage.

More sounds. Sibelius has long included licensed samples, but now following the Avid acquisition, the Avid virtual instruments folks have added their own symphony, rock, pop, organ, and (via Sample Logic) even band and drum and bugle sounds. We’ll have to hear how they sound and how well-integrated they are with the notation tools.

What about notation? The one thing I sense may be missing from this version is improvements to notation capabilities themselves. Because of the breadth of scoring possibilities, there’s almost always room for enhancement, and this update, while it appears a worthy investment for many users, seems from the information I have now not to address the core scoring functionality. That said, hidden in the feature set is better support for fonts which could have the greatest impact on how your scores actually appear: improved OpenType support adds compatibility with “the latest OpenType fonts, including advanced features like ligatures, and employ them in text frames with full DTP-level capabilities.” The ability to do that is very important to engraving and layout.

I hope to learn more about what the implications are for Sibelius scoring in Pro Tools, and how this version has changed.

By the way, Sibelius has also improved their academic pricing. US$295 is the student/teacher price, but what’s best about this is that they’re including four years of free upgrades for students. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen that (usually precisely the opposite, excluding academic customers from upgrades), and it’s a nice touch.

Previously, our coverage of Avid’s notation tool for iPad:
Not Quite Sibelius for iPad, but Avid Scorch Could Become an iTunes of Notation

Tablet Scores: Avid Answers Our Scorch Questions; Bluetooth Page Turners for iPad, Android

Digital notation took a big step forward last week with the release of Avid Scorch, the first take on mobile notation from developer Sibelius. (It’s the first mobile app, period, from industry titan Avid, so it’s interesting to watch them go first with notation – especially as even Apple skipped scores with their first release of GarageBand.)

Anything new is liable to generate a lot of questions. So we’ve taken those questions straight to the source, to the Sibelius team at Avid. One of the things I always enjoyed about the folks at Sibelius is that they’re an exceptionally bright, articulate, and musically-minded bunch of people, so I’ve found even if we don’t see eye to eye on an issue, I’ll get an intelligent answer. (The same is true, incidentally, of the people at their chief rival, Finale developer MakeMusic.)

Here’s what they had to say about page turns, annotation (hint: it’s missing for now), sharing and distribution, rendering and page format, and what this is all about.

Meanwhile, the most significant answer comes not from Sibelius and Avid but from vendors of Bluetooth foot pedals, the essential ingredient in making digital scores work. We talk to one of those vendors below, as well, about hardware relevant not only to Scorch and iPad, but other notation tools and devices, as well.

Q+A: Avid Scorch

Tom Clarke, Senior Product Manager for both Avid Scorch and Sibelius, answers a few of our questions. (Thanks to reader comments for suggesting many of these!)

CDM: How might a user turn pages with Scorch in a performance/rehearsal?

Tom: To turn pages in Scorch, you simply swipe – or, in Music Stand mode, tap on either side of the screen to go forwards and back. Scorch also works with any Bluetooth device that can send left- and right-arrow commands, including Bluetooth footswitches, to allow hands-free page turning. We’ve tested with a couple of devices in particular: PageFlip and AirTurn.

There’s not presently a way to annotate scores, I take it? With a paper score, of course, you can quickly make a note with a pencil, etc.

That’s correct – currently Scorch allows you to interact with and transform the music, but not to annotate it. We’ve already had a number of users request this, so it’s on the list of possible improvements to include in future updates. It’s actually quite a tricky problem to solve though, if the music underneath can be changed and reformatted: any annotations would have to be able to move around relative to the musical element(s) they’re describing, so it’s not a straightforward request.

Let’s say a composer wants to quickly push out a bunch of revised parts to an ensemble. How does one do this? And otherwise, you would distribute music for sale on the Scorch store as previously, correct?

Currently, the best way to distribute revised parts in Scorch would be to email the completed score (or extracted parts, if you prefer) to the musicians you want to share it with – or to use, say, a public Dropbox folder that everyone can access. Then each musician opens the score on their iPad and views their part independently, making any changes they want to their own copy of it.

As for self-publishing, using the SibeliusMusic.com site, composers and arrangers can sell their scores – or make them freely available – very easily. Sign up for an account, upload your music and set a price to sell it on SibeliusMusic.com (you get to keep half of the proceeds of any sale through the site); the Scorch Store, meanwhile, maps this price onto one of Apple’s in-app purchase price points and makes it available to buy on the iPad – if that price is higher you get to keep any extra margin.

How much of the Sibelius rendering engine is reproduced in Scorch? Is there anything you can see in a Sibelius score that won’t then appear for Scorch? Any special preparation?

The entire Sibelius rendering engine is reproduced in Scorch so that positioning, styles, formatting and everything else on the page should be no different to Sibelius on the desktop. There are some things that aren’t visible in Scorch, though, such as hidden objects, saved versions, ideas and layout marks. These items only really make sense in an editing environment like Sibelius. The iPad does have some limitations on things like the text fonts included in iOS, but we’ve included the same intelligent font substitution that Sibelius uses in order to try and render scores so that they resemble as closely as possible the original fonts used.

Normally, you format scores for different paper sizes (A4, Letter…) How would you format for tablets? Does the idea of a page size still remain? Would you make a score, say, 4:3 for iPad?

Currently Scorch respects the page settings and layout choices of the score’s author, so yes, page sizes still remain. We recommend using a Letter page size to make best use of the display in Music Stand mode. Look out for some House Style templates on the SibeliusBlog, which you can use to reformat your existing scores easily and make the best use of the iPad’s display and treat the device bevel as the margin.

How do you see the big picture for this offering?

We see Scorch as Avid’s first foray into the world of dedicated mobile apps: there’s a clear use for existing Sibelius customers, solving the obvious problems of portability – but without sacrificing musical intelligence, flexibility and the clarity afforded by the world’s most beautiful music notation. But there’s also an exciting opportunity here for people who wouldn’t normally be interested in notation, at least in the sense of creating it. For those people, Scorch is a great way to learn to play music and to expand their repertoire, tailoring the music that they enjoy to suit their instrument or voice. And because the world’s leading music publishers use Sibelius, we can take their extensive libraries of scores and make them truly interactive in a way that a piece of paper simply can’t match.

The Must-Have Accessory for Digital Scores

Swiping a tablet while you’re trying to play has about as much appeal as … well, turning pages with paper. One clear advantage digital scores have over the printed variety is the promise of hands-free page turns. To do that, you need a Bluetooth pedal. Thanks to the standardization of Bluetooth, these should work not only with Apple’s iPad, but tablets from other makers, as well. (You wouldn’t want music notation to be a platform exclusive, after all.)

Expect to see various offerings out there, but Hugh Sung, co-founder of AirTurn, was first to pipe in when readers pondered how page turns would work with Scorch. Hugh sends over some extensive details on how their system works.

The BT-105 works as an external Bluetooth keyboard, but with some nifty extra features, like a built-in debounce filter to prevent multiple page turns per foot switch press, multiple keyboard profiles for different applications, and one really cool feature exclusive to the BT-105, the ability to toggle on the iPad’s virtual keyboard for text entry (all other external page turners/keyboards hide the iPad’s virtual keyboard by default).

The BT-105 features the latest 2.1 + EDR Bluetooth capabilities, which means that pairing is automatic – no need to enter any passkey codes. Also, the pairing automatically shows the BT-105′s unique serial number, making it easy for multiple users to quickly locate their respective AirTurn units.

The BT-105 comes with 2 ATFS-2 silent foot switches – as i mentioned in the comment, these are the quietest foot switches in the consumer market, thanks to some nifty proprietary technology that features no mechanical moving parts aside from the hinge. That means, no clicks, no squeaks when operating the foot switch. We’re using a nedymium magnet and a rhodium reed switch embedded in the high strength plastic body of the foot switch. As a professional classical pianist, making sure our AirTurn page turning device was perfectly silent was my top priority.

You can find some photos of the BT-105 and our new ATFS-2 silent foot switch in our press release here:

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/6/prweb8504375.htm

You can also get more information directly from our website at http://airturn.com.

There’s no reason this will be limited to iPad; Hugh tells us that we can expect an Android version of the Musicnotes.com music notation marketplace soon, projected by the end of summer. (That should time nicely with a whole crop of Honeycomb-powered tablets over the summer; I now have a Galaxy Tab 10.1 machine I’m carrying for development and everyday use, and it compares nicely to my iPad that’s CDM’s testbed for music apps.)

There’s also no reason the use has to be limited to page turns. Foot switches could be boons in applications like punch in / punch out recording, too; developers just need to add support – and it’s simple to implement.

We’ll keep an eye out for other pedals. And if you’re considering using digital notation when gigging, we’d love to hear from you – and maybe talk about doing a proper review.

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re looking for a tool for composing and editing scores on your iPad, Avid Scorch isn’t it — not yet, at least. But as a score reader, Scorch could be a glimpse of a future in which tablets create a new marketplace and exchange for notated music.

Scorch is, first and foremost, a score reader. It shares the mature notational display engine of Sibelius, and makes use of Sibelius’ (and now Pro Tools’) scores. That includes Sibelius’ broad library of musical symbols, guitar tab features, and handwritten fonts, among other features. (It even includes the somewhat silly, but potentially-comforting, textures that have long been a feature of the desktop product.)

The role of tablets in digital music is still evolving. But it’s not hard to make a case for the form factor here: unlike a MacBook Pro or a PC tower, you can put a tablet on a music stand. As such, a tiny device can have dynamic access to a near-limitless collection of music. We’ve already seen impressive takes on the classic jazz fake book on the iPad, and they handily beat the older form when it comes to weight or bulk.

That leaves the question of what reading a score on what remains essentially a computer, in place of on paper, actually means. Scorch shows off some advantages here. For instance, you can transpose scores – say, for a singer, or a different reed instrument – in realtime. (That grumbling noise you hear is people complaining about the loss of musicianship and the ability to sight-transpose. I agree, to a point – but I’ve also known some musicians who could do that who also used the transposition button on a digital piano.)

Other features could broaden the appeal of notation in general. With one tap, you can convert a line to guitar tab, dynamically, as seen in the image below. You can change fonts, or pull out a single part, in order to improve readability. These are things that would normally require a copyist to go back to the drawing board and make new parts, even in the computer age. The very notion of what a score is is changing: that score becomes dynamic, electronic, and live, open to instantaneous shared revisions.

I’m following up with Avid’s developers and testing the application myself, as some questions remain. Turning pages electronically could theoretically be easier … or not. There’s an interactive “Music Stand” mode, but that’ll require an actual test. (Stay tuned for results of that shortly.) Depending on your instrument, you may not have a hand free, and on the iPad, there’s no way to tape multiple pages together to increase the size of the paper. My bet is that we’ll badly need a footswitch. (See this week’s discussion of augmenting tablets with foot pedals.)

While I investigate that, though, it’s just as interesting to ponder that Scorch is not just an application, but a marketplace. Using Apple’s in-app payments (the rules for which this week were loosened), you can purchase scores or download free scores. The display even looks like e-reader apps from Apple, Amazon, and others. With brick-and-mortar music stores few and far between, and the record store long gone, this is huge news. Demand for notation has been on the uptick, as popular music, reality TV, and shows like Glee continue to feed on – and feed – appetite for musical expression. (I need to pull some solid numbers on that, but I do know there are some positive signs; that’s probably a topic for another story.)

Scorch could be the start of something big – and with electronics makers around the world, not just Apple, betting on the tablet, it could be a sign of other tools to come.

I still imagine many people want to use tablets to make scores, not just consume them, and I expect that to be a growth area, too. But Scorch is notable as the first big-league entry into what could be a transformative arena. And it could be transformative in ways that are more profound than even digital distribution of music. Notation has evolved the way it has on a paper medium, designed to be fixed, still influenced by the conventions of the pen and engraving. The next question: will scores, from creation to display, need to change, too?

Avid Scorch

To many users, it’s been a long time coming, but using Pro Tools software no longer means working exclusively with Pro Tools hardware. Pro Tools 9, announced today, is a “software-only” version. That is, you can use it with your hardware – your audio interface, your DSP tools of choice, even the built-in audio hardware on Macs and PCs when you’re on the go.

Users are likely to remain fiercely loyal to their DAWs of choice, including Logic, DP, Cubase, SONAR, and Ableton Live. But today’s announcement is nonetheless big news for production. It means, on one hand, those tools may have to compete more directly with Pro Tools, at the same time that Pro Tools software has to compete more directly with them.

Now supported:

• Core Audio (Mac), ASIO (Windows) drivers: Now – as other DAWs do – Pro Tools will work with third-party hardware. Want to connect a MOTU or RME audio interface? On a plane rearranging tracks and want to plug into your MacBook headphone jack? Now you can.
• Automatic delay compensation The other end of the Pro Tools equation had once been relying on their DSP. Now, with automatic delay compensation included in-box, it should be easier to use outboard DSP effects from other vendors, like the TC PowerCore system or Universal Audio plug-ins.
• OMF/AAF/XMF interchange should make it easier to share files with users of other DAWs and non-Avid video solutions like Apple’s Final Cut.

Plug-ins in Pro Tools are still RTAS/TDM – no VST or AU support – but, well, that makes some sense. Major plug-ins are available for both, and adding another format would add additional support costs without any major advantages. (Supporting plug-in specs is tricky.)

Naturally, this being the version “9″ release, there are workflow enhancements, as well:

• More tracks and buses. Previously limited, PT now supports up to 96 mono or stereo-only tracks in the software version, and expands voices, buses, and aux tracks in both the software and HD versions.
• Time Code Ruler for easier video sync / post.
• More bundled in-box features (Beat Detective, DigiBase file management, full Import Session).
• EUCON hands-on control support (along with Avid, third-party options), updated 7.1 surround panner, variable stereo pan depth (closer to what you’d get from an analog console), and other enhancements).

Pricing: US$599 and up.
Availability: November 12.

http://www.avid.com/

If you want some follow-up questions with Avid, please fire away.

Other news: there’s some blurry purple lighting effect action on the box. How about that?

I’ll have some news from Avid following the event.

Updated: It’s over, and now you can find out what happened. I’m saving this article to save our comment thread below about good Avid press conference drinking game terms. (Not recommended if you, for instance, do PR for Avid.)

Anyone really serious about following Avid, you can read the notes from their Q3 earnings conference call.

For some time, the move has seemed inevitable – even more so as the rumor mill started echoing with suggestions that a native release was coming. But now, it’s happened: Pro Tools HD will now run without HD DSP hardware. And that’s not all — you can also use the same hardware with your existing DAW of choice, for users of software like Cubase and Logic.

There’s a price tag attached, though. This remains what for many would be a high-end solution. At US$3495 retail and up, it’s not competition for buying a basic interface card and Cubase. Think, instead, a more affordable and flexible way to equip studio rigs, and some potentially serious competition for vendors like Apogee, especially since you can use any DAW you want.

Just to say that again: Avid is making a version of Pro Tools HD that runs on the CPU and supports any DAW on Windows 7 or Mac OS X Snow Leopard and higher.

The AIR (Avid) user blog has some terrific analysis on the announcement even before it became public, comparing leaked price info for Native to an Apogee rig. If you haven’t been reading the AIR blog, they’ve hardly been shills for Avid; they’ve savaged some of the company’s decisions. And they’re actually pretty positive here. (Spoiler: Avid winds up being cheaper than Apogee by a few hundred bucks in their calculus.)
Is An Avid Pro Tools HD Native Core System Expensive?

What you get for that investment, though, is something worth discussing. It also reveals what’s necessary to get real, low-latency audio operation, which is relevant even if you aren’t in the market for Pro Tools|HD Native. CDM gets some insight into that from the developers.

First, Pro Tools|HD Native at a glance. Bundles:

Native core: $3495 buys you the necessary PCIe native card plus Pro Tools HD 8.5 software. The card comes with two Digilink mini ports on it.

Native core + OMNI Add an HD OMNI interface to the above. Total: US$5995.

Native core + HD I/O 8x8x8 Get a full 8x8x8 HD I/O interface. Total cost: US$6995.

Native core + HD I/O 16×16 analog US$7995.

Availability: November 4.

So, why bother with “HD Native” when there are versions like LE? The difference is that some of the more serious studio features remain:

• Surround, VCA mixing
• Destructive/track punch, advanced automation
• Solo Bus AFL/PFL, track-based input monitoring
• Sync HD support
• 9-pin Machine Control
• Venue support. (Yeah, that’s pretty huge, since Venue rigs don’t necessarily need all the TDM stuff.

This isn’t a TDM solution, though, so you don’t get TDM plug-in support, which for many is one of the big draws of Pro Tools. That includes the recently-announced HEAT, an analog-modeling sonic sweetener based on the qualities of tape. (There’s more to say about HEAT; I just got off the phone with its talented designer Dave Hill, so expect the results of that interview soon.)

It is a significant “mid-range” studio solution, and will likely fill a big need for Pro Tools customers. Avid told CDM in a briefing yesterday that they’ve gotten enormous demand for just such a solution. Just doing a discounted upgrade to HD got a big response, and users have wanted something between LE and the TDM-based HD for project or secondary studios. It also seems to me that it demonstrates Avid is willing to change, which could have greater implications down the road.

What you get is, says Avid, not a replacement for their DSP solutions, but otherwise unrestricted in sync, I/O, and functionality. It has the mixing and I/O LE lacks, and it even supports legacy “blue” HD converters (192, etc.), making it a likely candidate for upgrading studio setups that didn’t make the leap to 8.5 software.

If you don’t want to use Pro Tools as your DAW, you get 64 channels of I/O with any Core Audio (Mac) or ASIO (PC) system. Avid says they’ve tested extensively with Logic and Nuendo; Digital Performer, SONAR, and others should work, too.

And, notably, it’s a native system with extraordinarily low latency. Pro Tools|HD does .44 ms (at 96k and a 64 sample — yes, sixty-four total – buffer). But HD Native does a very respectable 1.6 ms; less than half that if you choose direct monitoring while recording, which you can do with simple stereo monitoring or even 7.1 surround setups. That’s 1.6 ms through the native setup, through PCI, and through the kernel and operating system. We’ve heard those kinds of theoretical numbers, but it’s a big deal to get it consistently on a computer system with a single, stable setup.

The Latency Story

I was curious to hear more about how Pro Tools|HD Native achieves those low latencies. The answer says something about the direction of Pro Tools, but also the potential of native computers for this sort of processing in general, regardless of the tool you use. (And that’s the sort of information we like.)

Bobby Lombardi, head of Pro Tools Product Management, explains to CDM:

The magic answer to all this is the Core Audio/ASIO “safety buffer” which is an additional layer of latency used by third party IO manufacturers (HW) manufacturers who provide Core Audio drivers for their HW. We also use a safety buffer for all of our hardware (including LE and M-Audio) that have Core Audio and ASIO drivers.

A safety buffer can have a very wide range of values. PCIe based hardware IO is the best case where manufacturers could theoretically get down to a 9 sample buffer, and go as high as several hundred samples for USB devices.

The key for a high-performance, low-latency system is PCIe-based IO and quality low-latency converters. This is the main reason why a PCI-based Pro Tools HD Native system combined with an HD IO has such exceptional latency.

The story gets even better at 96kHz sample rates where most converter latencies where the host CPU latency halves itself, and many high-end converters are capable of a low-latency converter mode without sacrificing quality. Our new HD IO and OMNI IO have such converters and perform in a low-latency performance mode when used at 88.2 and higher sample rates.

So to recap. The best possible latency story for Pro Tools HD Native using AD/DA converters is:

Pro Tools HD Native
Pro Tools HD Software @ 96kHz, 64 sample playback buffer
HD IO or HD OMNI interfaces

If anyone wants to get deeper into these issues with Avid (or anyone else), let me know; I’m game.

Don’t Write Off TDM Yet

Worth saying: this is probably good news for the future of DSP-based, TDM Pro Tools systems, not bad. The business advantage for Avid is, they sell more hardware and software, and keep more people on their platform. (I don’t think they can be faulted for that.)

But if you’re wondering, why bother with the pricier TDM systems at all, the story there doesn’t really change. As Avid puts it, TDM’s advantages don’t suffer when your CPU becomes more powerful. That just means you can use all the horsepower of the CPU and all the additional DSP processing of the HD TDM iron. Some of their customers are also using pretty extreme use cases, like recording 500 channels a time of a symphony orchestra. (I got an angry note regarding Logic Pro after writing a review of Apple’s DAW for Macworld where someone complained that Logic was choking over just sort a setup. Naturally, as a home producer, I had neither tested – nor could really conceive – what that setup looked like.)

There’s also time. Developing highly-optimized TDM plug-ins in Assembler is a different game from writing RTAS (or VST, or AU, etc.) plug-ins in C, and not everyone will port from one to the other.

What’s interesting to me, though, is that some of these issues transcend usage scenarios, budget, and the like. I don’t doubt that every musician would love 1.5 ms latency. And those fundamental architectural issues I believe will continue to be relevant for the entire musical community – whether their tools count as particularly “Pro” or not.

While out of the budget of many home musicians, Pro Tools HD remains the lifeblood of the studio, broadcast, and live worlds. Make no mistake – even in a slow-moving economy, that’s still big business. Users sometimes accept Avid’s hardware grudgingly, but revisions are significant news.

Avid has promised a series of new products for its audio lineup; the first major announcements have arrived in the form of revised audio interfaces and a software effect for adding analog warmth to mixes. Both are targeted at Pro Tools HD. (The audio interfaces also support Core Audio and ASIO on Mac and Windows, respectively.) They’re also the first to sport the Avid logo on the faceplate, though I suspect it’s the claims of improved quality that will earn the most interest from customers (and, likely, the most natural skepticism).

I was invited to a private press event last month at which Avid discussed their strategy and unveiled the new products. I would say the two major themes were quality and openness. In practical terms, that means that Avid claims these pieces sound better for your interface dollar, and that we’re beginning to see (legitimately) support for industry standards — see MADI, below.

There are three new HD interface offerings:

• HD I/O. 2 RU rack, 16×16 analog, 16×16 digital, 8x8x8 analog and digital. See full specs. US$3995.
• HD OMNI An all-in-one, 1 RU rack, 4×8 analog, 2x S/PDIF, 8x ADAT, 4 mic pres, 1 headphone out. Full specs. US$2995.
• HD MADI If you have to ask, you probably don’t need it, but MADI is a very big deal in terms of finally connecting Pro Tools HD to an industry-standard multichannel audio format. In fact, MADI likely should have become a broader de facto standard earlier. Specs mostly blank as I write this. US$4995.

Of these, the Omni seems like a particular sweet spot, particularly in that it is more compact. Note that it is HD-only, not an LE interface.

All of these boxes, as before, require internal computer PCI-bus cards to connect.

Avid’s competitors and critical users alike read CDM, which means that low rumbling sound, a bit like distant thunder, is probably them complaining about some features HD interfaces have lacked for some time. The HD boxes now operate as standalone mixers, offer headphone jacks, and an ample selection of inputs worthy of their studio name. Those are features hardly new to the audio interface world, particularly once you get well into four-digit gear.

The quality question is more elusive, though. On one hand, while a lot of audio hardware easily undercuts the price of these boxes, low cost is easy when you’re willing to make some quality compromises. On the other, I’ve talked to plenty of studio engineers who feel the HD interfaces haven’t necessarily hit the “pro” level they claim. (In fact, take the previous verbiage, drop the mention of “HD,” and we could have had pretty much the exact same conversation in 1998.)

On paper, at least, the next generation of HD interfaces is different. Avid has replaced the mic pres on previous models with newer options for the Omni and the I/O, something they emphasized at the press event. They’ve also looked at filtering and clocking – clock and jitter being major contributors to real-world performance. While comparing across product lines is harder, at the very least, the newer HD interfaces should be better than the older ones. By how much, and how this compares to competitive entrants, is something I hope the CDM community will continue to investigate – as well as starting to take these kinds of issues to task across product lines and budgets.

More on all of this soon, so if you have questions – and especially if you fall directly in Avid’s target market and can talk about how you use these products in the real world – send them our way.

http://www.avid.com/US/products/family/Pro-Tools

HEAT, Analog Warmth in Two Knobs

To me, the most interesting announcement Avid made is one that’s getting a lot less attention. The problem isn’t new: how can you model the sophisticated nuance of tape in a digital realm?

HEAT, an analog warmth simulator for processing your Pro Tools HD mix, is the creation of Dave Hill, the legendary audio engineer, producer, and designer. Dave’s been responsible for a lot of the best gear involving tubes in the last couple of decades, with notable creations for Summit Audio and now his own vendor Crane Song. (Think pieces like the < ahref="http://www.cranesong.com/stc8.html">STC-8 compressor.)

Dave isn’t new to TDM development; his Phoenix suite of plug-ins were an earlier attempt at doing what HEAT does. But Phoenix, from a design and interaction standpoint, was a bit more cluttered. You got a suite of plug-ins rather than a single solution, with bizarre labels like “Gold,” “Sapphire,” and “Opal” on a knob called “Luster.” (Sounds like the Spaceballs school of technical nomenclature. “They’ve gone to plaid!”)

HEAT is different. For starters, it’s not a plug-in. It’s a single, global control, as seen in our image above, which you enable or disable for tracks. When you want to impact the tone, you turn the tone knob. According to an Avid source at the press event, that was by design, so that you intuitively find a sweet spot in the sound rather than try to intellectually work out what impact you want. That knob actually consolidates a number of related simulations, which is something I hope to follow up with Dave about later.

I’ll say this: with HEAT and some other rivals entering the space, the days of bouncing out to tape may be over. Another prediction: while HEAT is not available in a native version, I’ll bet CPU-bound competitors will eventually get the sound right, as well.

HEAT is for HD only, at US$495. If you do have an HD rig or access to one, it’s available as a 30-day trial.

Avid HEAT

I expect Avid did not anticipate one unfortunate, topical coincidence of the name. How many studios in Cleveland do you think will buy a license?