What’s in 8.0.1

If you’re an existing Pro Tools 8 owner, you’ll want 8.0.1:

• Improved interface performance (“snappiness”!)
• Improved selection drawing in audio
• Workflow improvements, fixes

Those of you who grabbed the update in the last week or two, I’ll be curious to hear what you’ve found in some of those subtler improvements. Avid, to their credit, does do a lot of work on these point releases, not only in bugfixes but in other improvements, as well.

Software update for 8.0.1 (LE + HD + M-Powered)

End of the Line

Pro Tools 8.0.1 is the end of the road for quite a range of "legacy" hardware. 8.0.1 (in one or several of its LE, HD, and M-Powered flavors) will be the last version to support:

• Original Mbox
• Expansion|HD Chassis
• Macintosh PowerPC Computers
• Pro Tools MIX-era Peripherals

See last week’s End of Software Support announcement. Now, I suppose you can look at this as glass-half-empty or glass-half-full; it means if you have a studio with that gear in it and a PowerPC-based Mac at its center, you have a stable, modern, brisk version of Pro Tools that could last you a while.

PowerPC support is generally waning; Apple also dumped PowerPC for its own Logic. But there’s still a surprising amount of life in the processor. MOTU’s Digital Performer 7, released this week (news story on that coming) will actually run on a 1 GHz G4; see their System Requirements. I wouldn’t recommend that system, necessarily, but if you’ve got a fast Mac tower with a PowerPC, it could still make a fine studio machine. And DP7 is also compatible with Pro Tools HD, including Pro Tools 8. Ableton Live, also popular around these parts, also still runs on a PowerPC.

New OSes? Not Yet.

Absent from the 8.0.1 update is support for either Snow Leopard (Leopard only is supported) on the Mac side or Windows 7. Now, in fairness, Windows 7 isn’t even shipping yet, though in stark contrast to Vista’s RTM version, developers I’ve talked to have found their software runs without modification – and can run better without intervention than under the previous Vista release, which is something that almost never happens.

Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, but it does mean that studios with “legacy” gear could wind up with a version that doesn’t support Mac OS X 10.6 or Windows 7, if 8.0.1 is in fact the last version of that gear. It obviously won’t matter for the PowerPC Macs, since they run neither Windows nor Snow Leopard, but I can imagine some folks with the HD chassis or MIX peripherals who won’t be thrilled. It’s a small handful of people, but – well, before you complain in comments, yep, I’ve figured it out, too.

It’s been one of the few constants in music technology. To use Pro Tools software, you need Pro Tools hardware – that means M-Audio interfaces for M-Powered (and now Essentials) and Digidesign interfaces for LE and HD. Without M-Audio or Digidesign hardware actively plugged in, the software refuses to run. And there’s no way for a third party to get their audio hardware working with the software.

Or so everyone thought. Without the cooperation of Avid, Mackie says they have managed to get their Onyx-i mixer line working with Pro Tools, and they’ll even “certify” compatibility. At the end of July, a number of audio sites (including Mix and Sonic State, but not CDM) received a package with one of Mackie’s new mixers, a video, and a copy of Pro Tools M-Powered. The message: a “secret” driver provided compatibility between Mackie’s mixer-audio interface package and Pro Tools. (See Sonic State’s writeup.)

So, what’s going on?

Onyx-i – What’s “i”mproved

Before I get into that, first, a word about Mackie’s new Onyx-i mixers. Viral videos aside, I already know many CDM readers don’t actually like Pro Tools, and the Onyx-i has plenty of other features to recommend it. The original Onyx was already an interesting solution, with the potential to combine a full-blown Mackie mixer with a FireWire audio interface. But the hardware was bulky, and adding FireWire support required buying and installing a separate add-in card.

The Onyx-i solves both problems. The entry-level Onyx 820i model adds a compact, inexpensive (street just US$500) 8-channel by 2-channel output option. Also, all of the new Onyx line (up to the 16×16 1640i) have FireWire built-in – no expansion needed. The line still has a rather hefty bulge that sits below the mixers, but at least with the addition of the 820i, there’s an option I could imagine throwing in a backpack. (That’s good news, I think there are more scenarios where you might want simple mixing than need to lug around a 16×16 mixer-interface.) The cheaper Onyx-i models are also competition for the Cakewalk VS-100 I reviewed recently. The Onyx lacks the VS control surface, flash recorder, and the Cakewalk software bundle, but if you were more interested in the mixer to begin with, the Onyx series could be worth a look.

At the high end, the 1640i can stream full 16 x 16 audio channels in and out of your DAW.

The Onyx also makes “universal” compatibility a selling point, and that’s where this Pro Tools saga comes in. The Onyx-i is “qualified for use with all major DAWs,” including Logic, SONAR, Cubase, Ableton Live, and … Pro Tools M-Powered 8. Of course, the last entry was assumed to be technically impossible, and Avid has, to my knowledge, never been compatible with any hardware other than their own. (The only exception I can recall is the brief availability of something called Pro Tools FREE, which worked with standard audio drivers and cost nothing, though it had a number of other limitations.)

Mackie’s announcement came with this disclaimer:

The Onyx-i Series Mixers are qualified by Mackie for use with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8. Mackie will release a driver (via www.mackie.com) together with full details of how to use the Onyx-i series with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8 in the coming weeks.

Avid has declined to comment for the time being on the Onyx-i compatibility claim, though they at least confirmed that they were not involved.

Shaunna Thompson of Mackie emphasized to CDM that there was “no reverse engineering” involved in creating the Onyx-i driver for Pro Tools M-Powered, and that they were “in discussions” with Avid but could not comment further on those discussions or how Avid would respond.

Conventional wisdom about Avid and Pro Tools has been that hardware “lock-in” – the reliance on their hardware – is good for their business. That may well be, and I do believe in hardware choice; it’s part of why Pro Tools hasn’t ever been my main DAW. I do have to point out, though, that every other audio software maker, from big developers to people maintaining open source software, will tell you compatibility is a huge pain. Massive amounts of time get spent on testing and compatibility, particularly when you start combining different operating systems and different combinations of hardware and drivers. So there’s no question that the other thing Avid has been able to do is to reduce some of that complexity, some of the additional sources of support problems, and all the costs associated with both.

But that made me all the more curious about just how the Onyx-i support works.

Q&A with Mackie

CDM: Can you comment on the inclusion of Pro Tools M-Powered?

Mackie: The “Ransom Packages” that were sent out as part of a viral campaign included a copy of Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8. However, the mixers do not come with a copy of Pro Tools; users will need to purchase this separately.

CDM: I’m sure you can’t talk about all the details, but is there anything you can say about how the M-Powered support was reverse-engineered?

Mackie: Mackie did not ‘reverse engineer’ support for Pro Tools M-Powered 8. We created a custom universal driver that enables use with all major DAWs including Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8.

CDM: For that matter, at the risk of asking the obvious, why would Mackie want to support Pro Tools given support for other hosts and your own DAW (Tracktion)?

Mackie: The Onyx-i Series interfaces with all major DAW’s including Pro Tools^® M -Powered^™ 8 and our very own Tracktion Software. Our customers have been telling us for years that they want a mixer that can interface with Pro Tools^® – we are simply giving our customers what they want. 

CDM: Aside from the Pro Tools questions, I’m a little unclear – what’s new in the "-i" versus the original Onyx predecessors?

Mackie: The biggest difference is that the Onyx-i Series has deep FireWire integration. Now you don’t have to buy a separate FireWire card because it’s already built into the mixer offering a significant increase in performance and value over the older Onyx Compact Series. This effectively means you get a premium analog mixer AND an ultra-high quality digital interface. These are the tools you need for serious computer recording.

Every channel on the mixers can be routed pre- or post- EQ to the computer, allowing the user to choose whether to implement EQ to tape or not. Returns from you computer can be routed back through the channel strip for integration into the mix or for mastering the Perkins EQ.

So, Does it Matter?

It seems that if this had happened a few years ago, it might have been explosive news, which is not the sense I got with Mackie’s attempt to “go viral” with that guy, his little dog, and his pantyhose mask. Then again, I’d better not speak too soon, lest I wind up with 100 comments on this post…

For many users, people who want hardware choice may already have found DAWs with which they’re happy. Pro Tools has its loyal users, and people make great music with it – it just happens that the same can be said of Ableton Live, Apple Logic, Reaper, and many others (just in descending order of recent reader interest on this site). And, of course, Mackie also makes their own Tracktion. Mackie actually risks overshadowing the other news here – the ability to buy a single piece of gear that’s both a Mackie mixer and a FireWire audio interface for under $500.

On the other hand, it’d be a fairly significant acheivement to release this driver, and perhaps even to get Avid’s support. And while I had to ask the question above, of course, Mackie wouldn’t do this if they weren’t getting customers bugging them for it. That’s why interoperability ultimately matters: users want certain choices, and (perhaps rightfully) don’t understand why they might be denied those choices.

I’m going to place the burden on Avid on this one, for one reason: Avid claims “interoperability” is one of their new corporate goals. It’s never been entirely clear what they mean. Some of that goal seems to have more to do with interoperability between products in their own product line. (In fairness, that seems a logical place to start!) So I hope whenever Avid and Mackie do finish their discussions, whatever Avid’s decision, we get clear communication for exactly what the “new” Avid’s interoperability goals are. If they feel they have a case for not supporting hardware like Mackie’s, that’s their prerogative. I’d just like to see clear communication from either company, to explain to their user base why they make those choices.

And, of course, I don’t expect that communication from either Mackie or Avid will come from anyone wearing a mask and a disguised voice.

I’ll be watching for the outcome of the discussions between these two industry giants. Stay tuned.

A young, aspiring musician walks into a consumer electronics store. (Let’s call it Big Buy, and imagine people wearing… red polo shirts.) They wander into the game aisle and muse at the latest music games in the video game section – $60-100 in price. But there’s an endcap with something else: a box of Pro Tools that’ll run on their computer, plus a ready-to-use audio interface, for $99-129. Instead of Guitar Hero, they leave with Pro Tools – a name they already knew.

See full details of the new lineup, with photos.

This idea is nothing new – for many years, it’s been possible to do great stuff with $100 on a computer. But the most powerful brand in music production (Pro Tools) has remained notably absent. Instead, that hypothetical consumer would find a smattering of consumer-only choices with names they likely wouldn’t recognize. Meanwhile, the name “Pro Tools,” and the software interface that made it popular, have been limited to more complex offerings sold through specialists.

Today changes all of that. Gone is the idea that “Pro Tools” is only for the high end. Gone is the iLok hardware dongle. (You still need either the Micro or Fast Track interface plugged in, but the target market for this product may not care.)

There are three offerings:

A vocal studio, bundled with a USB mic (similar to M-Audio’s Luna).

A “recording” studio, bundled with a simple USB bus-powered audio interface (the previously-available Fast Track.

The “KeyStudio”, bundled with a 49-key USB keyboard. The software comes with 60+ virtual instruments, says Avid, so you’ve got quite a lot to play.

The software included in each has some limitations – it has 32 tracks (16 audio, 8 instrument, and 8 MIDI), and more basic routing options (3 inserts per track, 2 audio inputs, and 2 outputs). The absence of multitrack recording is probably the biggest restriction. But you nonetheless get a range of virtual instrument sounds and effects, plus a full complement of editing and mixing features.

On the same day that people are rediscovering The Beatles through a video game, and video games are causing people to rediscover music making, you can buy a studio for about the same price.

Now, if you’re reading this site, that’s probably not news. But it could be news to quite a lot of people who haven’t discovered computer music making. And it represents a tectonic shift in how the titan of music making software treats its flagship.

What’s hard to overstate is how profoundly Avid has changed overnight some of the rules they themselves wrote. There’s no diplomatic way to put this: for years, Avid/Digidesign has been a dinosaur, with all the negatives and positives that can come from that. They have all the heft of a dinosaur, the footprint – and all of the kind of ongoing assumptions about how to do business. The whole modus operandi of Pro Tools seems to have been protecting the crown jewels. The idea of something called Pro Tools sold to a genuine mass market at this price, without any differentiation between “consumer” and “pro” or “mass-market” and “musician” is largely new. And that could point to a sea change for the whole industry further in the future.

In fact, even Avid’s competition has followed the unspoken rule that your flagship product and the crippled version you sell to the mass market have to be kept isolated. Apple is careful to distinguish Garage Band from Logic, iMovie from Final Cut. Ableton’s entry-level versions of Live have key features removed – even the LE version that costs about twice what Pro Tools Essentials, with hardware, does. Cakewalk doesn’t call its entry-level software SONAR. MOTU doesn’t have an entry-level Digital Performer. Steinberg has Nuendo, Cubase… and, remember, most people who have never heard of any of these things have heard of Pro Tools. The result is the industry takes a bunch of names that aren’t well-known to the general public, and then …adds more.

The kind of gymnastics manufacturers do to keep the low-end from being the “real” product sometimes border on absurdist.

For instance, take M-Audio’s Fast Track, the interface now included with Pro Tools Essentials Studio. It’s a simple box with a USB jack and some audio inputs. But a first-time consumer probably wants to plug it into a computer – including a Windows PC that lacks a pre-installed GarageBand – and have something happen.

The Fast Track is marketed as coming from “M-AUDIO,” a company most people outside our bubble have never heard. It’s “compatible” with Pro Tools “M-Powered” (not an actual word). Oh, except that’s a separate purchase – and it comes with a special plastic USB dongle that you have to plug into your computer called the iLok. The average consumer hasn’t ever seen hardware copy protection.

On the Fast Track product page, the fine print about how the other software bundles work is longer than the description of the actual product.

*M-Audio Session software is available in Fast Track USB packages sold at consumer electronics retailers, and currently works only with Fast Track USB and M-Audio Micro hardware. If you purchased a Fast Track USB package from your local pro audio dealer, you received a professional software bundle including Ableton Live Lite. If you wish to purchase Session for use with your Fast Track USB, it is available directly from M-Audio for only $25 (valued at $69.95). Purchase Session now.”

What’s Session? That’s another software product, unrelated to Pro Tools.

Hell, I’m confused, and I do this for a living.

Now, instead of that complexity, you can get one box that includes both the Fast Track and Pro Tools Essentials, without any of the fine print. (As pictured.) If those stores had decent commissions, I’d just park myself in one around the holiday season.

Don’t get me wrong: Pro Tools Essentials has tough competition. GarageBand has been down this path before, minus the hardware and the “Pro Tools” name, but with the very serious “Apple” name attached. The aforementioned Rock Band franchise will now have its game songs produced in Reaper, a $60 piece of software that does for some of its advanced users what Pro Tools might. The hardware tie-ins here, ironically, may be less valuable to people than the software – Pro Tools, more than a keyboard or mic, is likely to sell the packages.

The bottom line, though, is that a box that says “Pro Tools” at $99 is important to the whole industry. And if Avid is redefining what a “Pro” tool is, something bigger than even Avid really is shifting. The technological shift is hardly new, but the ability to recognize that in the market has been a long time coming.

I’m curious to see what will happen next.

Having full control of a complete mix and session from your MIDI keyboard – without having to move your hands to the mouse or shift your focus to your computer screen – can be an addictive, if elusive feeling. Here’s a look at one way to accomplish that objective using the new Axiom Pro keyboards from M-Audio and CDM reader favorite Ableton Live, thanks to a first-look video provided to CDM first.

We’ve seen efforts to make this happen before, notably including the Korg Kontrol keyboard series working together with Propellerhead Reason and Novation’s Automap with software like Ableton Live. M-Audio’s Axiom Pro line has a new twist on the idea with what Avid calls “HyperControl.” Several details make HyperControl unique. For one, it doesn’t require any intervening software or drivers; the keyboard is USB class-compliant and plug-and-play, and you don’t have an additional software layer as with Automap. Also, the Axiom Pro is natively capable of sending keyboard commands, and even has a numeric keypad on the front panel of the unit. But most importantly, the Axiom Pro has its own workflow for different editing and performance functions. My suspicion is whether you love or hate HyperControl will probably hinge on how you adapt this feature.

Avid has been kind enough to give CDM an exclusive scoop on an extensive video they produced walking you through the process of setting up HyperControl with Ableton Live, step by step. Now, normally many of the videos from hardware makers make me cringe. John here has done a really terrific job, however. It’s really a tutorial and not a sales pitch, and while I’m a fan of writing and reading, this would be really confusing without the video.

Much of the working method focuses here on controlling the whole session rather than performance parameters. If that doesn’t appeal to you, skip to about seven minutes in for a discussion of “Device Mode,” which is when you finally map those eight encoders to the eight macro parameters for Device Racks so you can tweak your live synth sound. What’s nice here, though, is that you could couple that technique with the tips on recording clips, so you can play, record those clips, play back lips, and tweak all at once, one-man-band/one-woman-band style.

Have a look at the video, and let me know what else you might like to know. What isn’t covered? What other ways might you want to use a keyboard-and-software rig like this?

And don’t worry, while this week is becoming Controller Week (like shark week for MIDI nuts?), it doesn’t have to be The Ableton Live 24 Hour News Network. HyperControl also supports other software, including Avid’s own Pro Tools. Apple just released support in Logic Studio 9 and MainStage which I’m researching now. And while HyperControl is a slick moniker, I’m also researching more conventional control methods, which can even support Linux thanks to the fact that the hardware (unlike Novation’s) is class-compliant. So let us know your priorities in comments, and I’ll see if we can make them happen.

Axiom Family at M-Audio (now Avid

I Want My CDM TV

We’ll be putting more videos onto CDM TV very soon, and now you can subscribe to videos easily via iTunes, Miro, and RSS. Transcoding is fixed, too, so you can load up this video on your iPhone / iPod touch and balance it on the end of the Axiom Pro while you practice these techniques, if you like!

Subscribe to CDM TV with iTunes
Subscribe to CDM TV with RSS
Subscribe to CDM TV with Miro

Still a little thinner than we’d like, but expect this channel to heat up for the …um, fall season.

Sibelius today gets the biggest upgrade I’ve seen from the tool in a long time, with major improvements to the way the notation package lays out musical objects on the score, and ReWire support so you can integrate it with your host of choice.

This is an especially meaningful upgrade to me, as I’ve spent a lot of time with Sibelius since its first Mac release about a decade ago, both composing and teaching with it. In case you missed it Friday, I just spoke about some tips that can help with working in both education and composing:

Five Sibelius 5 Notation Tips, for Education and Experimentation with Scores

A couple of the recent upgrades, while nice enough, were not necessarily “must-haves” – a natural part of any upgrade cycle. But this to me looks different.

Here’s what’s new in Sibelius 6:

• Magnetic Layout: Sibelius has always been “magnetic” in that it automatically reflows objects and page layout to keep everything looking “tidy” as its English creators would say. It’s also always been fast at the task. The problem is, a lot of objects have still required lots of manual tweaking. Sibelius users, you know what I’m talking about: hours spent fine-tuning dynamics and text indications, rehearsal marks, and the like. Basically, all the objects that we’ren’t magnetic now are. (see above)
• Magnetic Layout implementation: In addition to the more intelligent objects and space optimization, you’ll see clever collision avoidance, and red-colored collision highlighting when a collision is unavoidable. It also looks like there are nice new guides for, say, making a forte, piano, and hairpin descrescendo all line up, something that required painful manual tweaks previously.
• Versions and comments: Scores now track and manage revisions, and you can create comments on the score. Theoretically, this is for collaboration and teaching, though I imagine it’ll be useful even to a solo composer as a score is developed – enough so that you may start to haul your laptop to rehearsals instead of just paper.
• ReWire: Sibelius will now act as a ReWire client, so you can record the output of the notation software itself (see the new instruments), or simply sync Sibelius to an existing project. Avid is naturally talking all about Pro Tools, but because the integration is with ReWire and not just Pro Tools, Ableton Live, SONAR, Logic, DP, and the like all become possible, too. I’ve never much liked the notation facilities in standard DAWs, so that’s good news – and this should be huge for the composer just wanting to record a quick mock-up with virtual instruments as well as someone doing film score.
• Notation improvements: Slurs have always been reasonably elegant and automatic in Sibelius, but when it comes to manually overriding those controls, they’ve been more challenging. Sibelius 6 includes (appropriately enough) six handles for controlling slurs. There are also optional stemlets when beaming across rests (hugely helpful for people who write complex, cough, rhythms in their music), automatic feathered beams (instead of the hack we’ve been using), and smarter articulation placement. There are new jazz repeat bars, and cautionary accidentals are finally added automatically. These are minor things, but quite frankly, it’s little details like that that often make the biggest day-to-day difference. (The cautionary accidentals alone might be worth an upgrade.)
• New integrated instruments: Profiting from Sibelius’ acquisition by Avid (formerly its Digidesign unit), Sibelius now acquires the lovely virtual instruments from the AIR team who have been doing soft synths for Pro Tools. There’s a new player, plus M-Audio’s General MIDI sound player. This replaces a previous player from Native Instruments. I love NI, but the NI player in Sibelius often wasn’t quite plug-and-play, and this promises to be an improvement. (See additional notes below.)

There are other features, as well. Keyboard and Fretboard windows provide visual feedback to those just learning musical notation. (The guitar fretboard is handy, too, for keyboardists like me who need to think through what a guitarist would do with our music – it was an early feature of Sibelius’ entry-level guitar product G7.) Classroom Control allows educators to monitor students, send and receive scores, and monitor changes, which could help with file exchange or even administering exams in Sibelius.

One feature may be especially revolutionary for certain user applications. Live Tempo finally allows you to tap in a conductor track so you can control tempo fluctuations manually. This is more sophisticated than the (useful) similar feature in Finale – it integrates with Sibelius’ existing fluid tempo functionality, allows subdivision of beats and other musical possibilities, and can be recorded and played back and edited by section.

All in all, this is a very significant upgrade. I’m still disappointed that Sibelius – and mainstream notation in general – remains so inflexible for lots of alternative notations, and that seems not to improve in this release. But as I noted in my tips from last week, there are workarounds, and for sheer usability and saving time, these improvements all look welcome. I’m also pleased with the subtle notation changes – these are little things, but I think it refines the quality of score you can produce and saves time. We expect review copies soon, so stay tuned.

Q&A on Slurs, New Instruments

CDM asked Daniel Spreadbury of Sibelius to talk to us about some of the specifics of the new instruments from AIR and the slurs.

CDM: As I understand it, the sounds have been ported to the new instrument engine, built by AIR. What does this mean for bringing scores you’ve produced in earlier versions of Sibelius into Sibelius 6 for playback?

D S: When you open a score that was created in Sibelius 5 that used the old version of Sibelius Sounds Essentials played back by Kontakt Player 2, Sibelius 6 will silently update the score to use the new version of Sibelius Sounds Essentials played back by the Sibelius Player.

99 times out of 100 this will be an improvement on the playback you heard inSibelius 5. Although the updated Essentials library excludes a set of GM sounds (now provided by a separate virtual GM module, which can nevertheless be used simultaneously with the Sibelius Player if desired), and some sounds from old providers (e.g. recorder, handbells, piano, harp) have been replaced with alternatives from Garritan, Tapspace or AIR, there are many new and improved sounds that better complement each other than the sounds with Sibelius 5. For example, Essentials for Sibelius 5 contained only a solo violin sound from GPO and the other solo strings came from the GM set, so ensembles like e.g. string quartets didn’t sound great. In Sibelius 6, we have licensed further solo string sounds from GPO, so a string quartet will sound substantially better. And we’ve tried to do this across the board, for all the common genres of music.

For that one time in 100 when the original library would sound better, provided users still have Sibelius 5 installed, they will be able to choose to use the Kontakt Player 2 version of the library by choosing ‘Sibelius Essentials (32 sounds, Kontakt)’ from the Configuration menu in Play > Playback Devices.

CDM: Slurs with more manual control handles are something we had seen previously in Sibelius’ rival, Finale. Can you describe what’s different about Sibelius’ implementation?

Sibelius’s slurs have a number of advantages, including the power to copy and paste a tweaked slur and have its tweaks reliably reproduced when pasted elsewhere, the ability to tweak multiple selected slurs simultaneously via the Properties window, reliable keyboard editing of the position of each handle and control point, and so on. Sibelius 6 also implements the standard slur positioning rules (i.e. slur below when all stems point up, but slur above if any stem points down; in two voices, slurs go above stem up notes and below stem down notes, etc.) but retains the ability to simply flip slurs by hitting X. Slurs are also now properly editable on both sides of a system or page break.

Sibelius’s method of editing slurs (including multiple slurs simultaneously) and copying slurs while retaining these edits, together with the fact that creating, extending and retracting slurs is in general simpler in Sibelius, gives slurs inSibelius 6 the edge.

Ed. note: Based on my experience with previous releases of both programs, this sounds about right – now I just need to pick something to compose this summer so I can give Sibelius 6 a try! –PK

If you have more questions about the new release, ask them here, and we’ll have a look as the new release comes out or pass along technical specifics to the folks at Sibelius.

Avid, the parent company of music product makers Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, has decided to assert the brand of its mothership more aggressively. As near as I can tell, that means you won’t see the M-Audio, Digidesign, or Sibelius brand names any more – along with video maker Pinnacle. You’ll see, presumably, Avid Pro Tools? (Right now, you see the Digi site with an Avid banner across the top that says “Digidesign is Avid.” But that was true before, so I don’t really know what this exactly means.)

Avid has also unveiled a new logo made, cleverly, to look like transport buttons on video and audio equipment.

I have to say, I have extremely mixed feelings about this, for a number of reasons. And by mixed, I mean mixed – this could be really positive, or really … not. The good news is, having one brand and one brand strategy probably does make a whole lot of sense. The (potential) downside:

• Avid may be the weaker of the brands here. It’s known among video people, but not necessarily even beloved there. Digidesign and M-Audio, meanwhile, touch wider user bases, and have real resonance with musicians.
• Will combining video and audio products actually work? Will a single brand really help? Sony has tried to do just this, with less-than-stellar results – perhaps because the video, audio, pro music, and “consumer” music markets (and their many factions within those umbrellas) are so particular. Sony has much bigger brand recognition than Avid (understatement), but even that hasn’t really made products like Acid or Sound Forge or (for video) Vegas substantially more popular. It works for Apple, but that’s because people associate Apple’s products with the computers they buy – and, well, they’re Apple and normal rules don’t seem to apply.
• You can’t read the new logo. Sure, the triangles are clever, but you can’t actually read the letters. Also, aren’t old-school hardware transport buttons a bit dated in this day and age? I’m going to assume all of that gets sorted out in practice, so I’m not actually worried about this, but I did have to point it out.

On the other hand, Avid’s combination of Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, plus the Avid/Pinnacle stuff on the video side really is a whole heck of a lot of what the music and video production world is about, and that hasn’t been clear. So despite the caveats and dangers, there is potential here. It’s all in the details.

And more important than branding is how Avid relates to its customers, and how the company operates. If that goes right, the brand will respond.

The press release promises not just a new identity, but a “new strategy” and “a new operating model.” But it isn’t clear, yet, what that actually means in the real world, particularly on the audio end.

http://www.avid.com/us/pressroom/brand-identity.aspx

The press release isn’t terribly encouraging, though, as it immediately shifts to Avid-centric, ultra-high-end / pro video solutions. Those products are extremely important. It’s tough to know just how anyone could find a way to relate that to a person buying a $100 plastic MIDI controller at the other end of the market, so I don’t envy the job of the business folks at Avid. At the same time, I do believe it’s possible to run a business that covers that gamut.

I’m going to talk to the Avid folks about this next week to get a better understanding. But because I expect many pro audio folks will react similarly on first brush, I decided in the interest of bloggy disclosure to go ahead and publish my initial reaction.

Let us know your questions or thoughts, and I’ll pass them along to Digidesign/M-Audio Avid next week.

Avid announced today that it will acquire Pinnacle,
one of Avid's few remaining competitors in media production technology.
At the ultra-high-end broadcast level, Avid already nearly owns the
market, and Pinnacle will complete that integration. Meanwhile, you can
expect Avid to make a big play for the consumer market with Pinnacle's
consumer-level offerings. Add this to Avid / Digidesign's purchase of M-Audio last year.

It's pretty much Avid vs. Sony vs. Apple at this point in the video
market. No tears shed here, because Sony's Vegas and Apple's iMovie and
Final Cut are in my mind preferable to Pinnacle's offerings.

One thing that is clear: Steinberg
just dodged a huge bullet. If Steinberg had been part of this deal,
Digidesign would almost certainly have wanted to kill Steinberg's Pro
Tools competitors. On the other hand, the buyout probably wouldn't have
happened at all: Pinnacle shrank when it sold off Steinberg to Yamaha,
making it riper for a takeover deal the company was likely courting
anyway.

In other news, CDM is proud to announce we've been acquired by Sony and
are discontinuing all our coverage of other products. Just kidding. I
think.