Pro Tools users, already switching to the latest-and-greatest Mac or Windows operating system? Avid has added compatibility with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and Windows 7 in the company’s 8.0.3 upgrade to Pro Tools. Oddly, some of the Windows support is still listed as “beta,” while the Mac support is “official.” Nonetheless, I’ve heard reports of people using Windows 7 unofficially without issue.

Here’s the status of the different operating systems and Pro Tools flavors:

Windows 7

Beta support, available to download today: Pro Tools HD 8, Pro Tools LE 8, Pro Tools M-Powered 8
Full “official” support, not yet ready for download, coming soon: Pro Tools M-Powered Essential

Mac OS X Snow Leopard

Official support, available to download today: Pro Tools HD 8, Pro Tools LE 8, Pro Tools M-Powered 8
Full “official” support, not yet ready for download, coming soon: Pro Tools M-Powered Essential

Even if you don’t use Windows 7 or Snow Leopard, you should consider downloading 8.0.3; the release includes numerous bug fixes, including solutions for some significant issues and crashes and a whole bunch of video fixes.

I’m a little disappointed that Avid is this slow with Windows 7 support, given the relatively minor differences between Windows 7 and Vista, and, well, the fact that Windows 7 is an improvement over Vista. If you’re already on Windows 7 and try the “beta” 8.0.3, let us know how it works for you. As for Snow Leopard support, Leopard works well enough that it’s still the OS release on the Mac I’m most inclined to use; there aren’t any major changes in terms of audio and music support I’ve seen that would compel me to upgrade. That could change in the future, though, if developers take advantage of some of Apple’s under-the-hood improvements in the OS.

Pro Tools 8 Product Page with downloads, changelogs

Updated – this is not a “legacy”-compatible release. Note that 8.0.3 does not have support for PowerPC architectures or some older Digidesign hardware. 8.0.1 is the last release with support for that equipment. See, previously:

DAW Day – Pro Tools 8.0.1: No Windows 7 or 10.6 Support, End of the Road for Legacy

Upshot – if you want to support that hardware, you’ll likely need to stick with Mac OS X 10.5.x and earlier. (Some users have experienced good results with Windows 7 and earlier Pro Tools versions, because the OS is so similar to Windows Vista. That’s also an officially-unsupported configuration, however.)

See comments for some largely positive results with Windows 7 and 10.6, however.

It’s long been the case that if you wanted to run Pro Tools, you needed hardware from Digidesign. That’s why it was a surprise when Mackie announced new audio interface-mixer hardware that they said they had made work with Pro Tools M-Powered, which previously worked only with M-Audio gear. Digidesign parent Avid had made statements that they would champion “openness,” but it wasn’t clear at the time if that would extent to allowing third-party gear to work with Avid’s software crown jewels.

We get our answer today from LOUD. There is a catch – you’ll have to pay extra for the connection – but it does seem that the two will work together.

LOUD Technologies Inc. (parent company of Mackie®) today announced it has signed an agreement with Avid® that licenses the use of Mackie’s new Onyx™-i Series Firewire Recording Mixers with Avid Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8 software.

To enable use with Pro Tools M-Powered 8, users will need to purchase the Mackie Universal Driver upgrade ($49.99 USD) at www.mackie.com. Once the driver is downloaded and installed, the Onyx 820i, 1220i, 1620i and 1640i mixers can be used with Avid Pro Tools M-Powered 8 software.

Of course, I imagine all of this prompts a collective eye roll from some of Avid’s competitors, since DAWs from MOTU, Cakewalk, Apple, Ableton, Steinberg, and others are all designed to work with a wide range of hardware – no fee-based driver upgrade needed. But for lovers of Pro Tools, this does mean a new choice, and it’s definitely a departure from tradition. If Pro Tools is your favorite DAW, this seems like very good news, as it’s an extremely versatile-looking interface-mixer that fills a gap M-Audio themselves hadn’t filled. Anyone with the new Onyx-i hardware want to let us know if you’re likely to bite?

http://www.mackie.com/onyxiseries

I’d be remiss if I didn’t note another significant DAW release: DP7 is shipping this week. The Mac-only Digital Performer still has a loyal following, especially among the scoring crowd, some of whom have stuck with DP since the Performer days – one of the Mac’s first sequencers. I have to say, this particular update seems to focus more on bundled effects than core functionality – and, in fairness, because it’s tough to change core features without upsetting the stuff that keeps your users loyal, this isn’t uncommon. But DP has uncommonly rich support for being a Pro Tools HD front end, it’s Mac-savvy and Snow Leopard compatible, and given its popularity in scoring, a little touch like the Marker Counter could be huge news for its major following.

Full disclosure: I haven’t found much reason to touch DP lately, with plenty of other tools to keep my attention, so if there is a loyal DP user who would like to send in their dispatch, I’d love to run it on CDM.

In the meantime, I’ll keep this compact to give you a birds-eye view. First, the effects stuff:

• Stompboxes: For the first time, you get a suite of guitar pedal effects, including emulations of Ibanez, BOSS, RXT, and Electro-Harmonix.
• Modeled amps: Simulations of the Fender Bassman, Marshall JTM45, and Marshall JCM800. So, sure, other suites offer more options – but these are three top picks.
• Physically-modeled guitar miking: The Live Room | G simulates a speaker cabinet and mic placement. Unlike the Logic 9 take on the same idea, you get a built-in EQ and four channels – but also unlike Logic, you get close / near / far rather rather free-form mic placement. That’s too bad, given the clever top-down view, though I suspect the default placements are typically all you need.
• Smarter strips: Access channel strips from a floating window, and see EQ and dynamics in-line on the mixing board. (Usually you get EQ, but not dynamics.) Plus, finally – unlike most other programs – your virtual rack of synths appears right on the mixing board. Mixer controls are also available in any edit window, not just the usual arrangement view.
• Better counters: A Large Counter resizes the counter to an arbitrary size – ideal for when you’ve rented an orchestra and are projecting counts (literally). And a Marker Counter displays markers and jumps to specific spots, which could be fantastic for backing tracks, recording, and scoring. It’s a simple thing – obvious, really – and yet I haven’t seen it done before.
• Real-time crossfades promise to speed editing.
• Automation by range.

There are also various notation improvements, including lead sheet generation – though I still think it’s touch to beat a dedicated scoring tool, or the recent inclusion of Sibelius in Pro Tools. More interesting, you get full support for running Pro Tools 8 on the back end, which is ideal for people who prefer DP (and that Marker Counter) as their front end. And there are also tweaks under the hood, including Wave64 support for massive broadcast files, side-chaining AU plug-ins, and a new sample rate conversion engine.

Guitar effects in this tool have to go up against Apple’s Logic Studio. I’d have to generally give the edge there to Apple, though, because the range of tools remains wider, and Apple also includes MainStage for rigging their effects into a performance-ready setup.

Guitar effects are nice, but I think enhancing the Counter, cleverly integrating some of the mixing controls, and making cross-fade editing faster could actually be more important. If you’re a DP user, do let us know what you think of the update.

New in DP7 [MOTU]

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.

For people looking to get into music recording and production on a computer, for the first time, there’s a bundle that says “Pro Tools” on the box that costs correction: as little as just $99. It really is Pro Tools software; it’s certainly streamlined (some basic track limits, no multitrack recording), but still with a serious complement of recording, mixing, and effects, and even some nice virtual instruments. Beyond that, your choice is which hardware you’d like in your “value meal”:

For vocalists: The Vocal Studio has a cardoid condenser mic – that’s a USB mic you can connect directly – plus a stand and a case.

For “recording:” The Recording Studio gives you a simple 2-in/2-out audio interface so you can connect your own mic/line/instrument input.

For keyboardists: The KeyStudio is a 49-key synth-action keyboard with mod and pitch bend, plus and an audio interface (the 1-in, 1-out M-Audio USB Micro).

Correction: $99 is the price for the keyboard and vocal bundles, $129 for the recording bundle with Fast Track. (I had an early press release that said pricing was $129 for all three.)

The target readership for CDM may not be in the market for this bundle — though it is a ridiculously cheap way to add Pro Tools compatibility to your rig, if you just need to trade session files. But I know we also have a lot of readers who offer expertise to other folks. Do let us know what they think – if they’re turned on, or turned off.

See additional analysis on what the larger implications of Avid’s strategic shift may be.

If you’re a beginning user, I don’t doubt that this software will get you started. You get over 5 GB of instruments and loops, 60 virtual instrument sounds, reverb / chorus / delay / flanger / phaser / compression / EQ effects, reasonable track counts (16 audio, 8 instrument, 8 MIDI), 3 insert slots per track for “up to 3 simultaneous effects,” buses and send/return routing, and 2 simultaneous audio inputs and outputs. So you can’t do simultaneous multitrack input or surround hardware, but you’d need a different audio interface for that, anyway.

Actually, so that you can email this story to your nephew or niece who’s just starting out and considering options, let me translate to English:

This is a well-priced package that gives you the hardware and software you’d need to record podcasts, voice-over, and vocals for music (Vocal Studio), play some synths and instruments (KeyStudio), and input your guitar or instrument (Studio), and in each of them, record, edit, and produce musical arrangements. You get some virtual instruments to play with, some pre-stocked sounds, and all the editing and arrangement you’ll probably need.

It’ll run on Mac and Windows machines with modest specs (see the product page for the full details), though you will need these audio interfaces connected for the software to start. (You can’t simply use the headphone out jack on your MacBook or PC laptop, for instance, which is possible in some competitive software. The interface is effectively used as copy protection for the software.)

-Peter, speaking English

I believe that there are other ways to put together a good studio for this price, of course. There are some terrific “bargain-priced” music apps out there, actually more than I have time to use. It’s time to refresh CDM’s own budget recommendations for a variety of different kinds of users. But I actually think the presence of this option, with the “Pro Tools” name, could raise the visibility of the whole area. And since ultimately comfort with musical tools comes down to preference, the big question is whether a new user likes the Pro Tools interface and the package here.

More photos of the included gear below – nothing glamorous, but certainly not bad for the price, let alone with the software bundle.

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.

Native Instruments has updated its sampling engine, releasing beta versions 3.0.5 for its Battery drum sampler and 3.5.0 final for the flagship Kontakt sampler. Both are free upgrades. (For anyone who thought that somehow Maschine was replacing Battery, it isn’t: the former is a drum machine, whereas the latter is more like a high-end drum sampler.)

There are a number of significant enhancements, but perhaps the most interesting is the support for 64-bit memory addressing. On 64-bit Windows Vista (and upcoming 64-bit Windows 7), that gives you true 64-bit memory addressing for — well, more memory than you have. (The theoretical limit of Windows’ 64-bit architecture on Intel is 16 terabytes.) This allows native 64-bit memory addressing on Windows for both Battery and Kontakt.

The Mac isn’t quite capable of that just yet (at least no audio applications beyond Apple’s own developer tools support 64-bit memory addressing yet), but the Kontakt Memory Server gives you up to 32 GB on 10.4 and later. Clarification: The Kontakt Memory Server is available now only for Kontakt.

The other important development for both Battery and Kontakt is that compatibility with Pro Tools 8 under Mac OS 10.5 Leopard has been restored.

Getting Kontakt on 64-bit is a very big deal, because of the widespread popularity of the sampler. At the same time, the fact that it’s not alone is a good thing — it suggests 64-bit memory for samplers may be catching on. Steinberg’s HALion, Cakewalk’s Dimension Pro, Garritan’s ARIA, and the open source Linux Sampler Project are some of the more familiar samplers that have gone 64-bit recently. (Note that, despite its name, Linux Sampler can run 64-bit on both Linux and Windows.) Cakewalk did a lot to lead the way here on Windows by getting both its SONAR host and Dimension Pro (among other plug-ins) fully 64-bit early. Garritan is equally interesting, because their Plogue-based engine is getting licensed out to soundware makers and, architecturally, is built more as a cross-platform engine. Garritan ARIA is also targeting Linux, and Cakewalk and Garritan are also supporting the open SFZ format.

Okay, I should have put that in a table. Imagine a table in your mind. Wow, that looks beautiful.

What else is new in Kontakt

64-bit is the headline, but there are other enhancements, too, in the Kontakt engine:

• “Zero-memory” DFD means you use less memory when streaming from disk (and using less memory is usually the very reason you’re streaming from disk)!
• True multiprocessor/multi-core support for enhanced performance
• A virtual rack of all your installed libraries and third-party content, so it’s easier to find your sounds
• Direct MIDI learn (meaning everything is finally assignable), improved automapping, bypass for effects slots
• Pro Tools compatibility now works properly on Mac Leopard
• KSP aftertouch interpretation – so now you can do something with that aftertouch-transmitting keyboard of yours

Update: Note that these are Kontakt-specific features, and not relevant to Battery for reasons clarified below.

Battery vs. Kontakt

Updated: You will note that Native Instruments is updating Battery and Kontakt more or less at the same time, and they do share some core technologies that allow that to happen. They aren’t exactly the same under the hood, though, as NI explains to CDM:

The core engine technology is the same in Battery 3.0.5 and Kontakt 3.5, but Battery uses a “lighter” version because of its typical use case as a drum sampler.

It doesn’t include the Memory Server and the multiprocessor/multicore support because these features really only become necessary with multitimbral operation, high polyphony and a huge number of instrument samples (and heavy effects usage) like in Kontakt.

Let us know what you think if you’re a Kontakt/Battery user.

New features in Kontakt 3.5 versus 3.0 [Native Instruments]
Public beta of Battery 3.0.5 [at the NI public beta site]

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.

While Novation was refreshing their Automap software for NAMM, M-Audio was unveiling their own dynamic controller technology, called HyperControl. M-Audio has one (big) edge on Novation: their controller technology can access ASCII keystrokes – something I’d love to have in all keyboard control editors. And HyperControl sounds like it has some promise, at least on paper – especially with the absurd number of controls M-Audio has packed onto the layout.

There are just two catches. One, there’s the (ahem) styling on the Axiom Pro keyboard. To put it diplomatically, it’s not terribly … subtle. Two, you get support for some DAW/workstations (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Reason) but not others (SONAR, Live, Tracktion, etc.) Now, that could change in future releases, but Automap has a significant running start.

Also, can we please get a moratorium on adding “Pro” to product names? (I mean, we don’t call the other model the Axiom Hobbyist or the Axiom Day Job.)

The keyboards: 25, 49, 61 keys, though sadly you don’t get controls on M-Audio’s 88-key models. The 49-key model lists for US$599.95, which means it’s in the price range of the Novation – though that also means the Novation is competitive. The keybeds are M-Audio’s semi-weighted “TruTouch,” which is one of the better semi-weighted actions out there.

But, seriously, this styling says “pro”? To me, it says this, minus the sportiness:

The features: One big graphic LCD (compared to the longer but narrower character Novation displays) – though that means the display is also not immediately aligned with the controls, so there’s a trade off. ASCII keystroke support so you can access keyboard shortcuts directly from a template. A ridiculous number of controllers, including function keys and keypad buttons the Novation lacks. Then again, if you go that far, you almost want a little trackpad while you’re at it.

Supported DAWs: Pro Tools 7.4 and up, Cubase, Reason, Logic. Now Reason is a no-brainer – it has terrific support for this kind of thing. But SONAR and Ableton Live also have lovely internal support for dynamic controller mappings. I hope that’s planned for a future update, but in the meantime, I’d have to recommend the extensive template support and track record on the Novation.

And then there’s the fact that you can get a more muted-gray Axiom 61 with most of these features – minus the whiz-bang HyperTransport you may not need anyway – for US$329.95 list instead of $599.95 (49-key).

But I am interested to hear more of the specifics of how HyperTransport itself works, because it sounds a bit different than Automap – same idea, different execution. M-Audio says, when working with DAWs and instruments alike:

The constant two-way link with your host DAW means the keyboard’s controls are always in sync with your software’s active parameters. The intuitive graphic LCD constantly updates the current values, which ensures seamless editing and prevents parameter jumps—even when plug-ins are closed. Toggle instantly between Mixer and Instrument control modes. Map buttons to send QWERTY key commands right from the Axiom Pro 61. Save settings to 50 memory locations—each with four profiles of quick recall via the intuitive graphic LCD.

The ability to control plug-ins when they’re closed sounds especially interesting. Stay tuned.

Axiom Pro Product Page

By the way, one other rival out there – albeit with traditional, non-dynamic controller maps – is Akai’s MPK49 and (new to NAMM this month) MPK25, in case you don’t like the fact that their new Ableton-centric APC lacks piano-style keys.

Akai Pro MPK25

Another advantage: the Akai still looks a little silly with so many pads and knobs, but somehow less so in black than white.