Pro Tools 8 is up on Digidesign’s website. Rather than copy and paste their features, I’ll let you read. This may not shake you from your music making tool of choice, but it looks like it could be, at long last, the substantial refresh for Pro Tools users of that platform have been waiting for. I can quickly sum up the strategy (“strategies” and “tactics” being on the American political mind lately):

• Get all the instruments and effects in the box: Apple’s Logic Studio set the bar for this by first bundling lots of soundmakers,then cutting the price. Digidesign has been busy with their talented AIR group designing some very nice stuff, so this is a no-brainer. Updated: as readers note, you still don’t get a sampler as with EXS24 in Logic and now Dimension Pro in SONAR. Then again, you could add on your on own; is that really a deal breaker for folks?
• Fix the UI (conservatively): Without rocking the boat, obviously Pro Tools was long overdue for a fresh coat of paint and some enhancement.
• Beef up MIDI: This was long Pro Tools’ weak spot, perhaps because of its lineage as an originally audio-only product (the opposite of most of its rivals); MIDI seems to be better integrated with existing paradigms for editing
• Edit pitch more fluidly: AutoTune and the magical note-editing Melodyne are probably safe, but more fluid editing of audio pitches is making its way into audio software in general
• Integrate scoring: The fruits of Digi’s Sibelius acquisition, real, modern music notation is finally in a major DAW (not the dated, clunky implementations elsewhere). My only concern: I hope Sibelius continues to make progress as a dedicated notation tool, because having myself spent long hours over scores, a lot of composition happens outside software like Pro Tools for other reasons.

The notation feature, to me, is probably the biggest story. As a long-time Sibelius user and with some interesting composer contacts, I expect to look at how this works in some depth. Congratulations to Sibelius and Digidesign for pulling this off; I’ll be in touch.

Actually, let’s do better. I’m through really reviewing DAWs. You know why? If I used every DAW, I’d never get any music made. And, oddly, the process of even trying to review something as broad as a tool like Pro Tools just about short circuits any music logic anyway. So I’d rather build a network of gurus in each, and talk about actual music production rather than feature lists – the latter is the developer’s job, anyway. If you’re game and consider yourself an advanced user, get in touch. I’ll have more on organizing this soon.

In the meantime, Digi has posted some videos; free registration on their site required.

Pro Tools 8 Announcement + Demo Videos

Update: keep the comments coming. To me, the challenge all these tools face is that people are (naturally) entrenched in what they’re using. So, yes, it’s possible to say Pro Tools is playing “catch up,” but to play devil’s advocate, you could easily say the same about its competition. My preference remains for “native” hosts with their more flexible hardware and software support, and because personally I’m more creative in an Ableton Live or SONAR (or tracker!); that’s me. Digidesign sent out an open letter about promising interoperability. I’ll be interested to see what they mean, as I don’t immediately see that addressed in any way here. But certainly, I respect the utility of each of these tools to someone. The loyalty of those user bases is part of why progress tends to be incremental, not revolutionary. You have to serve their needs first.

With some software tools, less is more. When it comes to the complexity and breadth of music notation tools, though, more is often more, because everyone’s needs are different. If the “pro”, “high-end” tool happens to do exactly what you need to do efficiently and quickly, that’s the tool you’re most likely to use — even if your notation needs are “modest” in your own eyes. In other words, if you use only 10% of the capabilities of the tool, but everyone’s different 10% is included, you’ve got a winner. And that’s probably part of why two major rivals continue to dominate mindshare in notation, Finale and Sibelius. Finale is on an annual release schedule, compared to Sibelius’ semiannual appearances. 2007 is one of the years the two coincide, with releases shipping almost exactly simultaneously next month.

We took a first peek at what’s new in Sibelius 5: massive plug-in support, an ideas hub, and other enhancements. Here’s what’s doing in Finale 2008 (keeping in mind Finale spreads new features out across annual releases):

Sibelius 5 is a big upgrade to the notation tool, now part of Avid. The biggest change of all: real VST and Audio Unit plug-in support on Mac and Windows. This merging of audio software and scoring software has been a long time coming. We saw limited support in Finale, but Sibelius actually fully supports racks of VST and AU instruments and effects to use on your scores, integrating with the Sibelius mixer for playback control, and merging into groups for control of sections of your orchestra/ensemble. There’s even MIDI control: the Sib site says “… if you have an M-Audio keyboard you can use its own faders and transport buttons to control Sibelius’s playback.” Wow, terrific! (Um, I’m guessing that will work for any MIDI keyboard once you assign the proper controllers, not just M-Audio hardware — but still good news.)

In case you want out-of-the-box instruments and not just plug-ins, Sibelius now includes 2 GB of orchestral, band, and other instruments from Garritan and others.

Also new in this version:

It’s already near-impossible to find a new computer that doesn’t have Vista already installed on it. As I’ve noted here, hardware driver compatibility can be a bumpy road. That’s the bad news. The good news is, application compatibility for Windows Vista is often not as big an issue. Music notation software, for instance, largely works, with a couple of additional notes regarding installation and registration.

Vista Compatibility for Notation Products [Finale / SmartMusic customer support]
Windows Vista compatibility [Sibelius]

These links come via a promising new blog/podcast for music educators, Music Tech for Me.

Both Finale and Sibelius (and various other tools from SmartMusic and Sibelius for education) are listed as “compatible” with Vista. There’s even a promised update specific to Vista from Finale for the summer. The only hitch is User Account Control (UAC) for software like Sibelius under Vista. Fortunately, disabling UAC isn’t so bad.

As a quick recap, some applications may actually perform more smoothly under Vista. Cakewalk SONAR, for instance, has robust support for the new WaveRT audio system (if you have a PCI audio card that supports it) and MMCSS scheduling. Be aware, though, that those marginal improvements can be quickly erased by driver issues elsewhere in the system, which have a tendency to domino when it comes to both stability and performance.

We could debate this all day, so I’ll just say this: there are still a number of cases where you would “downgrade” (upgrade?) a new Vista computer to XP, even if it means ponying up for a boxed copy of XP, and as with any major OS update on any platform, I wouldn’t even think of installing without a backup and rollback plan to the previous OS. If you can, test on a dual-boot system; it’ll make uninstalling easier.

Digidesign is fond of incremental upgrades with smaller improvements, and today’s release of Pro Tools 7.3 should bring some nice work enhancements to Pro Tools users.

The most intriguing new feature is called “Send to Sibelius”, a single button that allows you to transfer music from the MIDI tracks in a Pro Tools project to Sibelius for notation. Before you get too excited, though, there’s nothing really unique here other than the button. According to a thread on Sibelius’ help forum (registration required), this feature only exports MIDI data and imports in Sibelius. That’s possible in every competing DAW. Frankly, I’m glad to hear this, because I’d rather see more interoperability between notation software and all music tools — we should get to choose our favorite tools, not have them chosen for us by large corporate owners (hello, Avid/Digidesign acquisition of Sibelius).

Other improvements actually turn out to be more significant — but this upgrade does cost:

Sibelius Software Ltd., maker of the popular Sibelius music notation software, has been acquired by Avid’s pro audio division, Digidesign, maker of Pro Tools. That means Sibelius joins M-Audio in industry-leading products in Digidesign’s portfolio. Here’s the official word from Sibelius co-creator/co-founder Ben Finn:

I’m delighted to inform you that Sibelius Software Ltd has been acquired by Digidesign, the audio division of Avid Technology Inc.
…

Digidesign has acquired Sibelius because of its strong brand and expertise in music education and its advanced notation technology, not to mention its loyal user base.

Day to day, there will be no major changes to the running of the business ­our existing management team remain in place, and we will continue to develop all our existing products as before. Looking forward, there will be new possibilities for linking Sibelius’s products with both Digidesign’s and M-Audio’s ranges of software and hardware solutions.

Rivalries are good: they keep software developers competitive, leapfrogging each other in features. They keep the pressure on, and having seen what happens when one company gets a monopoly (Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you), progress generally slows. Notation users have benefited from the Finale/Sibelius rivalry, and that competition continues to produce better and better notation software. Finale 2007 looks like it will continue that trend.

Now, I’ve gotten in trouble before when I’ve said Finale was blatantly copying its music notation rival Sibelius. But I don’t think anyone can argue with me this time. The major features in Sibelius 4: parts linked to full score, and integrated video support and film scoring features. The major features in Finale 2007, based on a marketing email I just got from Finale:

1. Parts linked to full score
2. Integrated video support and film scoring features
3. Intel Mac native support

Sounds familiar, huh? Now, honestly, these were really features that both packages would inevitably add, so I’m glad to see Finale continuing to level the playing field.