iNate

Totally disagree, considering how many "Pro Tools users" produce in other DAWs and use it as a tool for specific stages of the overall production process - or when working at certain facilities. The only people who would do this are those in post, and given how dominant Pro Tools is there... it kind of makes sense that they would. Almost nothing else matters in that market segment. I see far more of that from users of other DAWs towards Pro Tools than the other way around, so I find this line of thinking to be quite ironic. Fanbois of all DAWs are dismissive of others, but those are generally a subset of the overall user base. The people active on internet forums are but a loud minority. It's why we have "DAW Wars." Beyond that, aside from me pointing out the unnecessary negativity, my post was quite critical because I think the pricing and marketing does not quite match up to what they are offering right now.

The fact that they are moving in this direction is promising. Cakewalk has had this for a while, but Pro Tools has had Audio Recording and Editing functions for decades that Cakewalk is still missing; so, people should tone down the sarcasm. I still think they need to bring the prices down a but and Studio should have a clearly presented $499 Perpetual purchase option with $189/year support maintenance costs. Once they have developed enough MIDI and Production features, they can bring the price back to to be on par with Cubase Pro for that SKU. Pro Tools Artist is still awful compared to Cubase Artist and other comparable DAWs in that price range. It really shouldn't even exist, IMO. It's basically an Elements SKU with mjd-tier marketing. I really like their dark mode. Pro Tooks windows management continues to be awful, and I'm not sure how they can fix that. Basically need an UW Monitor for it, due to how it manages windows. Still weaker than something like Samplitude Pro X for MIDI, but maintaining its prowess for Audio. The clip launcher actually looks quite usable - if not somewhat tacked on. Not as good as Logic or DP's, though. It's time for PT to receive the Media Composer treatment and get a substantial UI/UX update, IMO. Event Window is basically the same as Reason's design-wise.

I generally didn't mind the ST UI, except the browser is terrible and that's the most important thing for a ROMpler type instrument. I do think red is the worst possible accent color. Our eyes are sensitive to that color, evolutionary speaking, so it is a bit too prominent. That's why Stop Lights and Signs are red, Lol. They should give the option for a less awful accent color... Bad browser, too many patches with too extremely similar names (makes search less effective), CPU/RAM usage is too high (and no purge function), lacking articulations and round robins, no decent legato emulation for instruments that could benefit, inability to manage content after installation (except manually in file explorer), and a lot of redundant bloatware just to manage activations. Also, they really should use better efficient compression for the samples. I also had tons of issues accessing their servers. It only worked randomly, and always broke instantly when I tried to purchase anything. Last time I tried to purchase the TS3 upgrade, it broke. And I broke. So I deleted the entire account and moved on. I wasn't about to tether to my phone to download that much data, and I was not using it at that point. I was just going to upgrade simply to keep everything up to date.

Pretty big for a 0.1 increase.

You can still buy Perpetual Licenses, but the manner in which they handle support and updates means that their software is practically subscription de facto, anyways. I think Windows users are safer than macOS users. If you're on macOS, you basically can't risk not keeping the support contract running because any fixes to allow it to run on new versions of macOS (which are eventually going to hit you, since you can't keep running the same machine forever) will force you to either renew the support (if possible) or move to a subscription. The risk is high because of how volatile Avid can be regarding re-upping lapsed support contracts for Perpetual Licenses. I think you either have to accept their business model or opt out of it in its entirety, even though you can still buy perpetual licenses. Every time they "kill perpetual licenses," third parties continue to sell them until Avid inevitably "bring them back" 😛 I do think the only Perpetual Media Composer Licenses you still purchase buy are Educational. I think Media Composer is a more important product to Avid than Pro Tools, at this point. Post houses will continue to use Pro Tools because of how it plugs into the Avid ecosystem, but Studios all have viable options unless they are using hardware that only works with Pro Tools. For Post, work can be done in Pro Tools, and Media Composer can natively open the Pro Tools session when they send it back. The entire workflow works nicely there and Pro Tools integrates with Avid Storage/Collaboration systems that they have in place for those market segments. I don't see anything displacing it, and a large reason for that is the fact that no other NLEs have been able to compete well against Media Composer in those market segments. Media Composer props up Pro Tools in the Film Post market, which trickles down to other market segments. While I don't absolutely hate Media Composer in terms of workflow - it works very well for what it is designed to do - I dislike how it is designed to be installed and run on end-user machines as if it is on a turnkey system. I actually think Avid keeps their software expensive purposely - so they don't have to support the consumer market. Instead of selling to that market at cheaper prices, they simply sell to their primary market segment at a premium to make up for it - since those users are more likely to invest in other Avid hardware and services. Their support contracts guarantee specific turnaround times in each tier, so they wouldn't be able to support millions of consumer-level products... and they would get absolutely swamped due to the way their software is installed and runs on end-user machines. Even teh Standard Support's 24-48hr turnaround would destroy them just with the volume of installation support queries. In the up-market segments where they are dominant, turnkey systems are more common, and those system eliminate a lot of the issues that would cause the average consumer to contact support for help. They're also rented/leased and the hardware + software is supported as a single entity/product. It will be interesting to see what they do with the software, but I don't think Pro Tools ranks super high as the market segments where it is most used see less innovation overall and studios are fine sitting on older versions of Pro Tools for several years. There is less need for aggressive development there, particularly since they are not really aiming to be a generalist on the level of Cubase or Logic Pro. In the video market, people are forced to upgrade by virtue of technological inertia. It's why something like Photoshop CS6 is actually still very viable to use for graphics design, but Premiere Pro CS6... ... not so much. That would also explain why Avid has been MOST aggressive pushing the subscription model with Media Composer than Sibelius or Pro Tools.

I think you missed the point of that statement 😉

Toujours les francais... /sighs It's not hard to create a new Outlook.com, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc. account to use for this. Most of those services are decent enough at filtering spam, as well. I just can't be bothered to go through the trouble of doing that... just to see how much a shop is selling something for. There are too many other discount dealers with transparent pricing. I am not sure why this is such a debate. Lol. I simply stated that if someone is going to post a link to a shop that has gated pricing, that they should list the pricing for the items in question so that people can decide if it is worth going through the trouble of doing that (or risk giving their personal email accounts) to buy from that vendor. Nothing about that is unreasonable, controversial... or a hot take. Bye.

It's no different with women. We just give them a pass because... woman. For me, it's about how they serve those who are paying for the product. If they are dismissive of paying customers, that is a fundamentally far bigger issue. For professional use, they are cheaper - completely viable - products from developers that care more about their users.

The tone inferred is exaggeratory. There was nothing innovative about that, as this has been the norm in the 1980s, when software was built largely for developers and users in that field. That's why every major text editor from the 1980s was extensible in this way, along with every IDE and a lot of other software as a result of it. REAPER leaning into this is not innovative, it's a throwback to market norms of existed 40+ years ago, and this is why it's so polarizing. REAPER is still developed like it is being developed in the 1980s for a 1980s user base. Some people will love that (it's why Linux has a cult following), but the majority will simply not have the time or want to bother with it. Extensibility will always exist, esp in professional software, but the degree to which it is normalized this day is VERY different from what it was in the past. REAPER still lives in that past. This is a valid issue and one that I have voiced in the past on this forum. Some of these themes attempt to make the entire DAW look like another (Logic, Cubase, Pro Tools, etc.) which can make it more difficult for newer users to utilize reference material and [video] tutorials. They can only be assumed to work well for the person who is pushing them. This is why some DAWs have limited editing of keyboard commands and UI layout. It's like a Calculus textbook using a TI-83 for everything, but you show up with a Casio. Not only do you have to learn how to do the math, but you also have to level out the disparities between the two devices/interfaces in real-time while doing so. And that's ignoring the fact that the most offensive parts of REAPER's UI are the parts you can't theme, anyways.

Lost = List. Rest of the sentence is properly formed, so it should have been easy to work that out. My phone autocorrected and changed it for some reason. Thanks for checking. Personally, I am enjoying a life of little to no solicitations/spam. That's the only reason why these resellers set up in this way. To farm email addresses to sell off to solicitors. Taking one for the team. I can respect that.

Well, they're mega synths. I think HALion is better than Falcon. I have both, and even HALion 6 I did find easier to use... and it's an actual... sampler - so I actually had more uses for it. Also, you can package your stuff in VSTSound Archives, which is not possible with Falcon. That would require licensing from UVI. I honestly have never found Falcon to be better in terms of usability. I think both are different in terms of layout, but both suffered from some of the same issues - though HALion seems to be the one that received the crux of those complaints. Falcon, I think, is still not great with multi-core usage (probably still pegged to one core). Falcon does have some nice expansions, but there aren't really that many and I'm not sure I would buy it again if I could revisit the choice. I don't think they are worth the outlay. I could get equal value from NI Play Series instruments and spend far less overall. HALion has better Synths built on the platform, though, and some of the higher end libraries will outcompete the UVI stuff, which I find decidedly lower mid-range (but above e.g. IK Multimedia). Nothing that isn't a Falcon Expansion requires Falcon, though. You just use UVI Workstation for that stuff and move on.

That's par for the course with pretty much any orchestral library. They don't sound anywhere near the demos until the music are mixed well.

Seems like it could be a great thing for sketching, esp on a laptop if you compose for solo pieces. Would be kind of annoying to use for anything bigger. Requires some esoteric programming to control the playback, and DFE (which is common in notation software, but not DAWs). Sounds pretty good considering what it is, too. Probably could have "saved" it if he had shifted focus and competed with NotePerformer at a lower price point 😛

HALion Sonic 7 is free to everyone, SE3 is vestigial. Don't install it. Install Sonic 7 instead. Eventually the package and/or description will be updated to remove SE3, which is no longer supported or developed.

Lost member pricing so everyone doesn't have to create an account just to see how much they're selling stuff for.

Not quite sure thats how things went exactly for products like Studio One and Bitwig. As products mature there is less room for innovation, so v6 is bound to be less revolutionary than v2. But, "blah blah blah" is a bit exaggeratory, don't you think? By the time a product line gets to v5/6, users have generally pivoted towards asking for QoL over big ticket features. The product, by that point, has already established itself and the people looking for things like clip launchers have already chosen to go elsewhere and get it. Expectations have been set, and the user base has largely leveled out and biased heavily towards those people who the DAW already meets the needs of, which ultimately tilts development in the direction of their desires. Anything else becomes niche de facto, so the people who want it tend to choose a different product. This is pretty standard across all product lines. It's why most REAPER users are fine with the UI, even as many of us avoid it for that specific issue - in many cases choosing to pay a far higher price to get a product that delivers what we desire 😉 And REAPER is unlikely to improve in that area for the exact reasons I've mentioned.

You can statically link to libraries like Qt and Microsoft C++ Runtime, Foundation Classes, etc. Need for Redistributable is really a completely ignorance concern. There is only a need if you choose the wrong compile flags. Experienced developers know how to avoid that, assuming they'd want to. Using a Redistributable - dynamically linked- means the library can fix security issues and bugs without requiring you to recompile and distribute an update... unless something fundamental about the classes or methods used was changed. It's a case of balancing the benefits vs the risks and/or potential inconveniences. Bandwidth isn't free, either. Footprint mattered more when we had to pay $500 for a 120GB SSD.

It's almost like half the developers of creative software are incapable of understanding this. A $225 Pro DAW with the design investment of $19.99 1980s shareware. I couldn't be bothered.

Requires Internet Connection

SSD drives are too cheap to put much stock in it for that reason. Unironically, the stuff that Studio One ships with has the stuff I am most likely to reach for, like Impulse Responses for Open Air. Maybe I need to try the Mix Engine FX to see how good those are. I'm not that interested in Fat Channel, though it does come with the benefit of being usable in other DAWs. I'd probably subscribe to Waves if I just wanted those types of plug-ins. The only use for Notion is as a way to get Notation into Studio One due to its lack of MusicXML Import. That I do consider a waste of disk space, since it is so useless, IMO (the desktop software and its Sound Libraries).

Subscription is for people with nothing. Its not like their sound libraries are really of much value. If you have the production software already, you really aren't missing much of anything... Maybe the FAT Channel modules and Mix Engine FX...

Renaming it makes sense. PreSonus Sphere was always a bad name, as it never really indicated what exactly the subscription was about. I still think PreSonus is more well-known for their hardware than their software - in the grand scheme of things. This removes all of the ambiguity, even if it's a bit cookie cutter.

Lol. Debating and then shrugging off a response passive aggressively when you get something explained to you. Cheeky. I did expect that, though, unfortunately. At least you learned how to install the samples to another drive, assuming you can read (given you didn't seem to understand the installer dialog, that's up in the air).

The HALion Sounds come from Yamaha Workstation Keyboards. Again. No one is expecting Vita Solo to sound like Spitfire or Orchestral Tools. They are used because the workflow for using them in that DAW is fast and they sound good enough for sketching. Many composers and producers use sketching and ensemble libraries when producing or composing and then replace them with better/heavier instruments later on. It's a pretty common workflow. Like I said, the 40+ Vita Solo instruments + DLLs in Pro X7 Suite use < 10GB of storage, and... These can be installed to another drive. You set the content directory when installing Samplitude Pro X (or whatever other MAGIX Product you're using) and then the sample content go to there. It's in the installer (the \MAGIX\Common directory)... You critiqued the usefulness of the stock content while juxtaposing it with that of other products, using expense as a qualifier. I was merely responding to that. Samplitude Pro X is a $399 DAW, and Pro X Suite is a $599 DAW. Its price is comparable to that of Cubase Artist and Cubase Pro. Yes, choice becomes overwhelming. But, none of that matters as these are generally used for sketching and then replaced with better libraries later on. Like I said, this is a common industry practice. That is how I'd position them, except in cases where there is something that is so rare in other sample libraries that you may not have any choice but the Vita Solo instrument. Frankly, most of the Vita Solo instruments aren't really much worse (if at all) than comparable stuff in the SampleTank 4 Content, which people here seem to go Gaga over.

You don't need any justification for a $20-25 Humble Bundle deal. Samplitude Pro X is a more expensive DAW, and that is why it has "this stuff." The fact that you can get a 3-versions old copy on Humble Bundle for almost nothing does not make it a $25 product. If the stuff in "expensive DAWs" is good enough, I'm not sure what the problem with this stuff is 😛 Beyond that, the idea that stock content isn't good enough simply because it's stock content has been long-debunked and it's about time some people move on from that. No one is using a Vita Solo Cello expecting it to sound like Spitfire Solo Strings. It sounds "good enough" for what it is [intended to be] and for sketching it will use 1/10th the CPU and RAM on a low spec machine as a high end sample library - while using practically no storage. All 40+ Vita Solo instruments in Pro X7 Suite only have around an 8GB Sample Library payload, and maybe 1GB in DLLs. The Samples can be offloaded to another drive (set while installing Samplitude Pro X), so SSD space is hardly something to be worried about when we can buy 2TB NVMe SSDs for $70-100. Some of it is going to be more good than not. That goes for any sound content - bundled or not. How many here speak about how much stuff they never use in Komplete, despite its price tag?