What will Avid Pro Tools do for you?

Just by asking the question suggests that there are problems in-house. There are dark clouds looming, which could then dissipate, but it could also become a major hurricane. From the user side, there is a significant problem. To explain what the problem is, you have to go back a couple of decades into the past.

The history of Pro Tools goes back more than thirty years. It was one of the first systems to bring huge advances to the industry. By the 2000s, the system and its marketing were clearly based on the fact that this combination of software and hardware offered the best quality available. Because this was a fact, many professionals voted for Pro Tools. If you want to make money, this is the best way, even if it's expensive. And for TV channels and film studios, it was also necessary to use the system to get a high quality end product. The system became an industry standard because we had the software and hardware in all the important places, and we didn't have to worry that if we took the material to another studio, they wouldn't know what to do with it. During this period, digidesign gained a level of dominance that is still felt today. They were also helped by the fact that in the 2000s they released a free 8-track version of the software which of course a lot of people started using, they got to know Pro Tools and at the time it really pushed sales.

Then something happened. The marketers saw that the competition was getting closer. They started adding the LE version of Pro Tools to cheaper sound cards to increase revenue. Even at this stage, the software was not required to work with hardware, other manufacturers' software was seen to run well without hardware, but they stuck to this principle until they were forced to change. Pro Tools 9 was finally able to run natively on the computer. So far, this is the traditional way of a company, i.e. after success comes the ups and downs, then the marketers figure something out and more success comes. Competition today is getting fiercer with competitors, so Avid came out with Pro Tools First software which was free software using 8 tracks, and now a few years later with Pro Tools Intro. You know the situation, they've been doing the same thing for 30 years, i.e. when sales drop, they come out with a limited version to entice new entrants to buy. I think there's no problem with that, all companies do it. Only now the problems come.

Pro Tools has changed very little over the decades. Not in the early days because there was no need. But now it is quite clear that Avid has fallen into its own trap. The lack of development has led to a situation where they have a pile of stone-age code called Pro Tools, which they patch and patch, but which is now extremely backward even from a programming point of view. The software is slow compared to all its competitors, too bulky, a bunch of unnecessarily complicated code. They built their house on a foundation that is now weak. As a direct consequence, the user experience is below critical. Features that other vendors have done years, decades ago are only now being incorporated into the new version of Pro Tools. This is a clear indication that developers are not being given an ounce of creativity and innovation by senior management. All other vendors listen to their users' opinions immediately and implement their needs as quickly as possible. But not at Avid. Some people have decided not to be creative, they are just going to implement what other manufacturers have made successful. See Melodyne integration that's been in StudioOne for about five years, they've only just lifted it into the system. The user experience is below critical, no backup on system freeze, no drag & drop audio import, no one mouse click fade, not to mention the correct sounding of differently sampled sounds. Graphics are laggy, you have to work in a window that's been stuck with us for thirty years, you can't just drag the mixer to another screen, I could go on for days.

But one of the main problems is that instead of finally starting to really improve, they instead think that marketing and being forced to set a lot of industry standards will continue to make the money.

So the first problem is product quality. The second is competition. Companies that have already built their software in modern programming languages will now have a big advantage. A prime example of this is StudioOne, which has gone from zero to one of the biggest in 10 years, and is only just getting going. Already they have features in the software of such quality, with such a user experience, that even Steinberg's engineers are scratching their heads as to how they will keep up.

The third problem is price to value: the user is not stupid. They can sense when they're being ripped off. Pro Tools has become subscription-based, with a year's subscription costing almost a thousand dollars, while Reaper is almost free, but even StudioOne Pro can be coughed up for $400, especially if you have a previous version where an upgrade can bring that down to $200. Or there's Cubase Pro which is the most expensive of the cheap ones, but that's also around $500. So why should the user buy a thousand-dollar behemoth when all the newer software outsells the current version of Pro Tools by several times?

Fourth problem: I'm not the only one seeing the problem anymore, the experts see it too. It's matzah balls who have been using Pro Tools for 20-30 years who are leaving. Film and music professionals are abandoning the software in droves. This will not be solved if they come out with an 8-track free version, because young people are taking the trouble to look into which software would be right for them. And if they see that the company is bullshitting, they'll spot it straight away. So the software users are running out of supply.

How can Avid solve this problem? Perhaps by cutting out the marketing money-grab, listening to user feedback and thinking about why Pro Tools was so successful in the first place. The answer is: because it was the best. If the company really wants to soar, it will rewrite the entire Pro Tools program down to the last scrap of code. Of course, there is no need to fear AVID itself, there is a way around Pro Tools, but the company has built itself quite heavily on that name. In any case, I'd encourage users to switch to one of the StudioOne, Reaper, Cubase, Nuendo duo, while I'd urge Avid to rethink their whole strategy.