Our friends at Sound on Sound have released a video with Geoff from Avid taking us through some of the new features in Pro tools 10.   Even seeing this limited demo, it reinforces in my mind how big a deal Pro Tools 10 is. With the re-written disk handler for Pro Tools 10 and the Extended Disk Cache for Pro Tools 10HD added to the real time fades feature, we now have an amazingly powerful system which should mean we see the back of all those 'disk too slow' error messages. The other issue this video reinforces to me is that with the new AAX plug-in format the code for native and dsp card users is the same to the sound is the same.

Flux are happy and proud to announce that IRCAM Tools SPAT is the winner in the plug-in category of the Resolution Awards 2011!   The Resolution Awards recognise quality and innovation in professional audio and the winning products in the awards have been judged to be outstanding in these respects by the best informed readership in the industry.   We would like to thank all of you loyal Flux:: users and Resolution Magazine readers for nominating us in the awards and for voting in our favour!     IRCAM Tools SPAT   IRCAM Tools nominated in the Sound On Sound Awards 2012      The IRCAM Tools has been nominated in the Plug-in/Effects category of the prestigious annual Sound On Sound awards 2012. Voting is open now, and everyone casting a vote in the SOS awards will be automatically entered into the home studio giveaway, with a chance to win one of three home studio prize bundles worth £7,000 (approx $10,800) each!   SoS Awards 2012   (Voting closes at 23:59 PST on 30th November 2011)   IRCAM Tools Win your own copy of IRCAM Tools!   To celebrate this prestigious nomination we are together with Sound on Sound giving away one copy of the IRCAM Tools bundle in their monthly draw!   Participate Now!   (The deadline for entries is 11th November 2011)  

This was a question that was asked on the daw-mac forum over the weekend and I chose to answer it.   I am also posting it here so more folk can access the info.   Lo/Ro (left only, right only) is a stereo down mix where the different channels are simply summed together. Lt/Rt (left total, right total) is a stereo down mix where the different channels are processed before summing them together. The is also called matrix encoding.   Both LtRt and LoRo provide stereo compatible downmixes of surround content. The LoRo doesn't have the phase shifted surround component to give the Pro Logic decoder something to do. Usually LoRo is set up so the Left & Right channels pass through unaffected the Centre channel gets mixed into both Lo & Ro at -3dB and Left Surround (Ls) is mixed into Lo at -3dB and Right Surround (Rs) at -3dB into Ro. Although these settings can be changed to suit the content to get the most compatible downmixes.   Both LtRt and LoRo are used in television so you must look at the delivery specs to see what the channel is asking for.

Automatic Duck have decided to partner with Adobe Systems to work on some new products and so no longer feel able to support their existing products.  Wes says...   Over the years we've enjoyed improving the interchange between Avid, Final Cut Pro, After Effects, Pro Tools, Smoke, Quantel and other AAF and OMF-friendly apps. We have enjoyed helping users improve their workflows and finish their productions more easily, and we've even enjoyed working with users to fix the occasional challenging bug and odd misbehaviour. Not to mention at every trade show we had a great time meeting our many users from around the world. We are very proud of the company we created and the products we lovingly crafted. But after 10 1/2 years the time has come for us to embark on new challenges and begin a new chapter in our lives.

Here is what DTS said on the In Response to Pro Tools HD 10 Feedback thread....   I don't think I need to go into a 5 page long explanation trying to explain the rough times our beloved industry has gone through over the last years. I'm sure that all of you as well as all of us here at Avid wish for it to be different believe me. What I can asure you is that we continue to be very committed and passionate about our products and that we are very serious about making sure that commitment translates into into supporting our users and user communities the best way we can. Again, DigiTechSupt is a shared account which has been used by a number of different people throughout the years and which will continue to be used by a number of people for years to come. __________________ Avid Audio Tech Support As has been said in response to this thread, it isn't with the Avid staff left at the coal face we have the problem, it is some of the decisions made by senior management.

So with Pro Tools 10 we now have a range of new AudioSuite functionality.   Multiple Windows Handles or eben process the whole file Cross fades maintained Metadata maintained   Here is an Avid video demonstrating these.  

Fellow Pro Tools Expert, Russ has just written a very comprehensive Pro Tools 10 HD review. This is the last couple of sentences from his review.....   My advice if you are thinking about Pro Tools 10 HD is don’t believe anything Avid say about it in their marketing; they are playing it down - it’s better! Pro Tools 10 HD may have fifty new features, but it is for a hundred and one reasons that I’m giving Pro Tools 10 HD my Editors Choice Award. It's a no brainer.   Remember we are completely independent of Avid and as you have seem are critical of Avid when criticism is needed.   But go to the AIR Users Blog to read the rest of his review, you won't be sorry.

Following on from my post about the The Price of Pro Tools 10 and the 5 questions Russ from The AIR Users Blog submitted to Max Gutnik, Max has responded via the DUC, now sadly missing DTS (DigiTechSupt) who apparently is one of the staff Avid have decided to let go.  This is what Max had to say earlier today...

Lode posted...   I might be the only one here unaware of this feature, but maybe not, so here goes: If you right click on the spectrogram you get an option to adjust the spectrogram settings. Very useful to try to separate background noise from what you are trying to repair.  Sort of like adjusting contrast on an image. Very useful for finding small whines and buzzes.

Frank Kruse asked...   has some early adopter or beta-tester tried to work on PT10 off of a relatively "lo-fi" NAS? I mean not one of the premium solutions like I$is, Unity, DDP etc. If yes, does it work well? Which appliance are you using? Regular AFP, iSCSI or fibre? Does it work even with AFP? Are you getting reasonable track count? How much? The PT10 what´s-new-pdf is pretty vague on this topic. The only info is that it´s now supported but nothing about what´s recommended.

Following on from my post yesterday about the Price of Pro Tools 10 things have gone from bad to worse. Avid, have announced that as many as 200 staff have lost their jobs which is a little under 10% of the workforce. Losses have taken place across the board including marketing and bizarrely in customer support. News was given to staff yesterday, ahead of the Avid earnings anoucement today.   Unfortunately these are not the first job cuts Avid has made. At this time back in 2008 they shed 20% of their staff after bad 3rd quarter results. Then again in December 2009 they shed 120 more jobs. Good luck to Avid's management team; with many customers and staff alienated, and stock sliding off the cliff edge to nowhere, dropping from $20 in mid July to $7.25 yesterday so who knows where this will all end. but it could be Avid trying to save the share price nose dive. In December 2010 then announced a significant re-structure to be completed by the middle of 2011. As a result of which the shares rose back then by 25%.   It is sobering to be reminded that whilst some of us are not happy about the PT 10 pricing , or getting what they hoped for in Pro Tools 10, decent, hard working people are now without a job. However, we want to make it clear, our sympathy should go out to those people dumped by Avid and not to Avid itself.  Avid is big enough to look after itself, but the staff put on the scrapheap from key areas of the business like customer support need at the help and support we can give,  it is good people like you who made many of us hang on. Our thoughts are with you.

For regular readers of this site you will know that I have followed the progress of the Gobbler concept with a post Gobbler – New on line Pro Tools friendly backup system and an update. Then with the announcement of the demise of Mobile Me and an update suggested Gobbler's range should extend to sharing mix files, something I currently do using my iDisk. Next there was the 50Gb offer with a referral scheme which I came 6th in thanks to all your support.   Finally in July the start of a campaign to get Pro Tools and Gobbler to work together so that Gobbler could read the Pro Tools session so it could back up what is used in the session like the old Mezzo Archiver could.  Well the campaign has moved on Avid's IdeaScale site where users can post their suggestions for developments and we can all vote on them.

Avid have added a lot of new options to Pro Tools 10 in this area.   New Session File Format Pro Tools 10 uses a new session file format (.ptx). This means that sessions created in Pro Tools 10 cannot be opened in lower versions of Pro Tools. To share sessions with lower versions of Pro Tools, you will need to use Save Session Copy As to save a copy of the session to a lower session file format.

Wow, this has really kicked off, There has been so much talk everywhere.  Russ Hughes from the AIR Users blog has formulated 5 excellently framed questions that he has sent to Max Gutnik that I believe dome up the mood of most Pro Tools users backed up with the polls. Q: Our recent survey of the Pro Tools community gave Pro Tools 10 a massive 86% approval rating, and yet of the same people surveyed 86% said the cost of Pro Tools was putting them off buying it. How does Avid think they got this so wrong, particularly in respect to upgrade pricing? Is this a case of a brilliant set of product managers and engineers being let down by accountants?

Some of you may have read the latest news about us joining forces with Pro Tooler Blog and The AIR Users Blog. Stiff over at ProToolerBlog is hot on Pro Tools news, and seems to get details of new products before they are even on the companies own web site!.  Russ has become a bit of a Spielberg with the tips and tricks videos, with nearly 400 in around 3 years, and I try to say across the post-production space as well as my Pro Tools column in Sound on Sound. We think that's a powerful alliance for the Pro Tools community. One thing we promise, is that this isn't going to become some big faceless corporate gig; we love the fact that we can get emails and comments from you folk and then respond. Some of you have become really good friends, that is worth its weight in gold. We want to keep strong links with Avid, yet stay independent at the same time. Giving you the best information and giving Avid a unique link to the community. When we sense an issue that we may need to take up with Avid on your behalf. We don't see ourselves as your trade union, more of a distilled voice. We are not here to fight with Avid, merely to try and give them a touchstone on the feeling of the Pro Tools community. We've seen proof before that Avid do listen to our concerns, so we can solve things when we work together; us and Avid. We all need each other. Here's to becoming the best DAW community on the planet; something both us and Avid can be proud of - bigger, better, stronger.

I have just added posts referring to each of the 115 or so articles that I have written for Sound on Sound over the last 5 1/2 years. For some of them it feels only like yesterday when I was writing them when in fact it was 2 or more years ago and for some of them Pro Tools bearing little similarity to what it was them. If you want to have a look at them them use the Articles option in the Blogs menu on the site or click here.

  Three of the world's most visited Pro Tools sites, ProToolerBlog.com, The AIR Users Blog and Pro Tools For Media have entered into a strategic partnership to create a new online community 'Pro Tools Expert', that will create the biggest independent Pro Tools community on the web.   The aim of the partnership is to bring together their expertise and influence for the benefit of the Pro Tools Community in both music and post and to offer manufactures and distributors a single point of access to the huge community this will create.  

As part of the new Pro Tools Expert Community we are each producing a selection of FAQs to help you understand all the new features and options that Avid have brought us with Pro Tools 10. You can see the other faqs at Pro Tooler Blog and The AIR Users Blog.  

Our Mike Thornton writes the Pro Tools Notes, Techniques and Workshop articles for Sound on Sound as well as reviewing many of the new Pro Tools related products. Note that you will need to be a subscriber to view the recent articles or you can choose to Click & Buy individual ones.   Mac OS Finder - For those with a large collection of audio files to manage, we look at two applications that bridge the gap between Pro Tools and the Mac’s Finder.

Although the deadline for questions to Avid's Max Gutnik has passed, if you haven't yet done it then I would commend you to vote in The AIR Users Blog poll. The options are...   An agreed amnesty that I'll get the 64 bit version FREE An 90 day offer of Timeline Cache option for the regular version of PT10 A better deal for HD owners A 50% off deal on all upgrades for 30 days Nothing would tempt me I'm staying on my current version and waiting for 64 bit I'm moving to a new platform Please go and vote...