Our AAX plug-in database on the Pro Tools Expert site continues to grow, I have added 3 more entries in the last 24 hours BUT it seems that developers are in no hurry to produce AAX Native plug-ins and even less hurry to produce DSP versions.  Matt from iZotope has said "While I know this is something we'd like to do, I have not been made aware of any timetables for such features in any of our plug-ins."   Eventide when asked on their forum "will the AAX license be only AAX-native or will there be AAX-DSP as well? Would be nice to know while thinking about HD->HDX card upgrade." - Their response was "We can't make any announcements regarding AAX-DSP support at this time. We're looking into it, but I would not purchase it with the expectation that AAX-DSP support is coming soon."   Antares in response to an email question on the subject said "Antares is currently formulating our AAX strategy for the release of AAX plug-ins. Please check our website for coming news about AAX plug-ins. We are sorry to not be able to give you a more concrete answer at the moment."

My Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes has done an extended interview with Bobby Lombardi from Avid that you really should watch. It is over 16 minutes long but I wish this video had been around when Pro Tools 10  was launched.   Bobby explains that HD users aren't going to abandoned that they will support the HD platform for another 3 years including bringing out fixes and updates. He also has gone a very long way to restore my confidence in Avid and that they do care about the user and especially the pro user.   If Avid had gone on camera at the Pro Tools 10 launch and explained things as Bobby has done on this video I don't think we would have had half the problems and bitterness that has been banded about.   Also top marks to David Gould for getting the feature that came out from the Pro Tools in house 'hackerthon' so we could easily see where our routing is coming from and going to, a little talked about feature in Pro tools 10

I have been following a number of threads on both the DUC and Linked In groups and like me there are a good number of HDX early adopters who are not very happy with the lack of AAX plugins especially AAX DSP ones that will run on our shiny new HDX cards.  One of the contributing factors for me deciding to go with HDX now was the sales pitch that there were already 35 plus manufacturers with AAX plugins ready to go or very nearly ready.  We now have a crowd sourced database on our Pro Tools Expert site where you an go and check the status and progress of your favourite plug-in on its journey to AAX.         Now for me going to the HD Native card instead of HDX won't solve it because my biggest problem is the number of TDM only plug-ins that mean I have a raft of sessions I cannot open. The main culprit being SoundToys' Pitch Doctor.  Yes, I can run RTAS versions of the rest which I could on an HD Native system, so that doesn't fix it for me.

Top marks to my Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes for catching up with Scott Pederson from Waves to give us a definite version of where Waves are up to and their development programme.....   So March 2012 is going to be very busy for Waves as they plan to bring out 64 bit versions, out, as well as v9 of Waves, then a "no iLok authorisation" method also due out in March. As to AAX, Scott has announced they definitely plan to support AAX Native but "v9 is priority" and so no firm dates for release of AAX version of their plug-ins. As to the AAX DSP versions, it isn't a no, BUT they have no firm plans as to when they might do it and it still could possibly be a no. So AAX Native "will be supported 100%" but it is still a maybe on AAX DSP and no time frame but I think we can assume AAX Native isn't going to happen before March.   Well I am sorry Waves, I am not sure I can wait that long, I want good quality plug-ins that will work on my HDX card, so just as you can't guarantee that you will have Waves AAX DSP plug-ins I can use, I cannot guarantee that I am going to be able to wait that long. In my opinion you have you priorities misplaced however I accept that I am possibly one of a small percentage of Waves users with Pro Tools HDX system.

My Pro Tools Expert colleague Russ Hughes has been busy interviewing folk on this issue of the new AAX format and he managed to grab Dan from Eventide.   It is good news that they are bringing some of the Anothology II plug-ins across but my growing worry is that I may end up with a raft of sessions that use TDM plug-ins that I won't be able  to open properly because they contain TDM plug-ins that haven't been ported over to AAX. At the moment, it is less of a problem if there is an RTAS version as Avid have made sure that PT10 will use the RTAS version, BUT for those TDM only plug-ins that doesn't work, which potentonaly is going to mess up the carefully planned backwards compatibility map that Avid have devised.  I can see that the AAX transition is going to be somewhat more bumpy that Avid might have wanted. So you TDM only manufacturers please concentrate on porting your TDM plug-ins over to AAX as quickly as possible.  

My Pro Tools Expert colleague From the AIR Users blog, Russ Hughes managed to grab an interview with some key folk to discuss and put to bed some of the myths about the new AAX plug-in format.  

This is the announcement from Gobbler...   We’ve released our most ambitious build yet which includes multi-factor authentication & OAuth. We now store your photos, movies & over 20 new project file formats that YOU requested! The Gobbler Team has also fixed many bugs that were reported to us through the community. Keep using Gobbler & we’ll keep building a better product for you! Version: Gobbler 0.9.8, January 13th 2012

  The Plugin Alliance is the coming together of a number of smaller plug-in manufacturers under one umbrella.  They say....   As the new official service provider for all Brainworx, SPL, elysia and Vertigo plugins we would like to introduce you to our new license-management system. Finally, we are offering world-class audio plugins that require no more USB dongle or external hardware. One license file is all it takes to manage all your ALLIANCE plugins.     To get you started, we are offering some FREE plugins. Open a FREE account here, grab some installers and start rocking! You can use all of our plugins on 3 computers, and we will always keep your license count at 3, even if your computer dies.  

I have just sent an email to comments@waves.com asking them to port their plug-ins across to AAX as soon as possible.  This is what I said...   I have just upgraded my HD2 Pro Tools rig to HDX and I feel stranded. I have so few plug-ins that will run on the DSP chips on my new HDX card.  As Waves plug-ins regularly are my 'go to' plug-ins like Ren EQ - when I want eq, L2 for my master limiter for broadcast work, Renn Vox for voiceover and insert compression and so on, I am really disappointed that my only option now is to use the RTAS versions, leaving my expensive investment largely unused.   Please, please, please port all your plug-ins across to AAX Natve and DSP, by all means offer two products as you do now so the DSP products are more expensive, but please do it and do it soon. The longer you leave it the more people will find an alternative and then you will have a serious struggle to get people to come back to Waves.   So if you want access to Waves plug-ins then I suggest you do the same.

In part 1 I installed the new Mac Pro, and in part 2 I started the Pro tools installation.   Lack of AAX plug-ins Having now got a stable system it began to dawn on me how few AAX plug-ins were installed on my system despite the PR to the contrary on the launch of Pro Tools 10.     This shows the complete extent of my AAX plug-ins, notice that not even the Avid AIR plug-ins are there, even they are still dpm plug-ins. So I started to research what plug-ins were available starting with the list of “some 35  3rd party companies” that Avid announced on launch day having “AAX-compatible plug-ins ready or will have them ready shortly—please visit their website for specific plug-in information.” And are listed on their AAX compatibility web page. I will keep this page updated as announcements are made above AAX support, so do pop back to check for the latest info. UPDATE 27/01/2012. We have created a database on our Pro Tools Expert site which will be crowd sourced information so please follow the link to check on the latest news about your favourite plug-in and whether and when it will be available as an AAX plug-in. I have transferred and updated all the information that was here to the Pro Tools Expert database.

So in Part 1 I got the computer set up and had started the Pro Tools installation.   Check your plug-ins Before considering running Pro Tools I wanted to check that all my plug-ins were up to date, although the Avid site is getting better for providing this information there are so many plug-ins to keep track of it still isn’t an exhaustive list. So yet again I turned to a little application called Plug Tools, which I looked at back in August 2010 in Sound on Sound.   This application, built by Mark Trombino, compares the plug-ins in your plug-in folder with an online database, that can be updated by users, as Mark has wisely used crowd sourcing to help keep the database bang up to date. Even so when I did me install the database was thrown by a number of v10 plug-ins that it considered out of date. I will be updating the online database with my findings to contribute to the accuracy of the data.

So I finally did it, having made the decision as outlined in my post about it, the gear arrived arrived during the Christmas break and so over the last week I did the deed and here is my story. Trust me, never do a major upgrade in the middle of a busy spell when deadlines matter. These upgrades rarely go smoothly and end up taking much longer and I find that the knock on effects rattle on long after the main upgrade process is complete.

Recently I posted about mine and others experiences of starting to mix content to the new loudness specs to see how easy or otherwise it would be.   Well there has been an interesting thread on the Linked In Pro Tools Users group which has some interesting posts on it.   Firstly here are links to the key documents. The R128 spec for Europe from the EBU and the ATSC spec for the US.   Other useful articles are the EBU loudness site and an article in TV Technology which will be of more use to our US friends.

So I finally made a decision and melted the credit card.  I posted my initial thoughts ....   I have a Harpertown Mac Pro and it very much looks like if I want HDX I am going to have to replace the Mac Pro as well. We then have the rumours about the future of the Mac Pro and Apple’s continuing move to the consumer market and away from the pro market. So should I spend a load on money on a machine and cards for a computer forma factor that might not be around?  On the other hand you can delay making just about any equipment related decision because of a rumour of what might be round the corner.

Russ has set up a similar thread at the AIR Users blog and I thought it would be a good idea to see what the post community thought were the best product of 2011.   Mine is Nugen Audio's VisLM-H and VisLM-C loudness meter plug-ins. Loudness metering will become an essential piece of kit and the guys at Nugen Audio have produced, in my opinion, the best plug-in loudness meter especially in terms of value for money and consistency. Take a look at this video to tell you some more about this plug-in.....   So what has your product of 2011 been?  Please do tell.....

Recently there has been some discussion with folk starting to mix using an R128 loudness meter. Some have experimented with recording an uncompressed voiceover at BBC PPM6 and finding it is a couple of dBs louder than the R128 spec of -23. In response I mixed two 30 minute speech based documentaries for Radio 4 yesterday and I put an R128 loudness meter across it and found I got a figures of -24 overall.  So maybe the latest TC Electronic newsletter where they released details of more videos from the Rome Calling loudness seminars held in the summer might help. Also some of the videos already released have been re-released as full length videos rather than in 10 minute sections.  If you have an interest in loudness then these will be very informative and educational.

Despite promises to the contrary, Avid still haven't released the free Pro Tools 10 trail despite this being an offer to help convince users that the upgrade is worth while.  The latest is that this has been pushed back to Mid December.   Then there is the DV Tool Kit and Complete Production Toolkit upgrade saga. Again despite DTS mark 2 promising back on Oct 21st.....   The DVTK to CPTK upgrade will be available again in the next week or two on the Avid Store. I think Max didn't get the late breaking info about it still being offered - it was pulled temporarily for technical reasons mostly related to setting up the process for surrendering the old license and to remove 3rd party content from the 'package'.   It still hasn't appeared and there has been no formal response from Avid since then on the issue. This is real bad news for Pro Tools For Media users with these products.   Come on Avid, you are not helping reclaim your reputation amongst users with delays and silence about issues like this

I have been talking about Gobbler alot over the last 12 months, but haven't said too much about my experiences with it.   I have also been using Gobbler for ages and I respect that they have chosen the 'slow' route' to market, to test it for real with real users, yes OK they have used us to help their beta testing, but they have been very open about it, and we have had a free service in return.   Well in case you hadn't worked it out yet, I love Gobbler and use it a lot. For me it gives me that reliable off site backup that I hadn't got to date.  It is better than any of the other 'cloud based' backup options because it scans for sessions and then backs up everything inside the session folder. I really hope they can come to agreement with Avid and get proper acces to the session file so that Gobbler can read the session file and back up everything in the session file irrespective of where it is on the system. We used to have this feature with Mezzo Archiver in the days of tape based archiving but unfortunately that little company has gone to the wall. So it can be done, it has been done, so come on Avid and Gobbler please work it out soon.

I have been trying to decide which way to go with my Pro Tools rig.....   Do I keep my HD2/192 system on a Harpertown Mac and just upgrade to Pro Tools 10 HD software? Do I upgrade my HD2 to HDX? If so I will need to buy a new Mac and that isn't going to be cheap to get one that is as powerful as my current 8 core Harpertown. Do I cross grade my HD2 to HD Native?   With cash is short supply, option 1 would be the easiest but will leave me in a corner when Avid do the next upgrade. So at the moment the HD Native route is looking very interesting. I have been doing some research and the comments on the DUC have been very promising from those who actually have an HD Native system. There are alot of comments about latency performance of native systems but these appear to relate back to LE Native systems, rather than the HD Native system.

So the two questions I posed back on Oct 28th, are still unanswered.   If as an Pro Tools HD user with TDM hardware I take the support/upgrade deal to get PT 10 HD now, what happens when in a little while I want to take advantage of the HDX upgrade deal which includes the PT 9 HD to PT 10 upgrade which I have already bought?   What about folk who want to consider going from Pro Tools 9 HD to Pro Tools 10 HD with an HD Native card instead of an HDX card. - Max is looking into this one.     But things have moved on since then.