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April 06, 2005
an open letter to digidesign
As most people know DigiDesign's ProTools is where you go when you are serious about working with audio. A few years ago they released Pro Tools Free which is a limited version of the ProTools software that apart from limiting you to 8 tracks of Audio and 48 of midi was pretty damn cool. It didn't have enough multitracking ability to be a threat to the digi001 (which was then their bottom product) or even now to the mbox system.
What was also nice about Pro Tools Free was that you could work up tracks on your machine and take it to a bigger and better studio with Pro Tools, dump in your tracks and do real mastering and post production work on the industry standard. It wasn't the most reliable software platform, but support was plentiful via the digi forums, with other users kicking in to help other people. Infact, some of the more obscure problems I had when I used to fix TDM (the full version of Pro Tools basically) systems I usually got answers quicker from the forums than I did from Digidesign support here in Australia.
But we all told ourselves that when they updated the commericial Pro Tools to the new version we'd see a new version of Free that benefited from the stability of Windows 2000 or saints preserve us - Windows XP. But it never came. The free version of ProTools runs on Windows 98/Me and OS9 on the mac. Windows 98+Me being just about the most unstable platform for audio ever.
Which brings me to my point. Okay, and while I'm not suggesting we should just have a big love-in and Digi should give us free copies of their big money earning software - an updated version of free is something the music scene could really do with. Digidesign gets all that great customer goodwill and everyday schmoes can play around with thier music on Industry standard - and here's the real nub of the issue - EASY to use software. I'm convinced that Pro Tools is the best solution for audio editing, it's handling of editing, automation, inline effects are second to none. It really is fantastic to use - and its a damn shame they haven't seen a business case for updating free since they released it so many years ago - I'm convinced that it's a win-win situation for DigiDesign and musicians everywhere.
Posted by funnelbc at April 6, 2005 09:51 AM
Comments
I totally agree.
I´m a producer/musician in Bogota, Colombia and PT Free was very useful for pre-production and editing.
Now that I have migrated to OSX the only affordable solution is GarageBand and results for edit work are poor compared to PT Free.
Why doesn't Digidesign understand that with PTF people will really want to buy the other stuff after they are hooked with PT?
Posted by: corval ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.onetonnemusic.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at April 12, 2005 04:28 AM
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