Why is AS-native Pro Tools taking forever?

[James Steele]

Firstly... a disclaimer. DP is my primary DAW... period. I bought Pro Tools last October off a guy who was given it as a gift so I got a perpetual license for what is now Pro Tools Studio for half price. I still don't have any real projects in it... just one that's partially imported that I mess with from time to time. I got it in case I had to move a project over to it, etc.

What's interesting to me, just as a discussion, is how is Avid so far behind all the other DAW developers in making Pro Tools Apple Silicon Native? I was digging around on the web and reading forums to see and I came across a post where someone said it was due to Avid management outsourcing programming to Ukraine. That seems to fit with the money grubbing management at Avid. I assume you could pay Ukrainian programmers less than American programmers or programmers in western European countries. So maybe the Russian army has a lot to do with it?

Dunno... interesting discussion.

Here's a link to a promotional article on a corporate website talking about how they're doing contract work for Avid and many of their engineers are in Kyiv. It's not dated that I can see. I guess this is a hazard of outsourcing, but then who really saw that coming I guess? (That's rhetorical. This post is NOT meant to be political which is off limits on this forum).

https://www.globallogic.com/insights/bl ... n-ukraine/

[Michael Canavan]

So probably not due as much to Ukraine as IMO the same issues NI are having.

MOTU and Arturia are both older companies, but both were driven to update their GUIs for modern times, DP was starting to have tiny font issues etc. and the same with Arturia, GUIs from the turn of the century basically. The main issue with ports to different platforms is NOT the underlying code (usually done mostly in C or C++ from what I know?), but the GUI which is OS specific. Apple Silicon is essentially a new OS, but..... Everyone and their mother (developers wise) for the last 5+ years has been complaining about all the hoops Apple has made them jump through, but reality is it was all done to make the transition to AS easy. So between Arturia and MOTU they both had very recently updated their entire graphics framework for resizable GUI's, this also meant tighter support for modern code that in turn meant quick Catalina, Big Sur, and Monterey support, which in turn meant they could port to Apple Silicon in a timely manor.

Compare this to NI, whose employees flatly admitted that their GUI framework is inconsistent from product to product, and in cases 15 odd years old. NI are not having an easy time of it, and I would bet all that applies to Avid with Pro Tools. Pro Tools hasn't changed looks in 15 years at least, it's all about consistency etc. with them, then the ties to their hardware accelerator cards etc. etc. All this means that Pro Tools and NI have less than perfect Monterey support which translates to issues beyond a mere port to AS, and only Kontakt is available in native Apple Silicon as of now.

Now of course the invasion of Ukraine and the issues developers based there might have is a part of the problem. Ukraine is interesting, lots of issues beyond the war but really decent schools created a high number of developers from there, hitting well above what they should for their size etc. I mean Germany, USA, India etc. all make sense for a huge developer community just based on population alone. Yeah, it's possible that combined with the graphics frameworks issues I'm certain are behind it, that developers not able to keep up because they're literally in a war zone is part of it.

[James Steele]

Compare this to NI, whose employees flatly admitted that their GUI framework is inconsistent from product to product, and in cases 15 odd years old. NI are not having an easy time of it, and I would bet all that applies to Avid with Pro Tools.

Interesting. I wonder if that's why the copped out on updating Absynth? I saw somewhere today a statement by someone at NI regarding Absynth, but it was fairly generic but basically said it would require too many resources to modernize it. I couldn't help but think of Brian Clevinger's video where he said he was willing to drop everything and update it if he was asked. I'm guessing NI just doesn't think it's worth it.

Here's the article with NI's take on it that was posted today:

https://www.musicradar.com/news/ni-absynth-statement

Here's a snippet:

Discontinuing Absynth was not an easy decision to make, but the resource required to keep the product in line with modern standards has become too much of a challenge. Absynth has also long been in need of updates and improvements, and we are unfortunately not able to provide the synth with the attention it needs.

But yeah... what you said makes sense. Translation: "We milked it as long as we could and never re-invested in maintaining it properly and now it's such a mess it's not worth it." Perhaps that's like driving a car for years and never doing any maintenance and when it finally breaks down from neglect, it's too expensive to repair. Sigh.

[Michael Canavan]

Compare this to NI, whose employees flatly admitted that their GUI framework is inconsistent from product to product, and in cases 15 odd years old. NI are not having an easy time of it, and I would bet all that applies to Avid with Pro Tools.

Interesting. I wonder if that's why the copped out on updating Absynth? I saw somewhere today a statement by someone at NI regarding Absynth, but it was fairly generic but basically said it would require too many resources to modernize it. I couldn't help but think of Brian Clevinger's video where he said he was willing to drop everything and update it if he was asked. I'm guessing NI just doesn't think it's worth it.

Here's the article with NI's take on it that was posted today:

https://www.musicradar.com/news/ni-absynth-statement

Here's a snippet:

Discontinuing Absynth was not an easy decision to make, but the resource required to keep the product in line with modern standards has become too much of a challenge. Absynth has also long been in need of updates and improvements, and we are unfortunately not able to provide the synth with the attention it needs.

But yeah... what you said makes sense. Translation: "We milked it as long as we could and never re-invested in maintaining it properly and now it's such a mess it's not worth it." Perhaps that's like driving a car for years and never doing any maintenance and when it finally breaks down from neglect, it's too expensive to repair. Sigh.

Yeah, I've used NI Komplete for almost two decades now, and they do make great stuff, they just always wait on maintenance level stuff, because they have a massive catalog at this point. IMO it's the downside, if they weren't so obsessed with being a "one stop shop" for all your plug in needs, they could sharpen their rough edges that much quicker.

They just aren't that interested in keeping a back catalog alive in the same way Arturia or U-He do. So my list of deprecated NI gear both hard and soft is pretty big. Granted they slowed down on that a lot from years past, but I'm not 100% convinced that Absynth is the only thing on the chopping block.

the problem is U-He and until recently Arturia, concentrated on older synths and vintage sounds, NI with Reaktor, Absynth, Massive v1 and X, etc. are pretty forward thinking so it's always been a good match. Kontakt is a staple as well. They seem dedicated to Komplete Control, Kontakt, Reaktor and Maschine though. I think with them, again it's take them for what they offer right now, not what it will look like 5-10 years from now. It's IMO the main difference between hardware and software we all need to be aware of.

On that line though, they do have basic hardware functionality in the Komplete keyboards so no matter what they do your keyboard will work in the future to some capacity. If I'm not mistaken it will do basic Mackie Control of the mixer in DP11 even!

[James Steele]

They seem dedicated to Komplete Control, Kontakt, Reaktor and Maschine though.

Well, I have to say I've become quite enamored of Komplete Kontrol. I scored a used Komplete Kontrol S61 Mk2 and just love the ability to audition sounds from the keyboard and load up anything I want (provided there's NKS support) from the keyboard and not even having to look at the computer screen. Honestly, I feel the same sort of excitement loading up the standalone Komplete Kontrol app and zipping through various VIs and bouncing around loading this patch and that patch all from the keyboard. I think it's a great concept. Unfortunately, NKS does charge licensing for third party VI developers to support NKS, and I think for some of them it's not worth it. That's why I've hacked my own support for a couple of third party VIs myself. It's very satisfying to get that to work though.

On that line though, they do have basic hardware functionality in the Komplete keyboards so no matter what they do your keyboard will work in the future to some capacity. If I'm not mistaken it will do basic Mackie Control of the mixer in DP11 even!

I'm using an old Euphonix MC Control and MC Mix combo using the latest Avid firmware for those units and Eucon software and it's working quite well... even on a modern Mac Studio and Monterey. I was relieved and amazed when it did! MOTU worked out a LOT of issues with Eucon support in DP 11.1 and 11.11 and it works quite well now.

Along those lines, MOTU also stepped up and really did a good job supporting the Komplete Kontrol keyboards' control surface functions. I'm using my KK S61 Mk2 with DP 11 and hit the "Mixer" button on it and see level meters for the tracks in my DP project on the two screens on the keyboard and bank through them... adjust volumes and pans, mute, solo... etc. It's very responsive and the transport controls work very well too. The support is very good. MOTU did a good job on it.