Peak Pro XT

[nick danger]

I currently have Peak LE 6. They are offering an upgrade to Peak Pro XT for $199.

http://www.bias-inc.com/products/peakProXt6/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I also have DP6. Does this Peak bundle offer anything that I can't live without? Are they just squeezing out sales for old software packages in anticipation of the next upgrade?

Thanks for any opinions.

[mhschmieder]

Wow, that's a GREAT price -- go for it! I just have regular PRO. XT includes SoundSoap Pro and the Mastering Suite, as I recall.

I don't need either of those, but if I was still at LE, it would be a no-brainer. It's kind of a surprise, as the upgrade from PRO to PRO XT is much more expensive than that. They are also currently running two-for-one specials on individual plugs in the mastering Suite.

Both SoundSoap Pro and the Mastering Suite get great reviews everywhere. My problem with them is that the GUI is very fidgety.

This is also true of Peak itself, and I did let BIAS know about this while I was a beta-tester for Peak 6, so I don't remember if it was a low priority or a PPC-only issue. At any rate, it is an issue that affects everything I have from BIAS, at every level of GUI, and it is something I cannot live with in precision editing tools: the GUI stops showing you what you're typing as you get to a certain level of precision, and also hides the precision from you after you finish typing, even though it stores it internally.

I must apologise that this could be pilot error, as Peak is a complicated program that isn't organized as logically as DP, and its documentation is often a bit obtuse even though thorough. In other words, maybe there's some preference that I missed somewhere that is causing this.

I can live with it during my mundane by-rote mastering tasks (Change Gain, which ironically doesn't suffer this problem as do other editable text fields), since most of my work is inside Audio Units plug-ins (which seem a bit more stable than the VST equivalents, though peak is gfreat for running those when an AU version isn't available). But when I was reviewing the XT add-ons during a demo period a couple of years ago, I found that these simple yet critical flaws made it impossible for me to do audio cleanup properly or certain mastering tasks within the mastering SUite plug-in environment.

Nevertheless, they sound great, and probably are amongst the top in each class, except for maybe the pitch tool -- but then Melodyne is the only pitch tool I can really take seriously.

I do find it surprising that they have not redesigned any of their interfaces in awhile. Most of them are not easy on the eyes. Peak itself got a nice facelift with version 6, but as far as I know, the add-on stuff didn't. Maybe that changed in recent updates to SoundSoap Pro and Mastering Suite though.

After all this criticism, I must add that I am loving Peak 6 and find it extremely stable and trustworthy for critical tasks. I do think it is the best overall mastering package for the Mac, and that Steinberg's port of WaveLab is not likely to be as stable on the Mac.

I had LE for about a year or so before upgrading to Peak Pro. I primarily use the features that are in Pro and not the ones that are provided in the LE edition (but are in all editions). There's always something new to discover about the program, and it has saved a lot of projects that seemed doomed to failure. I couldn't live without it, or without iZotope Ozone and iZotope RX. Outside of the multi-track duties of DP, these are my most important tools.