20 l May 2013
www.psneurope.com SOUNDBITES Studio WORLD
As part of relocation plans during the redevelopment of Television Centre, BBC Studios and Post Production has joined forces with The Hospital Club to host the long-running BBC consumer affairs series, Watchdog. Production begins on Watchdog’s 32nd series at the Covent Garden-based studios this month and will run for eight weeks.
www.bbcstudiosandpost
production.com
Bournemouth-based music store Absolute Music attracted over 2,500 visitors as part of the UK’s nationwide Learn to Play Day in March. In addition to the opportunity for one-to-one tuition on various instruments, visitors were also invited to try Absolute Music’s new Star For A Day recording experience in its studio complex, which opened last August.
www.absolutemusic.co.uk
Tannoy has donated two pairs of Reveal 601P studio monitors to the Red Dreams charity, created by Ian McManus and his wife Dawn in memory of their son Kyle, who died at the age of 16 from a brain haemorrhage. In 2009 Red Dreams completed The Unit – a recording and rehearsal facility where the studio monitors are helping young sound technicians with recording and mix downs.
www.reddreams.org.uk www.tannoy.com
Lauten Audio has announced a new distribution agreement with Germany-based International Consulting & Marketing GmbH (ICM). ICM will serve as the sole distributor in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and 10 other European countries, for the California-based company’s professional microphone line, including the newly released Atlantis FC-387 multi-voicing condenser studio microphone.
www.icm-consult.com www.lautenaudio.com
It’s here: Pro Tools 11
Announced early April, Avid’s Pro Tools 11 (mostly) lives up to its rumoured expectations. PSNEurope’s Erica Basnicki and Steve Harveyget the lowdown on the new features, and the latest changes at Avid headquarters…
MUCH HAS been written on online forums about the anticipated features of Avid Pro Tools 11, which, as it turns out, has largely been right on the money. Announced on 7 April at NAB in Las Vegas and promised for release later in Q2 2013, Pro Tools 11 is built on an all-new, 64-bit audio engine, with an integrated Avid Media Composer video engine. PT11 features flexible offline bounce functionality, low latency input buffering, dynamic host processing and GUI enhancements, including expanded metering selections. Avid is hardly the first to market with some of these features, as company representatives were the first to admit at a recent product preview for the international press. “We were not as engaged with the community as we should have been,” said Chris Gahagan, SVP, product and services. But a good number of the
new features have been implemented in response to crowd-sourced requests from the IdeaScale-hosted Pro Tools Feedback Community, and Avid believes their features can’t be bettered. Offline bounce, for instance, is up to 150 times faster than real time and can be selected for individual tracks, sends or busses (enabling virtual instrument MIDI “freeze”), with or without plug-ins. “We’re heavily confident that this is the best offline bounce in the industry,” commented Rich Holmes, director of product management. Pro Tools 11 “sets up the
future for us to do things that were just not possible” with the previous architecture, Holmes also noted. “This is a release that was thoroughly coded from
Pro Tools 11 gives users the much-requested offline bounce feature
the ground up to make sure it was way more efficient.” As for power improvements, PT11 offers separate low-latency buffering for the inputs being recorded, improving monitoring without sacrificing plug-in performance. The new multi-threaded, multi-CPU engine has also enabled the introduction of dynamic resource allocation, again maximising the plug-in count by allocating DSP resources only when and where needed. The GUI has been
streamlined, too. “It’s about trying to make people’s lives a little bit better,” said Holmes, noting that the complexity has been reduced wherever possible. For example, if no MIDI tracks are in the session then associated controls are hidden. Among other screen improvements, meter options have been expanded to include VU, K loudness scales and world broadcast PPM standards, as well as dynamic gain reduction metering, which is also on the “state plates” (the plug-in selection buttons). Avid had already signposted
that a big change was coming when it released version 10, with its HDX hardware and AAX plug-in platform. In fact, two
teams were working on v10 and v11 in parallel beginning several years ago. AAX SDKs were sent to plug-in developers over two years ago and 90% of third parties are poised to deliver 64-bit products – some chose not to develop for the 32-bit platform – on or soon after PT11’s availability, according to Avid. One major exception is Waves, which will be supporting AAX Native but elected to go its own way with its DiGiGrid DSP and networking platform. For the first time, users can
have two versions of Pro Tools on the same computer: when you buy a copy of Pro Tools 11 you also get a licence for Pro Tools 10. According to Avid’s official Pro Tools 11 FAQ the aim of the two licences is “to ease the transition for customers and developers… [and] to serve as a bridge to AAX and provide compatibility with older sessions, as plug-ins are ported to the 64-bit AAX format.” Now more squarely aimed at
professional users, Pro Tools will be available in three versions, named Pro Tools Express (entry level), Pro Tools Software (pro-sumer) and Pro Tools HD (even though it uses HDX hardware). The full version will cost $699 (€540),
with upgrades and cross-grades variously costing from $299 (10 to 11) to $999 (9 to 11). (European prices were not available at publication time.) According to notable blog Pro
Tools Expert this upgrade path is somewhat concerning to users who have already purchased the Complete Production Toolkit 2 (CPTK2), which on Pro Tools 10 expanded the software to include many of the same features found in Pro Tools HD software. Despite having already purchased the added functionality these users will be treated as if they were owners of the non-HD versions of Pro Tools 10, and will be required to pay $999 to maintain the expanded functionality. Just as PSNEurope went to press, the company contacted Pro Tools Expert to say Avid was “now investigating amendments to the plan”. It’s not the only concern
expressed by Pro Tools users of late. Investment analysis website Seeking Alpha is reporting yet another departure at the executive level of the company: Avid CFO Ken Sexton is stepping down from his position, but will maintain a relationship with Avid as a consultant. Replacing him is John Frederick, formerly CFO of financial services software firm Open Solutions. The latter is also the former employer to current Avid CEO Louis Hernandez, who was appointed in February. These changes, coupled with the company’s postponed earnings reports, mean Avid is not back on solid ground just yet. In response to a question
asked at the Frankfurt launch about how he thought Hernandez might lead the company, Tony Cariddi, Avid marketing manager for professional audio, said: “I feel really confident in Louis. I feel he has a really strong vision about where he wants to take the company, and he’s been pretty vocal that some things need changing. I feel invigorated by [that], and I think the organisation as a whole does.”n
www.avid.com
For the latest studio news
www.psneurope.com/studio
Louis Hernandez, Avid CEO
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