It’s for SALE RIGHT NOW at the Avid web store!!!
US$250 for an LE “download” upgrade, US$349 for a HD “download” upgrade. BIG installer, big download.
Top features at a glance…
- Freedom to use your own IO/AD/DA hardware with PT9 software.
- ADC without HD hardware – STANDARD.
- Eucon support implemented – hints of more features to come. No longer use HUI!
- 96 tracks standard, 256 busses standard (YES 256!), 160 auxes standard…
- Timecode ruler and Digitranslator and MP3 option as STANDARD
- Destructive record and Quickpunch modes as standard
- Markers in Media composer can be imported into PT9 as memory locations!!
- Any RTAS plugins and their settings used in Media composer 5.x can be imported into PT9!!
With an existing Complete Production toolkit you also get:
ICON support, VCAs, all HD automation features, surround mixing, and 192 voices of playback!
One other thing – a PT9HD auth on your ilok will behave the same as a PT9auth plus a CPTK auth. SO you can take your ilok with you from your HD studio and open PT9 native with all your HD features and use your laptops audio outputs (or anything else) to edit bit sessions on the go…Very tidy solution to the customer feedback that came in after the Micro was released.
My take?
Avid are listening and doing everything they can, as quickly as they can, to make their clients happy. It’s a pretty big day!
One thing people are talking about is the ADC is “limited” to being the same as a HD system, ONLY 4096 samples are compensated for automatically. From my point of view I think it makes sense to pick this as an achievable goal with their first “port” of HD over to native so they have clean session interop between HD and native. Moving forwards, who knows what they will do, but to think they would give native a bigger ADC cache than HD out of the block is a bit naive IMHO.
The new Media composer interop features will be a big help – particularly using markers in MC and bringing them into PT9 as mem locates. Suddenly we have another way to talk between video and audio – yes, AVID are bringing better interop to market. It’s been a long time coming but we’re seeing the progress they are making as a single company, rather than Avid/Digi. It’s good times!
Omissions? Faster than real time bounce, freezing tracks, better RTAS performance, all stuff we’ve been harping on forever about, but how can they implement most of these native/host based features without first porting their software over to a host based paradigm? One step at a time, and I for one and happy to renew my trust in them as it really looks like they are heading in the right direction.
Well done Max, Bobby, and every developer who’s been working so hard at Daly City to make this release happen. Well done!
More info on PT9:
PT9 home page (from what I can tell)
Is it 64 bit?
A Great step forward & a must IMHO, as most other major industry software manufactures have had ADC as standard for many years. Can only only get Better !!
No. Only PT HD Native is 64 bit at this point in time AFAIK.