There’s nothing worse than being a brand who invented something, or indeed who became ubiquitous with a product and then having younger competitors taking the innovation lead. These brands range from Hoover, Ford and Microsoft, all who were once leaders but are now constantly playing catch up with more innovative brands such as Dyson, Toyota and Apple. Pro Tools is one such product.

In the last few years Pro Tools users have seen other DAWs take the lead in areas such as 64 bit processing and offline bounce. Whilst Pro Tools has continued to be the choice of professionals some of these omissions are frankly embarrassing. They have not been enough of an issue for most professionals to switch to another DAW, after all workflow is one thing we need continuity in and most of us simply don’t have the time to learn a new product.

It is therefore essential for Avid to do some magic in this next release of Pro Tools. For me 64 bit and offline bounce are nothing to shout about, I’m expecting them - what I really want to see is some killer stuff that I wasn’t expecting and that gives Pro Tools users more power and flexibilty - catching up is simply not enough.