AAX Plug-in Upgrade Fee Survey - Good News So Far!
Helped by community member Rex Strother, we’ve been asking plug-in manufacturers about their plans for AAX 64-bit upgrades and, in particular, any related costs for the user. These costs need to be factored in by anyone considering a Pro Tools 11 upgrade as this cold be a huge additional cost if you own a lot of third party plug-ins that cost to upgrade.
We have to say that so far we’ve had a very encouraging response. Even though many brands are in the middle of shows, we’ve had the following responses to the question of updates and any associated costs. You will see that, on-the-whole, updates will be free. But what must be noted is that the time and costs related to these ports vary from company to company, so we hope readers will not demonize brands who may have to charge to recoup costs.
As the list builds, we will continue to feedback info to the community.
Avid
Avid plugins will be ported to 64-bit AAX DSP and Native and made available with PT11 for no additional charge. There are a few Avid plugins that, at this time, are not slated to come to AAX (they can be found on this page, noted with an asterisk): http://www.avid.com/US/resources/Avid-Audio-Plug-in-Tiers
Blue Cat Audio
(1) Most our plug-ins are 64-bit-ready, waiting for the release of PT11 to be released too.
(2) For plug-ins that have been recently upgraded, the upgrade will be free. Some other plug-ins are currently being fully redesigned, so there won’t be an x64 version for the older version, only for the new one. But we do not charge customers for the new plug-in format, they get it for free when they purchase the latest version of the plug-in.
(3) See (2). For plug-ins that will be redesigned, the upgrade price will be pretty small (see the recent upgrade offers), but anyway this price has nothing to do with x64, it is related to the new features.
(4) No, they will all be released as 64-bit (some will be transformed with the big upcoming upgrades, but they will all become 64-bit ready)
Note: Blue Cat has posted a photo on their FB page (and via their Twitter account), showing an Avid Pro Tools 11 demo session, with Blue Cat Chorus prominently featured as “AAX ready”!
Celemony
Today we announced on our website that the AAX plug-in of Melodyne is going to be available simultaneously with the release of PT11. This will be a free update.
Fxpansion
1) All current and available (as of 2nd half 2013) RTAS instruments and effects will be ported to 64-bit AAX Native. We have no plans to support AAX DSP.
2) No upgrade fees will be charged for 64-bit AAX specifically. But if you own an older version of a product, you may need to upgrade to the newest in order to get AAX.
3) We won’t port old and unsupported products like GURU (you need to upgrade to Geist), or any Lite/OEM versions, or old freeware/magware like Orca and GeistCM, or anything older than the current version at the time the AAX64 upgrade ships. Avid have not authorized us (or any other developer) to port the VST-RTAS wrapper.
iZotope
Ozone 5 (including Ozone 5 Advanced) and Nectar join RX 2, Alloy 2, Trash 2, and Insight as Native AAX-compatible plug-ins from iZotope (available as free updates, as long you own the current version of the product. An Ozone 4 owner would need to upgrade to Ozone 5, to then get the free AAX upgrade price).
In addition, iZotope plans to announce AAX updates to two additional products in 2013: Iris (spectral-based visual instrument) and Stutter Edit (real-time remixing plug-in).
McDSP
All of our HD v5 plug-ins will be ported to AAX DSP/Native, and all of our Native v5 plug-ins will be ported to AAX Native. As long as a user already owns v5, the AAX support AND 64-bit support is FREE.
Plug-in Alliance
All our plugins are 64-bit and AAX Native already. Some are AAX DSP already and we’ll make more. The majority will port to DSP, but no schedule yet. No fees planned for these updates.
Slate
We’re porting everything over to AAX, and all Slate Digital will be AAX Native and DSP. No news on costs.
Sugar Bytes
We are porting everything to AAX 64-bit, but only Native, not DSP. There will be no upgrade fee.
XLN Audio
We definitely aim to continue supporting Pro Tools and we’re currently looking into AAX versions of both Addictive Drums and Addictive Keys. I’m afraid I can’t give you much more information at this point, but I can say that we will never charge money only for an AAX upgrade. If we were to charge for an update, it would be for a much larger update that would affect all plug-in formats with new features, etc.