Following what the company describes as an “extremely successful” inaugural Avid Connect event in early April, Avid’s Tony Cariddi tells Pro Tools Expert: “In 18 years, I have never been more excited.” Erica Basnicki sat down with him at NAB 2014 to find out why.

Avid Customer Association

The ‘phase one reveal’ of the new Avid Everywhere company vision also marked the launch of the new Avid Customer Association (ACA), which Cariddi says is essential to the system’s success. 

“When you take on an endeavor like this, you need to have the support of the community or else you’re all alone. So what we did over the weekend was that everybody met for the first time in person, we created the Charter, we handed the Charter over to the Board and said ‘Now you’re running this.’ This is an association that is enabled by Avid, but it’s not run by Avid.”

Anyone is able to join the ACA for a $100 (USD) membership fee, which Cariddi says is strictly an administration cost. Membership, “allows anybody to participate and get a voting voice in the direction of the company, where our investments go, and the decisions we’re making. It is completely open to anybody and we’re hoping the success of this inaugural event, with so many people having joined, will encourage even more people to join.”

Price Of Avid Everywhere License Option

On the subject of cost, Cariddi was also keen to address concerns expressed by the Pro Tools Expert community about the pricing of Avid Everywhere licensing options, saying there “may be a ‘freemium’ version for these collaborative services,” much like other cloud-based services, but that the company has yet to finalize any details. “I can tell you with complete certainty that the pricing that they are evaluating is going to be very, very affordable for the entry-level,” Cariddi says. 

Avid Everywhere Delivery?

No details on when end-users will be able to experience Avid Everywhere, but it will be based on the Pro Tools 11 platform, and the company is hoping to be Beta testing by Q3 of this year: “There’s still a fair amount of work to do to get this in people’s hands. Because this is going to require a lot of online infrastructure, the beta cycle is going to be critical.” 

Final Thoughts From Avid

“We know that this is only going to work if our tools stay best in class. We have the brightest, the most successful, most pre-eminent customers in the world using our tools but what we’re hearing from them is that they’re looking for somebody to step up and be a leader in an otherwise chaotic media creation, production, post and distribution market. Avid is in a better position than anyone to step up and unify this experience for everybody.”

Erica Basnicki is a freelance music tech and pro-audio journalist, until recently she was staff writer at Pro Sound News Europe but is now writing for several publications as well as working on her new project 94dBA, a resource for sounds and their use in art, science, history, technology, media and more.