It seems Avid are damned if they do and damned if they don't. Read some of the comments after the recent release of Pro Tools 12.1 and you would have thought Avid had reduced the feature set in Pro Tools 12 not increased it.

Anyone who has spent any time following our blog will know that we're not Avid stooges by any stretch of the imagination, but credit where credit is due.

It is not an easy task for Avid trying to transition from their long held hardware-dependant DAW strategy to be more inline with modern DAW technology. It has had both financial and technical implications that would tax even the most secure business.

On the one hand you have the native DAW users who want features every other DAW on the planet has and on the other hand you have got to show your HD users, who like it or not have on the whole spent more money with Avid, that their investment isn't wasted and that being a HD owner gives some benefits for the extra spend. What further complicates the issues is that to make some of the technology changes in a DAW like Pro Tools is easier (that's a relative use of the word) to do in native than it is to do in DSP, but imagine the furore if Avid released a feature that only appeared, or appeared first in the native version. of Pro Tools.

As we said it ain't easy being Avid and having to deal with their legacy.

Even a cursory understanding of how Avid have tried to deal with this broad church in the past will know that different releases of Pro Tools have tried to cater for these different segments; some music, some post, some native and some hardware customers. 

This latest release of Pro Tools 12 may not meet the needs of all Avid's complex customer base in one go, that's nigh on impossible, but many of us shouldn't look a gift-horse in the mouth.

Let's all hope this is a sign of a new more open world from Avid - who wouldn't want to celebrate that?