What Will Avid Deliver In 2018? The 2nd ACA Survey Results Are In
12 months ago Avid announced the results of their first Avid customer Association survey through their Avid Customer Association about future directions for their product ranges including Pro Tools. During the Avid Connect event at Las Vegas, on the run-up to NAB 2018, Avid announced the results of the 2nd survey and we are going to take a look at what this means for Pro Tools users.
In this year's survey there were just under 5000 participants, from over 3500 unique organisations across 117 countries with participants coming from all segments of the industry. So lets look at how this will impact on potential features for Pro Tools over the next 12 months or so...
Summary
In the Music Creation / Audio Production workflow category the results of the survey show that...
Users are looking for a more comprehensive collection of Virtual Instruments in Pro Tools.
Users want a low cost I/O hardware for Pro Tools that revive the quality and portability of MBox.
Sibelius users want Avid to make it easier to flesh out arrangements and orchestrations.
Users would like an 'On-Premises' version of Avid's Cloud Collaboration service for Pro Tools
Pro Tools users would like more advanced MIDI workflows.
Moving onto the product-specific requests Avid has concluded that these align with these workflow issues so that users want...
To be able to leverage advanced pitch correction from industry leaders like Celemony – directly within Pro Tools
PhraseFind for Pro Tools
'Next-generation' control surfaces
Folder Tracks
In-App access to the growing Avid Marketplace
As a result, Avid has announced that at least four of these ten items are on track for release this year.
Results In More Detail
So that is the summary of the results from the 2nd Avid Customer Association Survey, but what about the detail? Where did the various features and options come in the survey and did the ranking change for different types of users? Avid broke down the results into a total for all voters, those voters who are part of an enterprise organisation, those who are part of a creative professional team and those who are individual creative professionals. Pro Tools appeared twice in the full survey path structure, once in the TV and Fim Production pathway and the other in the Music Creation and Audio Production pathway and the rankings were different for these two environments.
Pro Tools
It is very pleasing to see that folder tracks are at the top yet again. 12 months ago it was top of the list and Avid announced it as "a planned 2017 release", before revising it in September 2017 to be "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release". Currently, it is still planned as a 2018 release so let's hope that it is released before the end of the year as it has been the most popular feature 2 years running on the ACA survey and it right up at the top of requested features on the Pro Tools Ideascale too.
The 2nd most popular feature in this year's survey was ranked 4th last year, below Enhanced MIDI Functionality and Enhanced AVE (Avid Video Engine) Workflows. It was Virtual Instrument Upgrades. This was announced as "Under Investigation" in April 2017 before being upgraded to "In the queue for 2018 - under investigation" in September 2017 and has now been upgraded again to "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release". Continuing the theme of virtual instruments, the most requested 3rd party integration was Universal Audio Virtual Instruments.
The Lower Cost Audio I/O has climbed from 8th place, 12 months ago, to 3rd place this year, but it is still "Under Investigation", which is a shame.
Adding more voices and so increasing the simultaneous track count for Pro Tools HD Native systems has climbed one place to be now ranked in 4th place, but still remains "Under Investigation".
Even though Enhanced AVE (Avid Video Engine) Workflows has slipped from 3rd place, 12 months ago, with "a planned 2017 release" status in April 2017, which was revised in September 2017to "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release", it has now been upgraded to "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release", which suggests that they are already committed to this development work despite dropping 2 places in the ranking and 2 codecs being added with 2018.2.
In the 2nd ACA survey, Avid chose to separate Folder Tracks from "multiple sessions open at one time". They were one item in the 2017 survey and together were ranked in 1st place. As we have seen, Folder Tracks are still in 1st place but 'Multiple Sessions Open at Once' is now ranked 7th on its own and unfortunately is still "Under Investigation".
The other 2 features that are scheduled as "In the queue for 2018 as a planned release" are 'Marker Track Improvements', which was not in the 2017 survey at all and 'Advanced MIDI Workflows' even though there have been a significant number of MIDI developments in recent releases. One has to ask what other MIDI features Avid still plan to add?
Control Surfaces
There is a lot more consistency in the ranking for the different categories and workplaces in the Control Surface survey results. Looking at the few differences there are, it isn't exactly a bombshell to see that people working in enterprise organisations are more interested in 'custom plug-in mapping' than an Artist Mix replacement.
It may be that Paul Neyrinck's work on getting the old Control 24 and Pro Control working with current versions of Pro Tools will be completed before Avid get any of these ideas into production.
It does seem that they are not that keen to develop the control surface market. Maybe they are preferring to get as much return on investment for the Dock, S3 and S6 products instead?
The biggest thing they could do for the control surface market would be if they opened up the Eucon platform to 3rd party control surface manufacturers, as we could then get a good range of quality 3rd party control surfaces that are not dependent on the limited development resources at Avid's disposal to make Avid manufactured control surfaces.
The Full Survey Report
If you would like to view the full survey report then you can as long as you are Avid Customer Assocition members and it is free to sign up if you are not an ACA member.
What Do You Think?
There you have it, there is a lot more to say about the results and comparing the ranking between the different groups. What do you make of these results? Do you think Avid has chosen the right features to develop? Are there specific features that are not on the list that you consider as important or even more important as the ones on the list? What about the future of Pro Tools friendly control surfaces? Do share your thoughts in the comments below...