There's a rumor Apple (Logic) are to stop support for Avid's Digidesign products (Pro Tools). This is a massive kick in the teeth for Avid who I here are struggling a bit at the moment. Neither rumor surprises me; I cashed in my (digital signal processing) chips a long time ago when Apple brought out the G5. The chips I cashed in were a Digidesign HD 3 (before excel) and a 192 interface. I could see the end for the need of processing power on PCI cards.
I thought I should get as much money for my Digidesign Pro Tools HD system as I could, I already liked the sound of Apogee interfaces so I bought a Rosetta 800 and made do with a G5 dual 1.8. It was a bit sluggish but I knew bigger beasts were 'in the post'. And in the post they were beyond my wildest dreams because I had no idea about the intel chips they were going to load them up with. I have to say also that I thought the Rosetta sounded much better than my 192 I had. Engineers often criticise Apogee stuff saying it sounds a bit sheeny. If they do then I like sheeny!
I hated the way Digidesign's upgrade system worked. I spent a fortune upgrading my Mix system to HD and it seemed only months later HD Exel came out. It's part of the reason I sold my HD system when I did; I wasn't about to fork out all that money AGAIN!
I do feel sorry for all those Logic users now lumbered with a HD rigs but soon will be unable to upgrade Logic. I don't know why Apple are withdrawing support, I know that Avid and Apple have never been the best of friends but this really feels like kicking them when they are down. I wonder how much my Logic using pals will be able to get for their HD rigs now. I've been native for a few years now, I'm running 2 x 2.8 quad intel xeon, a load of ram and I can't even get the beast to break into a sweat. I use an Apogee Ensemble interface now. I swapped my Rosetta 800 for the Ensemble because I wanted the lightpipe i/o when I ran Gigastudio. The stereo sp/diff i/o still comes in handy.
I can see the Mac Pro doesn't break into a sweat because I use islayer's iStat; It's a neat app which lets me know what's going on in my mac; from the temperature of my processors and disk drives to how much processing power I am using and from which processors, handy when you want to see how your individual plugins use your processors. There's even a handy ethernet bandwidth counter! All the stats appear at the top of the screen and look great; there are drop down menus of everything for more detailed statistics.
My advise to any Logic users with a Pro Tools rig is to come and do a Pro Tools course here with George or get shot of those cards and interfaces NOW!
Dave Garnish is the founder and owner of Garnish School of Sound.
http://www.musicproductioncourses.net/
Article URL: http://musicproductioncourses.net/2010/04/apple-to-withdraw-support-for-pro-tools-hardware/
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Garnish
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