Avid cripling HD?

[egan.]

Did you guys here about this?
http://www.airusersblog.com/home-page/2010/5/25/pro-tools-crack-the-analysis-of-avidgate.html

Apparently there are some cracks of HD floating around right now. What's crazy is that this creates some evidence that tracks and voicing are not dictated by the HD cards which has been the story since time and memorial. Obviously, if it's true this undermines the much of the HD sales pitch.

Interesting stuff.

 

[Line666]

Yeah there was a topic about this the other day. It mysteriously went missing, don't think it was Lasse, didn't look like his style.

 

[crillemannen]

Yupp... that thread just got deleted, we didnt link to the crack just discussed it

 

[kev]

Aye, its like a lot of products though... the creators are constantly playing the cripple game so they can sell you the next version.

 

[egan.]

I did search first so I'm glad I didn't just miss it. I think this is pertinent from a consumer interest angle. I don't think you have to want a crack to be interested in how the supposedly impossible is possible.

 

[drew_drummer]

I'm soooo over the whole PT thing anyway. This crack came five years too late!! Logic, Reaper, and Cubase... they're all pissing over the supposed 'industry standard'.

 

[crillemannen]

The funniest thing about this is that the cracked it open, 10000voices that equals that they deliberately crippled the system just because people would buy the cards....

 

[RyanUsesThis]

I'd be interested to see how many voices you can run before you system tanks. With a 64bit OS and 12gigs of ram you could probably get quite a bit...

With older 32bit 1/2 proc, 4gigs of ram systems, 112 voices simultaneously would be pretty strenuous.

I wonder how Avid will address this.

 

[Melodeath]

Considering that other DAWs don't have such limits or require hardware, wasn't it always obvious Digi/Avid crippled their software? This is just proof, I guess.

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

Im not really surprised...It IS kind of common sense that they've been doing that the whole time. It does suck but ive become quite accustomed to PT and anytime i try switching to another DAW i just get frustrated and go back. So ill just continue to stay in this bent over position until my back finally gives out and I make the jump.

 

[digitaldeath]

Not only that, but they increased the buss and track count in M-Powered too! There's absolutely no hardware restrictions so you essentially have a fully native HD system!
Avid are screwed and will have a lot of explaining to do.
I don't really care anymore. Reaper can be customized beyond belief and is not far from the editing power of Pro-Tools, it already beats it in so many ways! More and more are selling their HD rigs and getting an LE rig just to maintain some level of compatibility etc. But when I can edit an entire project in Reaper on a small laptop, using on-board sound and not have a problem - you know times are changing!

 

[Let it burn...]

Yeah I've heard about it the other day at work. Seems like there is no ADC so what's the point you know? Pro users will never stop using their HD systems because of this crack but its a good way to see what kind of a company AVID actually is

 

[ze kink]

Somehow I'm not too surprised.

Fingers crossed that Avid does the sensible thing and finally releases a native PT with no restrictions.

 

[AdamWathan]

Well I'm still on the fence here because M-Powered and LE don't have a voice count limitation anyways, that's purely an HD thing, so of course the native version of HD can be set up to have no voice limitation. My understanding was that the voice limitation was imposed as a physical limitation of the DSP chips that are processing the audio on an HD system. That doesn't happen on a native system so there isn't an issue. Since with HD everything goes through the DSP at some point, the limitation was that one DSP chip can only handle x amount of audio streams at once, which is basically what a voice is. But still, there are a lot of people more in the know than me who are claiming the voice limit is definitely artificial, and if that's the case I will be very interested to hear AVID make a statement about it...

 

[egan.]

Well I'm still on the fence here because M-Powered and LE don't have a voice count limitation anyways, that's purely an HD thing, so of course the native version of HD can be set up to have no voice limitation. My understanding was that the voice limitation was imposed as a physical limitation of the DSP chips that are processing the audio on an HD system. That doesn't happen on a native system so there isn't an issue. Since with HD everything goes through the DSP at some point, the limitation was that one DSP chip can only handle x amount of audio streams at once, which is basically what a voice is. But still, there are a lot of people more in the know than me who are claiming the voice limit is definitely artificial, and if that's the case I will be very interested to hear AVID make a statement about it...

Hey Adam your understanding is (or at least was) my understanding. Maybe I've misunderstood the situation but is the crack simply le with no limits or is it a crack of HD. I understood it to be the latter which would imply that either the core cards are doing less than we though or that at least that core cards could share the load with native power to create a best of both worlds.
But again, I may be misunderstanding the situation.

 

[AdamWathan]

It is basically HD without the stuff that is done on the chips, so no delay compensation, no specific input monitoring, no TDM plugins, etc. You do get all the busses, the enhanced grouping options, the enhanced session import, etc.

My comment was moreso directed at the people who are now really upset that they bought an HD3 rig just for the voice count, only to find out now that HD1 can handle the voices just fine and it was a purely artificial limitation imposed by AVID to sell more Accel cards.

 

[006]

Well it's as you said, ProTools was never really limited when it came to voices, just the HD cards (DSP). When someone can show that the DSP chips used are more powerful than Avid allowed them to be, by software or other means, then I can see people getting upset and it being a big deal. The crack as I understand it is simply allowing a user to not be restricted to interfaces designated by Avid. Nothing more, correct?

It seems people are making it out to be a bigger deal than it is. All this is, is the same as when Cubase got cracked or Nuendo, whatever... The HD cards themselves are still the big selling point of HD.

 

[LydonB]

It would be awesome for Avid to come out and make a statement regarding this. I can imagine that a lot of HD customers are pissed off about this. If they did make a statement, maybe it could be the beginning of a new era where they do not have such highly questioned business practices.

 

[006]

Hey read my post - the cards are the "big deal" of HD anyway, cracking the software only allows you to use any interface, it doesn't nullify the use of the HD cards. Now, of course if you have a badass computer you can do the same thing as the cards though...

I guess some people will still be pissed. Some could have spent $5k on a new decked out Mac Pro instead of $16k or more for a full HD3 setup, etc.

 

[LydonB]

Yeah, the cards are definitely the big deal about HD. Having extra and dedicated processing power available is awesome. But yeah, someone who felt they needed to buy an HD3 instead of an HD1 because of limited voices could potentially be really pissed. At least they have the extra horsepower