As a Pro Tools 9 User, I just want to express my disgust at Avid's push for Pro Tools 10/HDX. It has been just over a year since I bought Pro Tools 9 and at around 9 months later Pro Tools 10 came out. The upgrade cost being $300 for standard and $999 for HDX. Fine. There are some nice upgrades for Pro Tools since they went "open".

What upsets me is the fact that there was no amnesty for those of us who had just forked over the for the very new version 9. They offered a month of leeway. And, it's not even that. The fact is that PT 9 has some glaring issues with it. It is far from stable. You need only visit the DUC to see that. PT 10 only fixes some of the more apparent issues that should be dealt with in a CS update. Many of the "new" features have been available in MANY other DAWs for a long time now. Let's face it. 32 bit float has been around since at least '99. I had 32 bit float with Cubase VST 32.

But, the worst of it is the push. Pro Tools 10 adds some long sought after features. I went to the HDX presentation here in Vancouver BC, Canada. One statement that came up quite a bit was "finally, after ten years". Seriously? It took ten years to resolve issues?

"Support for Legacy hardware". Well what they're not saying is that this is the last version of Pro Tools to support the Accel cards. From here on in it will cost you yet another upgrade to HDX cards. In which case, why bother to upgrade to 10 at all? If you want continued support, you will have to buy into a whole new system. There is no other option.

And, if you want the upgrade, you WILL have to pay for it. Either directly or via the support package. The support package is $600 and good for one year of extended tech support. This gives you the free upgrade, if it gets released before your support term is up. Of course, if your support plan ends before the release, you end up paying for the upgrade. Which means you've pretty well paid full price by this time. What a racket!
Sure, I'm whining.

I just bought Sonar X1 Producer upgrade for $99. It was over 10 gigs of download. Many, many tools and sound libraries included. 64 bit float. They are about to release version D which is a free update with, get this, added functionality. That's right, this is the fourth update this year which is ADDING features and it's free.

To boot, I have yet to experience an error other than my own lack of experience with the program.

End of rant.

Here's some highlights of Sonar X1 Producer Expanded and Production Suite: