"Upgrade Or Not To Upgrade"

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William Shakespeare phrased it best..”To be or not to be, that is the question”. Today we substitute the word be for “upgrade”.

We view upgrades as shiny new versions of what we already have. But are we considering what we are really getting when we upgrade, or what may be sacrificed by doing so. Pro Tools 10 was a vast improvement from Pro Tools 8. In previous versions you could only use a Digidesign audio interface. In 10 you could use any interface of your choice. Great. But along with that came the dreaded iLok and the headaches it brought to the table…you loose it or damage it, no session. You either had to use your spare, then register it with the account (and we know how easy that can be..), or cough up $50.00 for a replacement. Pro Tools 11 had more detailed monitoring, and was using the new AAX format. Again, Woo-Hoo! New plugins! Oh by the way, the RTAS plugins wouldn’t work with Pro Tools 11…so there goes your previous work. You had to have both Pro Tools 10 and 11 residing together. On iOS based computers that again we upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks had some serious issues and Pro Tools 10 had to be uninstalled…with great difficulty… and again downtime while the issue was resolved. Now we have Pro Tools 12. The thing that makes this version “The Next Big Thing” is that it can be used as an online platform that you can pay to use. So now we can “rent” a DAW. Unfortunately, through all of this there is one factor that we didn’t consider…how much money we were going to loose by way of either downtime, lost files, or non-compatibility with other platforms. So as industry professionals, we must give serious thought before we disturb a stable, reliable system for the sake of “latest and greatest”, and loosing cliental as a result .