Avid recently announced new pricing and ‘a la cart’ availability on the following:
- HDX Core Card
- HD Native Card
- HD Software
- HD Interfaces
- HD Native to HDX Upgrades
- Pro Tools to Pro Tools HD Upgrades
What Does This Mean?
First of all it means that Avid is listening to us users. The jump to Pro Tools HD/HDX is no longer a huge $10k minimum investment. Now anyone can buy a single HDX card for $3k (still expensive but more reachable). You’d still have to pay for the HD software ($2499 outright, $1899 upgrade from regular Pro Tools, or $999 per year subscription), but this opens up a lot of options, like upgrading from HD Native to HDX without having to buy a new interface. The interfaces are also discounted a little, nothing crazy amazing, but a discount non the less.
3rd Party Interfaces
Avid is also providing support for 3rd party interfaces that have digilink ports to connect to HDX and HD Native cards. Companies like Apogee, Burl Audio, Lynx, and Prism Sound have been making interfaces for years that connect to Pro Tools HD under the guise of showing up in Pro Tools as an Avid interface. Now for $300 owners of these interfaces can get full functionality of their hardware in Pro Tools HD.
How Does This Affect The Home Studio?
You may be reading this with your mouth hanging open saying, “this isn’t a discount, everything is in thou$$$ands!”. Or you may be seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, because you’ve been stuck in that big gap between native and DSP systems, so now theres a chance to gradually move up to a DSP based system. Or you might not see the benefits of this change until down the road when you can go to a studio with Pro Tools HD for for better rates than now.
Check out this great chart that Vintage King put together to show the differences between what Avid used to offer and what they offer now because of these changes.
