Yesterday I upgraded my MacBook Pro and my wife's iMac to the Lion OSX, but of course, I didn't do the upgrade to my 8-Core MacPro in the studio, since that's the machine I use to run ProTools on. Why not? Because I know from experience that you don't just upgrade to the most recent OSX until lots of folks have caught up to Apple's newest version. Especially Avid with ProTools, as it's typically taken them about six months to get a working, mostly bug-free, compliant version up and running. Then, of course, you have to worry about all the plug-ins that you've paid good money for. That means checking to see IF they're offering updates, and even IF those updates are free or IF they will cost (meaning it's not an update, but an upgrade, actually).

So, since I did a little research to see IF there was in fact an update patch available for my old version 8 of ProTools HD for Lion, I thought I'd also take a look again to see if there was any good reason to make the jump to version 9 ask an HD user who already owns a good bit of hardware that is in fine working condition. Oh, and by the way, there's not an update for version 8, and I didn't expect there to be one. I somewhat doubt they will provide one, though I'd sure hope at some point Avid will provide one for us users who don't yet see any remarkable value in the new version of their software to pay $349 simply so we can run our machines on Lion.

So, I'm curious, can anyone on this forum find a good reason for me to actually make the jump to ProTools 9 HD, since I'm already a version 8 HD user? Sure, I could use non-avid interfaces. I get that. I could spend thousands of dollars picking up some other type of interface, and you could try to convince me that it's higher quality. If you want to convince me of that, let's do a shoot-out, and I want to see if you can prove to me which interface was used. Folks, there's a darn good reason the best engineers in the world haven't ever done a shoot-out between Digi hardware and Apogee hardware to see which is better: They can't really tell the difference.

So here's how I see it: There's no tangible difference in the two versions of the HD software, other than: 1. v8 has 128 busses and v9 has 256. 2. v8 has 256 midi channels and v9 has 512. 3. v9 lets you use non-avid interfaces. Anything else? Any other reason that I should justify spending $349 to cross grade to this new, improved version of the software that already functions extremely well for me, just so I can upgrade to Lion? Or should I wait to see if they offer an update?

Any changes in work flow that users have seen that are a remarkable improvement? Midi workflow improvement? We saw a massive improvement there in version 8 for sure.

Oh, on a side not, if you're an LE user, I get it... HD Native would rock your world on a newer mac, compared to the old LE world, and even the newer version of LE9 is way better than the old. There are clear advantages there. No brainer. But for us HD users, I just don't get it, Avid. Oh, I guess there's one more thing, if you want to use some different control surfaces, but really, I'm pretty happy with my old command 8 that I've had for half a decade or more. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Funny, how I'd consider some digi hardware nearly vintage at this point. Kinda sad, even...

What say you?