Avid Announces Price Reduction for Pro Tools

With summer drawing to a close, Avid is looking to heat up demand for Pro Tools.

Pro Tools 12 graduates to 12.2, with lower pricing and more features.

The company announced today that Pro Tools 12.2 has been launched, and with it lower prices across the board for the annual upgrade and support plans and subscription licenses that accompanied the launch of PT12 in January. The price for perpetual licenses also sees a significant drop.

In addition, Pro Tools 12.2 sees the introduction of premium AAX plugin bundles and a variety of new features.

Pricing Developments

Will the reduced pricing help to increase the popularity of the Avid Everywhere program? What do these adjustments say about the reception so far for Pro Tools 12? Presumably, demand needed a spark – if expectations for sales were being met, prices could be expected to stay level or even increase.

That said, tinkering with prices happens in every industry, and the software-as-subscription model is still in its relative infancy for the pro audio vertical. The overall implications of this development remain to be seen.

PT12.2’s price reductions appear to be significant:

• The annual upgrade plan, which provides access to all Pro Tools upgrades, is now $99. Previously this plan was $199.
• The annual upgrade and support plan which provides access to all Pro Tools upgrades, the new bundle of 17 plugin effects, and Avid standard support is now $199. Previously this plan cost $299, and did not include the plugin bundle.
• Customers new to Pro Tools can now purchase and own a perpetual license for $599 – a 33.37% drop from the previous $899. The plan includes a perpetual Pro Tools license with a one-year $99 annual upgrade plan and a year’s access to the new plug-in bundle. Customers can also add Avid Standard Support for $99.
• There is also a new annual plugin and support plan, which provides access to a new bundle of 17 plugin effects and Avid standard support for $99.

Pro Tools software monthly subscription (one-month license subscription with updates and support) is $29.99/month, as opposed to $24.92/month for an annual commitment.

On the Pro Tools | HD side, the new annual upgrade plans that were recently updated with a lower renewal price of $399 now also include access to 16 new stompbox effects and nine additional premium AAX plug-ins. According to Avid, customers with active upgrade plans will get access to this plugin bundle during the term of their plan, while all new Pro Tools | HDX and HD Native systems come bundled with the new annual upgrade subscription.

The Annual Upgrade Plan for Pro Tools | HD systems starts at $599 for the first year and includes upgrades, access to the HD plug-in bundle and standard support for one year. All new Pro Tools | HDX and HD Native systems come bundled with this plan which can be renewed for $399 each year thereafter. Starting in 2016, plans that lapse can be reinstated for $999.

Availability for the new Pro Tools 12.2 kicks in September 9, and will be free of charge to Pro Tools 12 customers with upgrade plans.

Fresh Features & Plugins

Now that the economics are out of the way, what’s new on the workflow side? The upgrades for PT12.2 include advanced mixing workflows such as VCA Masters, extended metering, gain reduction metering, and Disk Cache for high-performance playback and record, even when using slower storage.

Both Pro Tools and Pro Tools | HD get new access bundles of plugins in addition to the more than 60 plugins and virtual instruments previously included for the term of their plan.

The plugin bundles include 16 new stompbox effect plugins from Eleven Rack. Users can add grit, space, modulation, and overdrive to guitar tones and more with this bundle of stompbox-type effects from the Pro Tools | Eleven Rack amp/cabinet emulation system. According to Avid, Eleven Effects is a new collection of 64-bit AAX Native, AAX DSP, and AAX AudioSuite plug-in effects that are modeled after the circuitry and design of many classic and popular analog guitar stompboxes and effects—from EQ and compressor, to reverb, delay, modulation, and distortion effects.

Pro Tools customers will also get Space, a high-powered convolution reverb plug-in for music and post-production applications. From large concert halls to dense plate reverbs, Space delivers “the pristine sound of natural reverb spaces” with full control of reverb parameters in mono, stereo, and surround formats.

But wait, there’s more! Pro Tools | HD customers, in addition to the 16 Eleven stompbox effects and Space, also receive all five Avid Pro Series plug-ins including Pro Compressor, Pro Expander, Pro Limiter, Pro Multiband Dynamics and Pro Subharmonic, as well as the Eleven amp/cabinet simulator plug-in, the ReVibe II powerful room modeling plug-in, and the Reverb One plug-in, an easy-to-use, sonic quality reverb.

In other words, here’s the bulleted breakdown —

Pro Tools (Standard) 12 access plug-in bundle contains:

• Space
• Eleven Effects Stompboxes: BBD Delay, Black Op Distortion, Black Shiny Wah, Black Spring, C1 Chorus/Vibrato, DC Distortion, Flanger, Gray Compressor, Green JRC Overdrive, Orange Phaser, Roto Speaker, Studio Reverb, Tape Echo, Tri-Knob Fuzz, Vibe Phaser and White Boost

Pro Tools HD 12 access plug-In bundle contains:

• Avid Pro Series: Pro Compressor, Pro Expander, Pro Multiband Dynamics, Pro Subharmonic and Pro Limiter
• Space
• Eleven
• ReVibe II
• Reverb One
• Eleven Effects Stompboxes: BBD Delay, Black Op Distortion, Black Shiny Wah, Black Spring, C1 Chorus/Vibrato, DC Distortion, Flanger, Gray Compressor, Green JRC Overdrive, Orange Phaser, Roto Speaker, Studio Reverb, Tape Echo, Tri-Knob Fuzz, Vibe Phaser and White Boost

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