A video started making the rounds as FOH’s August 2009 issue was going to press that appears to at least imply that the unbreakable tie between certain Digidesign software and approved hardware has been cracked. Or maybe it is a marketing strategy. Bottom line is that at least on the lower-end of the audio spectrum, you can now run Pro Tools (and the plug ins that have become such a hot ticket in the live audio realm) using a Mackie Onyx mixer as the front end.
Not many FOH readers can do the gigs they do on a mixer this small, but the implications are huge. Until now, if you tried to launch Pro Tools without a piece of Avid/M-Audio hardware attached, it just wouldn’t open. If the driver that Mackie is shipping with this new mixer—the Mackie Universal Driver V1.0—is what it appears to be then the implications for live event audio are huge, as it should be at least theoretically possible to access Pro Tools (and all of those lovely plug ins) from “non-approved” hardware.
I placed calls to both Avid’s PR company and to Loud, the parent company of Mackie. Avid was “internally reviewing” the information and could not comment before we went to press. Loud said that while the new driver was not developed in conjunction with Avid, they are “very open to communications” and that currently the only product shipping with this capability is the Onyx i mixer.
But, again, the potential implications are huge. Stay tuned…
