Mackie Takes on Avid
About a month ago, editors at music publications began receiving packages from Mackie containing Mackie Onyx-i mixers, a boxed version of Pro Tools M-Powered software, and not a lot of explanation. It was a teaser campaign to get the press’s attention, and get us talking about the fact that Mackie had managed to reverse engineer a mixer/interface to make it work with Pro Tools. Why is that a big deal? Up until now, Pro Tools could only run on hardware made by Digidesign or, in the case of Pro Tools M-Powered, by its sister company M-Audio. Both Digidesign and M-Audio are owned by Avid.
At that time, I contacted Avid to get that company’s reaction, and, not surprisingly, it wasn’t particularly positive. Here’s Avid’s official statement, as of August 10th:
“Avid (Digidesign) has not approved or tested Mackie equipment to be interoperable with any of its solutions. Pro Tools M-Powered is only licensed for use with our M-Audio peripheral products.”
Why is Avid not happy? Because, its business is based on selling hardware. Up until now, Pro Tools or Pro Tools M-Powered could only run on a Digidesign or M-Audio interface (respectively). Pro Tools software, is, for the most part, the carrot that attracts people to the company’s hardware. Avid’s control of its market hinges on the fact that nobody, at least up until now, can run Pro Tools without buying its hardware. Suddenly, here comes Mackie, a company with a distinguished reputation for building mixers, with a challenge to Avid’s entire paradigm. Today’s Mackie press release about the Onyx-i mixers, which are due to ship this month, had this to say in a subtly placed footnote:
“The Onyx-i Series Mixers are qualified by Mackie for use with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8. Mackie will release a driver (via www.mackie.com) together with full details of how to use the Onyx-i Series with Pro Tools® M-Powered™ 8 in the coming weeks.”
I don’t know enough about intellectual property law to predict whether Avid will launch a legal challenge to this, but it certainly bears watching. Without question, this is a story that could have a big impact on the personal-studio market, and I will offer updates as they become available.
In other Avid news, the company has announced a new entry-level version of Pro Tools, called Pro Tools Essentials. It will offer very low priced, track-limited Pro Tools bundles, replete with M-Audio hardware, and a price of $129. More details on this soon.
