Wait a minute. 10,000 voices are unlocked!! WTF!! So here we are all these years going out and buying HD Accel cards to get more voices, and it turns out it's nothing but artificial crippling just to make us purchase more of their overpriced cards!! I'm pissed! What a scam!

Screw you Avid!!

I bet the 1,000 tracks of audio run flawlessly until you add an Instrument track! :)

i was thinking this through and this is a two side coin situation.
now that anyone with a mac can have a powerhorse station filled with logic studio downloaded from a torrent and pro tools hd 8.0.3 downloaded from multiple servers, and of course the hacked plugins that the ilok couldn't protect.
it will make anyone and audio engineer period, you have a mac ,and interface and some pro amps, we are rolling.
but to really be and audio engineer you need experience and to really fine tune your ears and to know everything about digital audio these days, having the gear at your disposal doesn't make you an engineer, and doesn't make an engineer a great one.
one of my beloved teachers told me"you have to work it out somehow" despite the gear and sometimes the muscians.
so please educate yourself before downloading all the stuff there is around and just making the music worst.
i would really want to know how the companies are gonna react to this situation:
a witchhunt and burn all users and servers how allow such a thing, or really make a difference and becoming more efficient and more financially reasonable.

Why couldn't this individual hacked this a few months ago before i bought a Pro fire 610 ? Just kidding , i haven't had any of the problems with the 610 that so many have reported . I have moved over to mixing and mastering in Presonus Studio 1 . Delay compensation with unlimited track count (and stability) and some impressive features to boot . The Presonus firestudio mobile was cheaper then the 610 , has an impressive, sturdy build, nice pre's and significantly better AD/DA ! Plus , they actually communicate with their customers . You can call them and chat , email or talk to them on their forum . AVID take a note or 3 . Still going back to PT to use all my AIR VI's . Love AIR VI's , wish they could make the trip to.

Why has this happened for God's sake!!!
Who started the Ptools demise? I've spent $1000s and years trying to get my head around home recording and now just as I'm about to actually record with midi channels (after finally 'getting it'-well most anyway) there's all this hoo-ha about Ptools going down? Not another Titanic!!! Guess we didn't see this one coming as well.

die avid die... no more ilok/PT hardwear. THATS RIGHT FOLKS 10,000 VOICES. PTs HAS BEEN RIPPING US OFF FOR QUITE A WHILE. *** i am a happy pirate.*** take waves with you on your journey to proprietary hell. you will never get another $ from me.

now we are even, i think.

why is it that folks are so quick to say die avid simply because they sold a product. If someone stole a truck from your grocery store loaded with food you wanted and you happen to now be able to get it cheap or free would you then say "Die Safeway Die for ripping us off all these years"

I think humanity is in trouble. . more so than avid.

Proprietary Hell. WTF??

Tall about proprietary hell... My car will only let me use Gasoline. I wanna use something cheaper like Pepsi... Damn proprietary thinking corporations.

Weird... I had just decided to leave PT because of all the restrictions. I bought a Metric Halo interface and was ready to go the Logic route. Even though I was really gonna miss the AIR VIs...

I don't support cracked software, but this isn't the same as a regular crack. Like the ilok cracks that we've seen the past several months. This unlocks several features that customers have begged for for several years. If anything, this makes Avid look just as bad as the pirates imho...

I don't see myself using this in the long run, but I'll at least give it a go this week...

Avid did more than just charge us for stuff that didn't work. The artificial crippling of the voicings in Pro Tools HD all these years makes me quite ill to my stomach. I had no idea I was supporting a company with these absolutely disgusting business ethics that they've done for the past decade to their HD users. One will quickly run out of voices in an HD system. The solution is to purchase another Accel card which will not only add track count, but also valuable voices. The fact that 10,000 voices are unlocked makes the big picture quite clear now. The minimal voicings in HD has obviously been intentional so that one will go out and purchase another extremely overpriced Accel card just to get more voices. This clearly unethical con and scam on HD users is worse than the pirates who cracked it.

You screwed over your user base pretty bad with this one Avid, but now we know the truth. The HD users of the world are pretty pissed and you need to make a public statement about this ASAFP!

Shame on you Avid...shame on you!

"Tall about proprietary hell... My car will only let me use Gasoline. I wanna use something cheaper like Pepsi... Damn proprietary thinking corporations."

You want to talk proprietary and automobiles? How about the OBD-II bus? In this day and age, I should have a USB port on the dashboard of my car that allows me to do everything a service shop can do. Do I? NO! If there are things involving the onboard computer of my car, I'm forced to have to go and pay for someone to do for me what I can do for myself.

It seriously chaps my hide when I have to pay to have a new component "initialized", or have the settings corrected in the computer after the variable speed module for the AC blew and erased them. I have no problem with proprietary, but I do have a problem with absolute control. If you believe in God, even he gives us choice.

Wow! So full blown Pro Tools HD can run completely native after all. Not only can it run natively, it runs better natively than it does using the cards. Holding back LE features to keep the product line separated was understandable, but to keep the voicing count low enough on HD systems so that a user would have to go out and purchase an Accel card for more power, as mentioned in some of the posts above, is pretty pathetic. It will be interesting to hear how Avid is going to justify this. They'll definitely have to make a public statement regarding this.

We're really disappointed with you Avid. The truth is now out there.

This has really been an eye opening experience for me, about Avid. In less than 24 hrs, they've pulled 2 threads over at the DUC. Folks are only discussing what has occurred. And not even mentioning the actual act. Really unsettling that they are so big on censorship, especially since that's not going to change what's happened...

Well, it's nice to have VCA groups, Advanced Grouping features, Multi Track Beat detective, all through the Sound card on My MacBook Pro, with no iLok, and enough Tracks, that my HD sessions aren't 1/2 Grayed out...Quite honestly, if this were released by Avid, I'd pay $300 - $500 for it, without complaining. Does this somehow devalue my HD system?

Naw, in this "Cracked Version" we Loose all of the DSP specific functionality... mostly ADC, TDM Plugins and ZERO Latency input Monitoring - This does not "Open / Unlock TDM Slots, or Delay compensated voices on an HD system" - Rather, just LE style "Host Voices" In fact, because of this.... this is HD, without Delay Compensation, and unlike LE, has no "Low Latency Monitoring" and in my experiments, using the standard card in a MacBookPro, the Host based Latency is ALIVE and WELL.

I don't see this as usable, beyond having advanced "HD Style" session editing, and Setup, on a LapTop in your travels, but I WILL be running this rather then "Crappy Old LE"

Voice Count?? would be nice to "See what we can do" past 192 voices if we need to... but by opening these limits to 1000 we're just dreaming of FSB Bandwidth, and Disk Data streaming WELL beyond our machine's capabilities.

Nevertheless, this is the Best, most freeing version of Pro-Tools my MacBookPro has ever seen. It Won't replace my HD rigs, but it will replace my MBox Micro / PTLE8

I've used and supported ProTools since '97, through my company which has bought dozens of TDM systems, to my own LE systems that I use at home.

Digidesign's (and in turn, Avid's) approach has always stunk. That they operate the way they do is why so many people are clapping and jeering from the sidelines.

I hope herein lies a lesson for Avid, but not a fatal bullet, as I, too, find Reaper w-a-y behind where ProTools is at.....and I need to continue working professionally each day.

Cracking software is a disaster. ALL of the crackers out there are A-holes. Piracy is the last thing the DAW industry needs. DAW developers don't even have enough money to fix bugs…now they need to spend months patching security holes instead of fixing bugs and adding Freeze Track. ROT IN HELL KRACKERS!

Pro Tools IS NOT Logic Reaper Cubase etc etc etc. It is VERY different and has an equally different role. Traditionally, Pro Tools has been developed in a slower, more conservative way…It is the only program made that can RELIABLY be put at the heart of million dollar studios with little worries of Logic-esque bizarre bugs happening in front of clients. Pro Tools also differs in that it is a professional "system," with it's integration with large format Icons, the video world, etc and this level of big development take big money.

I don't get it. What is it in people's souls that makes them want to do something so harmful as to crack someones work or putting stolen intellectual property on a public server?!? Stealing software will only slow down development and bug fixing. It's like downloading free music…great, but it takes $50,000+ to make the albums I like to listen to like Rumors, OK Computer and Dark Side…stuff that sounds beautiful along with great songwriting. Now, partially due to free music and the new digital age, there is far less money for big budget studio albums. Now we have an extinct lost art form thanks to the digital age ways. Great, now we can download endless this throw away JUNK music. JUNK is what we'll be downloading software-wise soon as well thanks to these kracking A-holes.

Companies like Avid has every right to make money. Consumers have NO RIGHT to STEAL there hard earned intellectual property. To the thiefs: Why don't you all try making a living by working on your client's music for months/years and then when done, they hack into your computer and steal it all from you…no pay at all. Do you expect hamburgers to be free, lawyers? Doctors or cars?!? Then why software?!?!

This is illegal and it's wrong. Do your part to help other understand this, spread the word. Actually talk to people that steal software about how what they are doing will severely hinder development and bug fixes.

Karma it is.

Personally, I'd love to see 'Avid' get their shzitt together. Either this will be the long overdue wake up call, or it's just a matter of time till they're toast.

This is not a wake up call...it's felony crime.

Wake up call?!? You all need a wake up call if you didn't realize we were paying a lot more for HD than for other DAWs and that the Mix and HD cards were a severely undersigned smokescreen since the mid-90's. Yeah, we paid a lot more but it wasn't fraud.

And what did we get when we paid a lot more? HELLO?!? A hell of a lot more reliable and professional system to rely on than and other DAW. Hmmm...more expensive + higher quality...coincidence?

I don' support hackers and their hacked versions of software. It's illegal and doesn't do anything good for those hard working, dedicated audio enthusiasts at AVID.

About the hack and host based software.

Many fall over the amount of tracks PT can run. You can claim a DAW can run a million voices (or 10.000 in this case) but what can it ACTUALLY and RELIABLY run.

Look at Logic. It has a theoretical 255 voices for audio tracks. But how many tracks can you trust Logic to run reliably?? The maximum amount of voices depend on the computer you have, the amount of RAM, speed of your hard disk, et cetera. Who has ever run a session in Logic with more than 128 tracks including plugins and without crashes??? It's a very loose number and you can't buy a logic system and know that the specific amount of tracks you need will run professionally without an embarrassing crash.

With Pro Tools HD you KNOW it WILL run a specified amount of voices reliably when you have a supported computer with a specific amount of cards, and the right specifications for your hard disk and RAM amongst others. That's something that host based software can not do. At least with an HD system you know that the amount of power that comes from your Core or Accel cards can be balanced between the amount of voices and the amount of plugin power you need. This is very difficult to predict with a host based system.

The complaints about PT LE are a whole different ball game though. LE is host based and should give its users the same "possible" features as any other DAW.

We have to pay a large sum of money for a toolkit that will theoretically give us a higher track count. Sure, those toolkits also give us extra plugins and functionality. But most of that functionality is already present as a standard in most other DAWS. (of which i think gaining access to timecode is one of the most ridiculous ones to pay for). Besides i would like to have a choice in which plugins i buy and not be stuck with one or two plugins in a toolkit that i might not use. I do like plugin bundles that give you a good deal on plugins with specific functionality for Music or Post Production.

Our complaints are a self fulfilling prophecy though. What if Avid decides to listen to our request? They'll discard all toolkits and put the features as standard in PT LE? How will that make those that bought one of the toolkits feel? (I own the CPTK and paid a large sum for it) Will those users be compensated? Will that be another debacle like with Structure?

These are difficult times for a company that makes one of the best DAW's but needs to make firm decisions to have a strong future. I hope they do right by those that spent many dollars in buying their software, rely on PT for a living, and have thereby supported the company for so long.

I hope they can get their act together rather sooner than later. I have a feeling that we'll have our answer soon. AVID have promised they'll release somthing this year and something tells me that June or July might be the moment.

Many people are getting confuse about the HD thing, is HD in spirit, virtual spirit.
for the people who has never work with HD before is actually HD.
but as i say it yet again, no delay compensation, that means do it manually or use Mellowmuse ATA.
and no TDM support, because those process are outside your computer run by dsp cards, and actually is kind of neat to have those cards, because of the cpu usage, the people actually ussing the k'd beware of your processing power.
i would called the crack, the native HD version or LE with the complete production toolkit.

Way to stick to your guns, Russ! You have every right to your freedom of speech, and we appreciate the straight-up unobfuscated truth! Their threats and behaviour are disgusting, and the last thing Avid should be worrying about right now...

I left PT a few months ago and I'm still glad. Those gravy-robbers can rot away for all I care.

So do you think we'll have new product by AES in November? Does this change Avid's time line for product release?

This isn't the first time a crack of HD like this has appeared. We had this on PC about 6-7 years ago during the 6.7 era. It was a patch that was called TDMthing. It allowed us to run Pro Tools HD natively on LE hardware minus all the functionality that the TDM chips themselves covered, therefore no ADC, Input monitoring, TDM plug-ins, surround mix engine etc. TDMthing still required Digidesign hardware and you needed the Pro Tools HD 6.7 software to even get it going. This worked on the original Mbox, 002 and yes, even the long since discontinued 001, which was dropped at 6.4. 001 users were absolutely outraged because it clearly demonstrated that Digidesign lied and still could've supported the 001 long after 6.4, which was when they discontinued it. Users even went to the Digi store to purchase the 6.7 HD software and downloaded updates just to get this going. If Digidesign was to go back and check their sales records with the time period that TDMthing was introduced, the will see an odd rise in sales of the Pro Tools HD 6.7 software and rise in update downloads. Yes, the TDMthing patch actually made them revenue, which was the big irony of it all. TDMthing worked up to 6.9 and then it wouldn't work after that. The seriousness of this new crack is you don't need the Digidesign hardware like we did with TDMthing. The other seriousness is that it was done on the "beloved perfect Mac", which has always been promoted as "secure" from this sort of thing. After all, many still seem to agree with the myth that hacks are done on PC only, and not our beloved perfect Macs.

When TDMthing was introduced, Digidesign went on a "police the internet" effort and tirade. They made sure all mention and posts of the TDMthing patch was removed from the most popular audio forums of that time, such as Gearslutz etc. Even though no one was posting download links and only discussing the pro and cons, Digidesign still tried to "police the internet". They even banned DUC members on the spot from simply mentioning "TDMthing".

Fast forward 7 years and we find history repeating itself. But this time, we are now in a different era with blogs, twitter, digg, facebook, YouTube, social news sites etc. I applaud Russ and give him a big standing ovation for having the balls to stand up and give us a place to discuss the pros and cons of this serious implication, without the psychotic censorship of Avid and the paranoia fear they created with the owners of other forums many years ago the last time this happened with the TDMthing patch.

The big irony of this very post is that we can even discuss the history and past implications of the TDMthing patch, and not worry about the psychotic paranoia and censorship by Avid. They have screwed over their users for way too long and it's finally come back at them. They have NEVER BEEN "sweetness and light".

Thank you Russ for giving us a place to discuss this free from censorship and fear. These are mere discussions and no one is doing any harm.

Long live the 001!

...and long live TDMthing, which has continued to give the 001 extended life long after Digidesign prematurely discontinued it. This time, the mere mention of it doesn't get censored, or get one banned.

I own LE with complete toolkit and digi 003... so spent some money and still am not able to
edit sounds that are recorded 192 khz.

I need this function.... with this I simply could do this....
makes me think....

* ADC is hardware based
* TDM only plug-ins will not run
* The Hardware emulator will add latency
* This hack is very unstable
* NO SUPPORT
No serious user is going to mess with it
In the past protools is always about stability sure logic pro can do 10000 tracks but it's flakey and not as stable a PTHD

This hack is claiming 10,000 voices in reality it's only 128 so PTDH will still do more.
And it's buggy as hell so serious user is going to take chances with it.

@ Paul T

You can argue functionality and usability but my "obsolete" [*] 001 and mbox differ with your argument. There is joy on seen my "old" hardware being put back into use.

[*] AVID decided my investment on their hardware did not meet the requirements of the investment on their new shinny software and I (in a way) was forced into buying a piece of hardware I had no need. I know, AVID did not put a gun on me. But I, like thousands of users, wanted the software's new functionality and If I wanted to keep using PT I had no other choice but to "upgrade" my hardware. Today.... I've been given a choice!

The choice to use my old hardware, the choice to be mobile without the need of bulky hardware, the choice of using my own choice of hardware, the choice to keep my current setup and ignore this "unlocked" release.

AVID if you are reading, I'm a loyal user of yours. A fan truly. All I ask of you is for you to give me choices and allow me to make my own, specially when it comes down to hardware. I and repeat ,I, want to decide when is the time to get a new card. Perhaps one made by you or perhaps the one my "sensitive" ears decide !

@ Paul T:

Don't forget that the Mix Bus is also handled by HD hardware, meaning that the Mix Bus in the k has been coded (or stolen) by the team of hackers.

@ Everyone else:

As for the 10000 voices thing. It may well be that genuine HD software has a theoretical limit of 10000 voices, but the hardware cannot process anywhere near that amount and allow processing headroom for plugins etc. Digi have (by and large) a good reputation for reliability and one of the ways they built that rep is by playing safe and leaving plenty of headroom.

It may well be that the 128 voice limit of an HD card is real, not a cynical ploy.

Anyway. In my opinion, the k is worthless. The HD k is not HD and MP is way under-specced in comparison to other k'd DAWs. I can't see why anyone would want them other than the MP user who wants more voices.

None of this is going to make the slightest dent in Avid hardware sales, and that's where the profit lies.

At people who are saying the crack is worthless, it isn't about whether it works well or not. It's the fact avid lying about the actual limits of their DAW so they can gain money by selling you more hardware you don't actually need. I guess that's the whole point that these hackers/crackers are trying to make.

You can if you prefer stick your head in the sand and pretend the reason they add these limits is because of stability etc, but the truth is every time you buy another accel card because your voices are hitting the roof you're getting scammed by the AVID/Digi fatcats.

The truth hurts doesn't it?

Pro Tools is a professional tool. If you are actually earning an income from audio ( post or music ) there it costs you to run a business. Pro Tools is a part of that for me. I can tell you that I have no problem in not paying the power bill for an SSL anymore. Pro Tool is more affordable & more flexible.
Most people dancing on the grave of Avid or Pro Tools are probably not actually doing commercial work. that's cool, but if you are trying to complete a project you need to rely on your staff & tools.

I don't need 10000 tracks - 192 is fine most of the time.
I love Apple computers because they work
Pro Tools turns up for work every day
There isn't a viable replacement our there at the moment in my opinion. sure there are lots of interesting other DAWs, including many commercial & open source ones, but I know I can send a session anywhere in the world & it will open & sound the same, the automation will still be there, it will work on a Mac and PC etc..

back to working on tunes

Henry

As was mentioned, Pro Tools is a professional tool. As with all software and hardware, it has its bugs, but in my 15 years + experience it has proven to be the most reliable DAW on the market and I know that what I am buying is tested and true. The fact that it has become a standard in the recording industry is also of great value to me personally. These things come at a price, and the people at Avid need to set up a pricing structure in order to make a buck.
LE has a pretty transparent pricing structure, you know what you are getting for example when you buy an upgrade such as one of the toolkits: essentially the license to use certain functions.
With regard to HD, things are a little different. If in fact this 'crack' proves to be stable with higher track counts, it means that the folks at Avid and formerly Digidesign have been misleading with their marketing. Hopefully this news will bring some long awaited improvements in the HD line in the way of software development and value.

The Avid PT HD Scam wrote:
Wait a minute. 10,000 voices are unlocked!! WTF!! So here we are all these years going out and buying HD Accel cards to get more voices, and it turns out it's nothing but artificial crippling just to make us purchase more of their overpriced cards!! I'm pissed! What a scam!

It is just business - nothing personal!

Reaper will win over PT in few years time. You just watch. A flurry of frustrated PT(HD!) users are coming to Reaper on a constant basis, and after some adjusting, THEY ARE STAYING!

Reaper can be made to look like PT. Actions can be changed to mirror those of PT. If there aren't some actions, you can coax a macro or script which will do it, or write an extension if you're a programmer or you know one. You can change cursors. You can reorder menus! It has PDC. And there is one die-hard PT user which is making all the changes to mirror PT to Reaper. ReaTools. It will happen (with some things still needing to be included from Cockos' side). You just watch.

Oh, and Kontakt is a much, much better sampler than Structure.

AVID is slowly dying a very painful death. And there's no magical potion which can heal that old machinery. Only stupid users paying too much cash for hardware which they are led into believing that they need. They can screw themselves. That's karma for you.

I think 10000 people should go into AVID and all fart on them. One fart per unleashed voice. That would really show them! grr Give me a refund, oh yeah and I'm sick of my HD crashing, one more fart each for that. 10000 + 10000 = 20000 farts total.

Hi guys!

Here's my opinion: I do not like Avid because of their policy of acquiring other companies and moving them into the Avid walled garden. I am still furious that they did not let Wizoo release a fix for the Wizooverb multicore bug, and I have not purchased anything from any Avid company since that time. And I have no plans on doing so. Hopefully, Avid 's market performance will become so poor that they will be forced to sell off parts of their business and those parts will be bought by other entities who will have a different approach than Avid's. But you know, even if their approach is the same, I will be glad to see Avid do badly.

The group responsible for cracking ProTools M-Powered and HD has just released drivers supporting external interfaces (firewire/USB).

Oh, boo hoo. I don't feel sorry for them one bit. They are known for software but the majority of their income is from hardware sales. Apple has been doing a version of this for their entire existence. It is most noticeable now because they are running on intel chips. the ONLY reason I would ever buy an Apple computer is to run OS. I don't really care what my computer looks like as long as it runs well and is, in my eyes, a "value". So am I forced to pay 3 times the price of a Windows PC just to have Mac OS?

Nope. Hackintosh.

Bend over Avid and Apple... let the pirates rape you for a change.

I've been using PT since v3. Year after year the same problems, the same PT tech on the other end of the line with the same sorry ass "we've never heard of that before" or "we're not a hardware company". Really? Avid, you suck. For once why don't you come clean and give us back what you've been taking for years. Namely: a system that works and, last but not least .......... RESPECT.