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Avid, Berklee School of Music and the John Lennon Bus celebrate with the Tipitina's Foundation at "Instruments A Comin'" 2012

Mark Williams — Fri, 04 May 2012 16:53:00 GMT

Image Courtesy of the Tipitina's Foundation

Avid, the Berklee School of Music and the John Lennon Bus were all on hand to celebrate and educate at Tipitina’s “Instruments A Comin’” fund-raising event in New Orleans on Monday, April 30th. The event was held at Tipitina’s uptown New Orleans music venue on the first night of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and featured incredible performances by some of New Orleans most famous hometown heroes including Galactic, Trombone Shorty, the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, and the legendary Neville Brothers that kept the crowd on their feet till the wee hours.

The Tipitina's Foundation’s “Instruments A Comin’” annual benefit concert, silent auction, cultural fair, and block party was established eleven years ago to raise money for local student musicians, and has provided more than $2 million worth of musical instruments to date, assisting more than 70 school marching bands and after-school music programs, benefitting thousands of young musicians.

Avid and the Berklee School of music marked the occasion with a donation of recording, composition, and music creation equipment to the Tipitina’s Internship Program. Under the artistic direction of Donald Harrison Jr. the Tipitina's Internship program is an after-school jazz performance and digital recording program for ages 12 through 19. Now in its eighth year, the program is part of the Berklee City Network and focuses on instrumental performance, music theory, recording and general academic tutoring, and creates positive change in the lives of young New Orleans musicians.

“Avid is thrilled to support the Tipitina's Foundation and its partner, the Berklee City Music Network. Both are deeply committed to bringing music to the children of New Orleans and with their efforts are making a big impact,” said Lee Whitmore, Ed.D., Avid Director, Segment Marketing. “We’re so excited to mark this incredible "Instruments a Comin'" event with the donation of a complete Pro Tools recording system including Artist Series controllers, an M-Audio keyboard and a copy of Sibelius 7. I can't wait to come back to hear the amazing music students will create and record."

Berklee City Music is a nonprofit education program that harnesses the energy of contemporary music to reach underserved 4th to 12th graders all across the country. Students dedicate themselves to building their musical talent, their self-confidence and, in the long run, the strength of their community.

“Berklee is proud to support initiatives by our City Music Network member Tipitina's Foundation who are grooming the next generation of musicians, innovators and leaders,” added David Mash. Senior Vice President for Innovation, Strategy, and Technology, Berklee College of Music.. “Tipitina's commitment to enriching the New Orleans community will have a lasting effect on the teachers and students of tomorrow. Berklee is pleased to continue to leverage our relationships with strong partners like Avid, who is a pioneer in providing solutions for music creation and production, and by working together on projects such as these, we can truly make a positive impact on the lives of children.“

“I must say that Avid's support of the Tipitina's Foundation will help us preserve New Orleans' irreplaceable music community,” concluded Kim Katner, Managing Director, Tipitina’s Foundation. “The equipment and software fill a large need the Internship Program has for audio production tools, and it represents a wonderful investment in the music, culture and people of New Orleans.”

And wherever there are kids, music, and good times, be sure to keep an eye out for the John Lennon Tour Bus – and as fortune would have it the Bus was able to join in the festivities at “instruments a Comin’”. The John Lennon Educational Tour Bus is a state-of-the-art mobile audio and HD video recording and production facility. In its fifteenth year, with the very newest technology and gear, the Bus continues to be dedicated to providing young people with tours of the studios and participation in free songwriting and multimedia production workshops. The Bus offered tours during the event, and also made several stops in New Orleans, including working with the O. Perry High School jazz band “The Chosen Ones,. With sousaphones, trombones, trumpets and southern soaked vocals, the students had a great time writing and recording an original tune on the bus and learning about the power of Pro Tools. Check out the great video of the stop below.

Avid Releases Latest Version of Sibelius First; The Fastest, Easiest Way to Write and Share Music

Mark Williams — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:30:00 GMT

Avid today announced the release of Sibelius First, the easiest and most intuitive way for aspiring composers, songwriters, arrangers and students to write and share music.

Sibelius First combines the Sibelius Student and Sibelius First notation products into a single easy-to-use, powerful, and fun music composition tool. The new Sibelius First takes advantage of the features introduced by Avid’s Sibelius 7, including a task-oriented UI specifically designed to guide you through the creative process, exceptional playback and sound quality, 64-bit technology and support for the latest operating systems—plus new video export functionality, online publishing, and direct sharing to YouTube, SoundCloud, and Facebook, and more.

Sibelius First’s standout features include:

- Easy-to-use interface: Using Sibelius First is faster and easier than ever, thanks to a refined, task-oriented user interface that makes it possible to get great results without prior experience

- Enter notes the way you want: Choose from scanning, transcribing, or MIDI import to quickly get your ideas into Sibelius First—now with full MusicXML interchange for transferring your music into and out of other applications

- Exclusive Sound Library: Includes a premium sound library so you can hear your compositions played back in amazing detail on high-quality sampled instruments, and produce better quality exports

- Full 64-bit support: Unlock the full power of your 64-bit computer, and directly address more than 4GB of RAM

- Smart tools: no engraving or notation expertise required to get great results. Magnetic layout and dynamic parts make it easy to produce and tailor your scores to suit musicians of all kinds

- Take your scores on the go: Sibelius First scores can be added to the score library on the Avid Scorch app (sold separately)

- Exciting new social media and video sharing options: Users can easily export compositions as videos and publish their work to social media websites (YouTube, SoundCloud, Facebook) along with traditional print, email, or audio exports

For a deep dive into all the new features, check out this wonderful blog post from Avid's Daniel Spreadbury over at the SibeliusBlog.

New innovative design, incredible included sounds and comprehensive sharing options make Sibelius First the premiere solution for beginning notation and composition.  Sibelius First software is available now for $119.99 USD and multi-seat 5 packs are available for $299.99. Current Sibelius First and Sibelius Student customers may take advantage of upgrade options for $39.99. For purchasing inquiries, please visit the Sibelius Store.

NBC Olympics Chooses Avid for Sixth Consecutive Broadcast of Olympic Games

AlissaV — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Another exciting morning at NAB where we’re excited to announce that we will deploy the most comprehensive Avid workflow in the history of NBC Olympics, a division of the NBC Sports Group to support its coverage of the 2012 Olympic Games taking place in London, England, July 27-August 12, 2012.

With just 100 days to go until the Summer games begin, this marks NBC’s Olympics division’s and Avid's sixth consecutive Summer or Winter Games working together, NBC’s Olympics division’s broadcast facility will house employees responsible for delivering 17 consecutive days of Olympic coverage. At the heart of this massive undertaking is the Avid Interplay Media Asset Management (MAM) system. Serving in conjunction with third party vendors, SONY and Harmonic, the Interplay MAM system will be used to create two simultaneous feeds for use in London and at NBC’s Olympics division’s headquarters in New York City.

All of the video content’s metadata, including all athletic content, will be ingested directly from

Sony’s XDCam Station into Avid’s Interplay MAM system and, once there, replicated from London to New York using Harmonic’s MediaGrid and ProCast solutions. In New York, media coming from Interplay MAM will be used by more than 40 users to create highlights for web distribution. London-based users and editors will get immediate access to Olympic footage, which can then be transferred from Interplay MAM to Avid’s ISIS® shared storage for use in multi-user, simultaneous production across multiple networks and news feeds.

HD nonlinear edit suites in London’s International Broadcast Center (IBC) are outfitted with seven Avid Symphony and 26 Media Compose systems for high-end editing and 5.1 surround sound. The systems will be connected to Avid ISIS shared storage and Avid Interplay production asset management systems. Users will be able to quickly browse the Interplay MAM proxy and transfer material faster than real-time for use in Symphony and Media Composer editing software applications. AirSpeed® 5000 is used in conjunction with ISIS 7000 to create turnkey production islands at the Olympic venues, including gymnastics, swimming, diving, and track and field.

For more information please visit: http://bit.ly/IKVIA5

Avid Announces New EUCON Partners at NAB 2012

Mark Williams — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 01:19:00 GMT

More exciting news to share with you from the show floor at NAB 2012. This week Avid announced that content creators will be able to use Avid Artist Series controllers to control the recording, editing, and mixing features of the upcoming release of Adobe® Audition® CS6 software, the transport and color grading features of Digital Vision® Phoenix® and the live color and image definition features of Pomfort® LiveGrade® via native support for Avid’s EUCON™ Ethernet control protocol. Avid is committed to driving openness across the industry, and today’s announcement adds key professional software solutions to a list of EUCON supported titles from industry leading companies like Autodesk, Blackmagic Design, RED, and Steinberg.

“This week's announcement demonstrates how far Avid has come in developing an open ecosystem of third-party workflows based around the EUCON Protocol,” said Martin Kloiber, vice president of products and solutions at Avid. “We remain focused on driving the interoperability of our audio and video solutions, and we are proud to work with industry leaders like Adobe, Digital Vision and Pomfort in the pursuit of that vision. Our expanded partnerships enable us to provide creative professionals with deep, integrated control over their favorite applications and flexible workflows to do their best work.”

These new partnerships validate Avid’s efforts to provide customers with open solutions that work with a range of products in the content creation ecosystem, delivering highly responsive tactile control of many of the world’s leading creative applications. Compact and portable enough to fit into any setup, Avid's Artist Series controllers combine best-in-class industrial design, a highly responsive feel, and extensive functionality.

“We're excited to have fully integrated EUCON support into Adobe Audition CS6," says Colin Stefani, senior manager, professional video at Adobe. "The quality and flexibility of the Avid Artist Series controllers is a perfect match for the advanced feature set of Adobe Audition CS6. Whether recording, mixing, or performing audio restoration, the combination of these powerful solutions can really help make your audio and video productions sound their best."

EUCON is Avid’s open, high-speed Ethernet control protocol that allows Avid Artist Series control surfaces and other consoles and controllers to connect to a variety of third party creative audio and video software solutions, delivering deep, integrated control over multiple applications and workstations, resulting in increased efficiencies and cost-effective workflow expansions. EUCON is currently supported by a wide cross section of Macintosh- and Windows-based applications.

"Excellent quality and a competitive price make the Artist Color grading panel the perfect partner for the use of LiveGrade on-set,” adds Patrick Renner, managing director at Pomfort. "Our users like the direct interaction with the image they get with our software products - and Artist Color supports this with professional, physical controls."

“This will be an exciting NAB for Digital Vision," concludes Torbjörn Dyrvold, Digital Vision’s Phoenix & DVO Product Manager. "Together with the introduction of our new video restoration system for broadcast and archival material, we are also showing the integration of the Avid Artist panel into Phoenix Finish, our high end film and video restoration and mastering system. We looked at several alternatives and chose the Avid Artist Color panel as it provides an economic and compact solution for controlling our advanced color tools, allowing the Phoenix users to operate the system with ease and speed."

Stop by the Avid booth (#SU902) to see EUCON in action, and congratulations to our new partners on their announcements

The Latest Product News from Avid at NAB 2012 – Giving Customers the Freedom to Create Content Anywhere and Distribute Everywhere

AlissaV — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 16:00:00 GMT

It’s been an exciting week so far at NAB 2012 with several big news announcements issued at the show. On Sunday, during our global press event, we announced the largest showcase of integrated media production technology we’ve ever presented at NAB. We’re featuring completely new and upgraded solutions for advanced asset-based workflows spanning distributed production, multi-platform distribution, server and storage, and broadcast graphics, demonstrating how customers in news, sports, TV, and post-production can prepare for the demands of the future.

Our new asset-based workflow solutions announced at NAB 2012 include:

Interplay Sphere

Gives broadcast news professionals the ability to acquire, access, edit and finish stories from anywhere, anytime. Leveraging a cloud-based architecture, applications like Media Composer and NewsCutter will give contributors the freedom to work in a completely distributed environment that spans multiple locations and time zones. For more information, click here.

Multi-Platform Distribution (MPD)

To address the rising demands of multi-screen consumption, Avid’s new MPD solution streamlines and enhances the process for journalists and editors who are creating and distributing content across multiple traditional, digital, and social platforms. For more information about MPD click here.

The new Avid ISIS^® 2000 near-line storage solution works across multiple Avid Interplay installations to provide search, browse, access, and management, extending production storage; the Avid ISIS 7000 v4.0 effectively doubles its storage capacity with the new i4000 blade; and the next generation AirSpeed^® 5000 video server features new codec flexibility with Avid DNxHD^® playback included in HD versions. For more information click here.

Avid Motion Graphics
Gives enterprises the ability to create stunning visual imagery, get it quickly and easily to air, and build strong brand recognition with an advanced real-time 2D/3D rendering engine, accelerated by the latest GPU and I/O technology. For more information click here.

Avid at NAB 2012 in the News

Following the announcements, media were quick to offer their take on the news. Check out what The Hollywood Reporter, Broadcasting and Cable, Sports Video Group , Studio Daily and Variety have to say about Avid and our latest solutions.

Stay tuned for more news coming this week from the show floor ….

Avid Studio for iPad wins PC Magazine’s “Editors’ Choice”

AlissaV — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

We’re pleased to report that in PC Magazine’s recent review of video editing applications for the iPad, Avid Studio for iPad was awarded Editors’ Choice. Michael Muchmore takes the application through its paces and provides readers with his comments on the interface, basic editing capabilities as well as calling out the App’s montage capability as “what really sets Avid Studio apart.” For all of the detail, check out the full review here or check out a few of the comments below.

“Its [Avid Studio] sophisticated montage capability is what really sets Avid Studio apart when it comes to video editing on the iPad. You can simply drag one clip on top of another to overlay it, and then pinch to resize and rotate the resulting picture-in-picture. Avid also supplies 15 presets that can animate the overlaid video(s); some also add artistic backgrounds.”

“My 1 minute 5 second test movie with just one cross-dissolve transition took Avid Studio just 54 seconds to output to 720p, better than iMovie's 58 seconds, and far better than ReelDirector's more than 15 minutes.”

“ . . . if you want the most control, power, and ease-of-use in your iPad video editing project, Avid Studio is the way to go, which is why it's our Editors' Choice.”

Have you tried Avid Studio for iPad yet? For more information about the Avid Studio for iPad App and where to download visit here. “You can also share your experiences and connect with Avid home video editing experts on our Avid Studio community on Facebook (http://facebook.com/AvidStudio). Also, for tutorials see Avid Studio on YouTube (http://www.avid.com/ipadvideos).

Avid Announces NAB 2012 Technology Demonstrations, Customer Presentations and Live Webcast

AlissaV — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 08:00:00 GMT

As we count down the days to NAB 2012, we’re excited to share our lineup for the show, which includes presentations from renowned customers and the largest array of new product announcements from Avid at NAB in more than a decade. Additionally, we’ll be offering overviews of our recently released solutions including Pro Tools® 10, Media Composer® 6 and Avid Interplay® Media Asset Manager (MAM) 4. Follow the news as it happens and see which customers will join us on the main stage at the show.

Get Avid News Live on Sunday, April 15, 2012

We’re excited to host a live press event and simultaneous webcast to announce our latest solutions on Sunday, April 15 at 4:00 p.m. PT. A live online Q&A session with Avid experts will immediately follow the webcast. To participate, visit http://www.avid.com/nab and select the registration option.]

Technology Demonstrations

If you’re able to join us at the show, come visit us in the South Hall at Booth SU902 to see technology demonstrations highlighting integrated news, sports, and TV production workflows that enable users to create amazing content and business value. We’ll also feature demonstrations of our industry-leading creative tools, including Symphony 6, Media Composer 6, Pro Tools 10, Avid DS, ICON, and System 5 mixing consoles for broadcast and post production. Avid solutions will also be showcased in more than 60 Avid Partner Booths, reinforcing our commitment to open, collaborative workflows.

Avid Customers to Share their experiences at NAB 2012

We’re thrilled to have several of our customers join us to share their stories at the show. Customer presentations on the main stage in our booth (SU902) will include the following guest speakers:

-- Morgan Spurlock (Comic-Con Episode Four: A Fan’s Hope, Failure Club, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, A Day in the Life, Super Size Me)

-- Eddie Hamilton (X-Men: First Class, Kick-Ass, Resident Evil: Apocalypse)

-- BellMedia, Matthew Sherman and Michael Nunan

-- Discovery, Randall Rike

-- Person of Interest, Scott Weber and Keith Rogers from the Audio Team; and Joshua Levey, associate producer, and Ryan Malanaphy, assistant editor from the Picture Editorial Team

-- San Francisco Giants, Paul Hodges, Brad Martens, Chris Gargano

Avid will also be on hand at several NAB 2012 events including the following:

Avid and the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus will come together outside NAB Central Hall 5 entrance, offering public tours on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of the state-of-the art mobile studio that visits schools, festivals and industry events all over the U.S. Documentary film maker Morgan Spurlock will be on board for a live stream event on April 17 at 5pm PDT. Outfitted with Avid’s latest audio and video offerings, including Media Composer 6, Pro Tools 10 and the new Pro Tools|HDX System, the John Lennon Bus is a self-contained professional recording studio and post facility dedicated to providing students of all ages with free hands on opportunities to make music and produce professional video projects

-- MediaMotion Ball, Monte Carlo Resort & Casino, April 16, 5:30- 10:30 p.m. PDT

-- Eleventh Annual Las Vegas SuperMeet, New Tropicana Hotel, April 17, 4:00-11:00 p.m. PDT

For more information and to stay connected with Avid at the show or online at NAB 2012:

-- Visit the Avid at Booth #SU902, Las Vegas Convention Center -- April 16-19, 2012

-- Visit Avid.com/NAB2012 for more details on session times, live webcast information and information about Avid at NAB 2012.

-- For daily updates during the show, check Avid’s "Industry Buzz" blog, and follow Avid on Twitter: @Avid, and Facebook: http://www.avid.com/facebook.

. . . And the Awards Go To . . .

AlissaV — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Sunday evening marked the exciting conclusion of the winter awards season, and today Avid congratulates its many customers who were recognized as award nominees and winners at the Oscar®, GRAMMY®, and ACE Eddie Awards, collectively the world’s most prestigious ceremonies that honor music, film and television industry professionals. Avid and its customers were also recognized for their contributions to the craft of sound mixing in films and television at the 48^th Annual Cinema Audio Society Awards.

The 54th Annual Grammy Awards kicked things off on February 12, 2012, honoring dozens of our customers for their contributions and achievements in music and the recording arts. Artists, producers and engineers using Avid's audio solutions took home awards for Record and Song of the Year, as well as Producer of the Year, Best New Artist, and Pop, Alternative, R&B, Rap, Dance and Country Albums of the Year. Honored albums powered by Avid Pro Tools included Adele's 21, Kanye West's My Dark Twisted Fantasy, Chris Brown's F.A.M.E., Lady Antebellum's Own the Night and Bon Iver's Bon Iver.

At the 48th Annual Cinema Audio Society Awards, held on February 28, 2012, again our customers were honored for their work on Hugo, in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Motion Picture and Boardwalk Empire in the category of Outstanding Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Television Series—both mixed on a System 5 digital audio console at Soundtrack NY. In addition, Pro Tools 10 received the CAS Technical Achievement Award for Post Production.

The 62^nd Annual ACE Eddie Awards were also held on February 18, 2012, recognizing the most accomplished editors in television and film. Avid customers honored by the American Cinema Editors during the ceremony include: The Artist (Best Edited Feature Film – Comedy or Musical); Freedom Riders (Best Edited Documentary); Cinema Verite (Best Edited Miniseries or Motion Picture for Television); Breaking Bad: “Face Off” (Best Edited One-Hour Series for Commercial Television); Curb your Enthusiasm: “Palestinian Chicken” (Best Edited Half-Hour Series for Television); The Descendants (Best Edited Feature Film - Dramatic); Rango (Best Edited Animated Feature Film). Joel Cox, A.C.E., (Lifetime Achievement Award).

Heading into the 84th Annual Academy Awards on Sunday, February 26, 2012, Avid customers were well represented—more than 40 were nominated for an Oscar. Eight out of the nine films nominated for best picture used Avid audio or video solutions, including—The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Hugo, Moneyball, The Help, Tree of Life and War Horse. During the ceremony, The Artist, which was edited using Avid Media Composer, was named the winner in the Best Picture category, and customers also took home awards in the Animated Feature Film, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing categories.

Avid was also interviewed by some of the local Boston media to share in our excitement surrounding the highly-anticipated event. Check out: WCVB-TV Boston - Local Company Has Oscar Dreams.

Congratulations again to all of our customers on their creative achievements. As another season comes to a close and with the New Year already in full swing, we can’t wait to see how all of you will use Media Composer®, Pro Tools® and Sibelius® software and more to create the most prestigious, award-winning productions, and most loved media in the world.

Media Composer 6 Reviews – DV, Macworld UK, Studio Daily and more . . .

AlissaV — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:00:00 GMT

Positive reviews have been coming in for Media Composer 6, so we wanted to provide our Buzz readers with a roundup of the recent coverage that has appeared on DV, Imagine News, Macworld UK, Studio Daily and Tej’s Tech Blog. Check them out to get first-hand accounts about working with the newest updates – including the new 64-bit architecture, modern tabbed interface, Avid Open I/O, DNxHD 444, new stereoscopic 3D workflows, among others. Following are some brief excerpts on what they had to say:

-- Featured in the February issue of DV, Oliver Peters concludes—“Avid Media Composer 6, Symphony 6 and NewsCutter 10 are the real deal for professional editors who need a powerful application that can tackle every level of post. It's not an attempt to ’re-imagine‘ 100 years of editing. It's a product designed to let you be instantly productive with a skill set honed through experience. Film and documentary editors will appreciate that the optional ScriptSync and PhraseFind modules can still be used. SAN support is still the best in the business, whether you are running stations on Avid ISIS or a third-party solution like Facilis Technology TerraBlock.” Oliver gives the software a four diamond rating and you can read the full review here.

-- Scott Simmons put Media Composer 6 software through its paces for Studio Daily, providing readers with a detailed look at several key features, including the new interface, and Avid Marketplace. The review summary notes, “What’s Cool: Thanks to 64-bit, sluggishness and error messages should be a thing of the past; Tabbed bins make for a much better way to organize bin clutter; full third-party hardware support; better stereoscopic editing.” Overall he gives the software a rating of Sweet. Read the full review here.

-- Tej Babra reviewed Media Composer 6 software for Tej’s Tech Blog, covering the interface, Avid Marketplace, surround sound mixing as well as comments on color correction enhancements and the Avid Artist Color compact control surface for color grading. In the conclusion he notes, “Avid Media Composer 6 is absolutely the best NLE I have used to date. Avid continues to push the boundaries and set new standards for tools provided to professional editors. If you have done so yet, I highly recommend upgrading, purchasing or running out and getting a copy of Avid Media Composer 6. Avid just raised the bar again!” Check out Tej’s article article here. In addition, Tej recently contributed an in-depth Media Composer 6 overview for Phillip Bloom , which you can check out here.

-- Duncan Evans tests out Media Composer 6 software for Macworld UK. He gives the software a four star rating and concludes, “Avid has cleverly avoided taking any risks with its core users by providing a 64-bit architecture base for faster rendering, opening up the hardware side and streamlining the interface. For pro-level direct editing of footage using a variety of input sources Media Composer is still the best in the business.” Check out the full review here.

-- Loren Miller reviews Media Composer 6 software for Imagine News, noting that the new features will please veteran users, those returning from FCP and those in school. Overall he concludes that Media Composer 6, “is a real feast.” For the full review, click here and head to page 12.

Now that you’ve read the reviews, download our free 30day, full-featured Media Composer trial. You can also read more about its full capabilities at http://www.avid.com/mc. In addition, if you’re new to Media Composer or simply returning after some time away, be sure to join our “Getting Started Fast” community. There you can get assistance, answers, and insights from Avid experts to start editing with Media Composer right away.

Avid garners six awards at NAMM 2012

Mark Williams — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 08:37:00 GMT

Avid took home six awards at the 2012 NAMM Show, with "Best Of" designations being awarded to a range of Avid's recording, composing, and live sound solutions. Pro Tools 9, Pro Tools HD Native, Sibelius 7 and VENUE 2.9 all took home industry honors, and were recognized by a cross section of industry professionals representing manufacturers, customers, editors, and channel partners.

On Wednesday January 18, the evening before NAMM 2012 kicked off, Avid received the prestigious Electronic Musician 2011 Editor's Choice Award for Pro Tools 9. Dubbed the "Plays Well With Others" award, we can't argue with the fact that the open hardware architecture introduced by Pro Tools 9 was a huge hit with our users, both old and new.

On Friday morning, January 20, we were proud to receive the coveted 2012 Sound on Sound Award for Pro Tools 9. Voted "Best DAW" in their reader's choice poll, the power and performance of Pro Tools 9 again proved to resonate, this time with the discerning professional audience Sound on Sound has cultivated over the years.

That evening, Avid was honored with three 2012 TEC Awards from the TEC Foundation for Excellence in Audio, the premier music industry trade association. Pro Tools HD Native won in the Computer Audio Hardware Category, Pro Tools 9 in Workstation Technology, and VENUE 2.9 in Sound Reinforcement Technology. Avid's solutions again were found to deliver best in class performance and power were recognized as the leaders in their very competitive market categories.

And on Saturday, January 21, Avid Sibelius 7 was awarded the Software Line of the Year Award from Music Merchandise Retailer (MMR). Avid's premier composition software has always been the top choice of professionals and educators, and knowing that the line is a top choice amongst our channel partners mean's we're definitely doing something right.

We are honored to be on the receiving end of so much recognition. We thank the editors, business partners, and most of all our customers for all the honors. Your success is what drives us everyday.