In the Production Expert 10th Anniversary Christmas Competition we offered the chance to win a one-year subscription For Pro Tools HD Standalone software worth $999 as one of over 30 great prizes on offer worth over $30,000 in total.

The competition closed on December 31st 2018 and the winner is Kevin Dallas.

Kevin Dallas is a freelance Sound specialist based in Scotland with worldwide horizons. Kevin and his post production sound facility, Dallas Dubbing, use Pro Tools every single day to create soundscapes for award-winning documentaries, and Children’s programming.

With over 10 years of sound design, mixing, recording and editing experience, Kevin trained with the best in the business at the BBC, branching out on his own to create the successful Dallas Dubbing, creating bespoke sound solutions for each project, from the BAFTA winning Scotland ’78 to the film festival hit documentary Magnetic Mountains.

Kevin has built his own state of the art sound studio, affectionately called the Dubshakk…it’s where the magic happens, with a little help from Pro Tools and his faithful Yorkie #dubbingdog.

Kevin says “Winning the Pro Tools Ultimate Subscription is fantastic. It will allow me to continue using Pro Tools daily and the money saved will go towards an additional control surface. My favourite Pro Tools feature that often goes unremarked is that just about any session can run on a laptop with headphones and then be taken to a large mixing stage with DSP and large format console without any issue. This flexibility is an absolute winner in today’s Post Production environment”.

What Is The Avid Pro Tools HD Standalone Software Subscription?

There are two ways to buy Pro Tools software...

• Buy a perpetual license, which will always work, and then take out an upgrade plan so you always have the latest version.

• OR

• Buy a rental subscription plan which includes an upgrade plan which will only continue to work as long as you pay the rental subscription fee.

What's Included?

• Software/plug-in installers and user guides

• 1 GB Collaboration Cloud Storage

• 2 GB high-quality loop library

• 60 Virtual Instruments & Effect Plug-ins

• 25 bonus plug-ins, including all Pro Series plug-ins, Space, Stompbox Emulations and Eleven

• ExpertPlus support through Avid Customer Care

There has been some discussions about the cost of the Pro Tools HD Standalone software at $2499 or to be able to rent it for $999 per year, so I thought it would be helpful to do some analysis over 3, and 5 years to see how the costs plan out.

A Comparison Of Rental With Perpetual & Upgrade Plan Over 3 Years

After 3 years it is still cheaper to rent the Pro Tools HD Software rather than buy a perpetual license with an ongoing upgrade plan saving $8.33 per month.

The breakeven point is around 4 years. After 5 years the scales tip the other way and it becomes cheaper to buy the perpetual license with an upgrade/support plan, as you save $15 per month.

But that isn't the only criteria.  Rental is good for shorter periods and with the rental option you do know exactly where you are and it is the same amount every month, with the Perpetual/upgrade plan option you have a larger outlay at the start - $2499 and then payments of $399 at the start of each subsequent year. But you can plan for either model and build those into your cashflow projections. 

Consider Cap-Ex or Op-Ex

For those bigger facilities managing budgets, you will know exactly where you stand. You can choose whether to fund it from capital expenditure with the perpetual route or operational expenditure with the rental subscription route.

For smaller, one person operations, going down the rental option means it is an operational expense and can be recharged to the client.

Why Get The Pro Tools HD Standalone Software?

The standalone version of Pro Tools HD introduced at v12.6 enables you to get all the advantages of the HSD software like surround and immersive audio track formats without having the expense of the Pro Tools HD hardware. As long as you have an interface with enough I/O for your needs then you are good to go.

See What Else You Can Win?

If you would like to win a prize like the Avid Pro Tools 2018 Perpetual License and additional 12 months support courtesy Of RSPE Audio Solutions Worth $699 then go over to our Win Page and see what prizes we have on offer.