What planet do Adobe live on?

No that is never going to happen - Adobe have to make money to stay alive - Cockos on the other hand don't.

It's a bit like me - I make money doing other things which allows me to run a studio and write software for others to hack and give a way for free.

BTW Reaper has been hacked as well!
You can get one which doesn't have the 5 sec nag screen - so nothing is free from being hacked - not even them or me - pirate wankers!

Having my DAW online hasn't been a problem for me for many years now. Years ago I did have a problem with Norton Anti-Virus conflicting with my Cool Edit program. Once I got rid of Norton, all my headaches went away. So now fast forward to 2011, and I have Windows 7 and Microsoft's Security Essentials, and have had zero virus problems and no conflicts with CS 5.5. Times have changed and having a DAW online ain't such a bad thing anymore.

By the way, I am enjoying my CS 5.5 very much thank you.

What are you using it for?

The "Cockos" people seem to be doing ok despite releasing Reaper with no copy protection at all, and simply relying on people's honesty to pay. It doesn't need an internet connection to run or for authorisation.  It doesn't even need to be installed on a computer (ie it can be simply copied onto a portable drive or USB stick and run from there).  And the download isn't bloated by copy protection stuff so it's still tiny (under 5MB I think for Windows 32 bit), thus making frequent updates no big deal to download.   

But the chances of Adobe ever following that model are zero, I'm afraid.

I agree.  Cockos can do that because people think they're small and real, and that's why Reaper's leading edge.  But trust often finds it difficult to extend as far as a big company's image, and that's why Adobe isn't leading edge.  I mean, I'm pretty committed to Audition, and I still wonder how much of my upgrade money goes to sustaining the size of Adobe.  My $99.   

But to return to an earlier topic, I think internet connection's required for a lot of music making purchases these days.  It's like credit cards and cellphones - it's more difficult to do it without them, do it a different way. 

I reluctantly have to agree that it's not so important to have a "clean" DAW anymore.  The machine I now use for recording and mixing now has normal internet access including anti virus software.  However, all this is totally shut down when I'm doing something important and I never seem to have any problems.  Doing simple stuff, I just stay online.

Like Steve, I spend a lot of my time transferring my work to "the cloud" (or at least a file sharing server) for others to access.  I recently got a call at 2230 Aussie time from a guy in the UK needing a sound effect I'd done for a show about ten years ago...but with a slight modification.  I had the modified version to them by 2250, had a message asking for another slight change which I did and had to them by 2300--and the cast were rehearsing with it five minutes later.  Without having my DAW online this would have been a bit more difficult, even with removable storage.

It's a brave new world...but mostly it works.

Bob

I mean, I'm pretty committed to Audition, and I still wonder how much of my upgrade money goes to sustaining the size of Adobe.  My $99.   

Look on the bright side - rather less of it's going to Adobe corporate than the amount that Microsoft corporate bleeds from your purchases. Also, I suspect that this is true about a lot of other expensive software too - with a lot of this stuff, I can't help thinking that collectively, we must morally own a couple of ocean-going yachts by now!

Having my DAW online hasn't been a problem for me for many years now. Years ago I did have a problem with Norton Anti-Virus conflicting with my Cool Edit program. Once I got rid of Norton, all my headaches went away. So now fast forward to 2011, and I have Windows 7 and Microsoft's Security Essentials, and have had zero virus problems and no conflicts with CS 5.5. Times have changed and having a DAW online ain't such a bad thing anymore.

By the way, I am enjoying my CS 5.5 very much thank you.

What are you using it for?

Mostly music editing and occassionaly multi-track recording. I have a home studio and am now using CS 5.5 for the basic heart of it all. When I'm in the mood to write music I need a way to record it..........Audition replaces my DA-88 and Mackie 24 x 8 mixing board for a hell of lot less money. For midi recording that I also do at times, I use Sonar X1 Essentials. I've also use Audition to clean up old tape recordings I made back in the '70's.

re What are you using it for:
We're still playing with/testing cs5.5,  but use Audition for most  audio work, though not MIDI (don't do much with that).  We do a lot of multitrack work, often building long complex projects- some to picture, but many audio-only. Also a lot of mastering and fix-up work with material we didn't originate. Mostly for cleanup work we use  RX but then frequently bring material into AA after working with it there- or sometimes the other way around. Hard to generalize, often the work flow is very project-specific.  Sometimes we mix entirely in the box, other times do analog summing or final processing outside and then capture the mixdown on a 2nd machine. We've never used AA for making CD masters,  have other specialized systems for that.

I can definitely see the potential of CS5.5, the stability and speed improvements plus other things noted elsewhere in the forum are important advances. But currently with many things "missing" (hopefully to come back later), won't be able to use it for everything we currently use AA3 for- at least not yet.  Key as have noted before is  current inability to export stems  (master and sep files). There are  several others too,  which many users have written about elsewhere here.
 

To hear some of the music I've recorded with Audition over the years, goto my SoundClick page and click on the songs....

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=441592

I must be a GOM too, since I refuse to connect my DAW to the 'net as well... As I read through this thread I am reminded of all the grief that I, too, went through with dongles, Norton products, and various other scenarios.

The latest product that I had problems with was a well-known drum sampler which wanted me to access the 'net to register the program. After telling their customer support that I was sending the product back to the retailer for a refund, since I couldn't use it anyways, there was a quick change of heart... A way was found to load the required files to a memory stick, take them to a 'net-ready machine and access the registration site, and then load the registration files back to the DAW. Worked fine! Maybe we just gotta stamp our feet a little harder, Graeme.

Movable hard drives make it really easy to get product from the DAW to my FTP site.

And if you think the possibilities of getting something malicious are slim to none, I got a Trojan the other day from an update to a file-housekeeping program that I've used and supported for 10 years. Turns out that THEY were hacked and all their outgoing files were infected. Nothing got through my anti-virus program, but it took 3 hours out of a busy day for the program to remove, restore, and diagnose.


That's a delay I could have done without!

Maybe we just gotta stamp our feet a little harder.......

If I were a younger man, then I probably (no, certainly) would take up the fight, but the truth is I'm too old to care about this sort of stuff any more.  I've made the decision to retire and that means I won't need any new stuff and it no longer matters to me how the software houses try to protect the unprotectable. If the future is in the cloud, then it will be without me.

And if you think the possibilities of getting something malicious are slim to none, I got a Trojan the other day from an update to a file-housekeeping program that I've used and supported for 10 years.....

Happens all the time. I installed a new bit of software the other day and it installed the bloody Ask toolbar, without so much as a by your leave - more time wasted getting rid of it - and not for the first time this has happened.

I ask myself what happens when the cloud gets corrupted - as it surely will one day?

I ask myself what happens when the cloud gets corrupted - as it surely will one day?

it's not just some day . . . the LulzSec incidents coming to light this spring underscore how fragile even the concept of 'cloud computing' really is

but for me security is not even the threshold issue.  No matter how powerful a computer one has permitting a 'cloud server' the kind of control and interference required by the concept of cloud computing is contra indicated for any small business/entrepreneur . . . which pretty much covers significant majority of all audio recording/editing facilities operations.  If you don't have, can't afford, your own dedicated IT department (not just your idiot nephew) 'cloud computing' simply is not for mission critical systems

even if you can afford an IT department 'cloud computing' is going to, by definition, remain behind the curve.  For small entrepreneur operations competitive edge requires you to be conversant with 'curve' and be able to figure out how to be ahead.  There are all sorts of reasons why 'cloud computing' will make this impossible.

I'm actually happy for other people to be on the cloud and there are aspects that might make certain types of collaboration more practical (though I've yet to see this as anything other then a theoretical possibility (a marketing point offered but never realized (for the small entrepreneur) by PDF, OLE, & I started using HTML in 1979) . . . but while I tend to have audio & video editing resources on all systems those type of tasks also demand dedicated systems.  I do not see that changing anytime soon

I'm actually happy for other people to be on the cloud and there are aspects that might make certain types of collaboration more practical (though I've yet to see this as anything other then a theoretical possibility (a marketing point offered but never realized (for the small entrepreneur) by PDF, OLE, & I started using HTML in 1979) . . .

I, and a lot of other people in similar situations, use Dropbox (a quite widely used cloud-based file sharing system) quite regularly to share SFX files so that customers/co-workers can approve them. In fact, when you have more than one person working on projects, it becomes even more valuable - it really does save a heck of a lot of time. Even if there are potential security issues (I haven't experienced one yet), with this stuff I don't really give a damn - it's short bits of audio with effectively no commercial value in that form.

I'd say that if you use cloud-type resources sensibly, and remain aware of the issues, you won't have much of a problem with them. But, in the same breath, I'd also say that I wouldn't dream of using anything like that for data where there might be security issues...

I have several ftp servers I use for this sort of thing - I like things I have some sort of control over
Hope my wife doesn't see this post 

I, and a lot of other people in similar situations, use Dropbox ..... it's short bits of audio with effectively no commercial value in that form.

I don't have a problem with that, it is obviously useful and hardly life-threatening.

What concerns me is that, as I understand it, the eventual commercial aim is to have everything stored in the cloud, thus rendering your computer little more than a dumb terminal. It's bad enough when people hack Sony games, imagine the damage they could cause if none of us kept anything on our machines, but all in the cloud.

We use DropBox a lot here too, though some clients mandate that we post stuff to their internal FTP sites for security. But like Steve, mostly what we send are just bits of audio that probably have little value to anyone other than those involved with the specific project.  And once we know all that are supposed to get the Dropbox stuff did get it, we delete the files.

Tried a few other "cloud" ideas but Dropbox so far has been the simplest and easiest to use.

One thing that has pretty much gone away is making ref CDs of early versions of projects - past several years most clients instead want MP3s uploaded to the cloud. We still do a matching ref (sometimes several) with every master though and insist the client check it before sending out a master CD. And we're still mostly delivering a physical CD master though DDP file sets are an option for some replicators.