Question for Sound Professors, Teachers, or students

[meghanpotpie]

I am working on a research project for my Masters Degree and wanted to put this question out there in Controlbooth. How many of you require your students to purchase their own sound software (ie. Acid, Sound Forge, Q Lab) or did the school provide it? If you're a students of sound, were you required to purchase the software and was it monetarily possible for you?

 

[Eboy87]

When I was a student, the school provided labs and computers for shows with all the needed software (ProTools, VectorWorks, QLab, SFX, SoundForge, etc). That being said, I did purchase my own version of ProTools, and I used the free version of QLab (back when you got 8 discreet outputs with the free version).

 

[Robert]

We have a lab of I-Macs with Sound Forge and SFX on one side and Q-Lab on the other. Undergrad program with no tracks, BA in Theater.

 

[Footer]

We were given access to labs with all the software... AutoCAD, Vector works, lightwright, and audio stuff. The university did not give us any software to put on our personal machines.

 

[0HZ]

We do not have any labs, we have computers we use for productions which have QLab and video software, but drafting software always gets the response of why not hand draft it. Thankfully most of the students have the free student versions of Vectorworks. For sound the lighting/sound professor is pretty out of date and preaches Audacity... even though he does not know how to use it.

 

[themuzicman]

In response to 0HZ: why not hand draft? Because it's 2014 and you can't email hand drafting very easily, especially when more often than not these days design teams are pulled from multiple cities and need to use the internet to communicate rapidly and effectively. You should learn how to hand draft to know how to do it, and know how painful it once was, but you should de facto be using a drafting program without a second thought. It's a bad education that pushes hand drafting these days.

As for the original question -- we had a drafting lab that had Vectorworks and AutoCAD for drafting, as well as LightWrite for the LX folks. We had a sound lab that had editing booths with Logic, ProTools, and Soundforge, as well as a server that housed a large SFX library that all designers pulled from and contributed to. We had production computers that had QLab on them.

It was highly encouraged to download any student copies just so you didn't have to hang out in the drafting labs forever, as well as the free copies of QLab, Watchout, etc. just to get familiar with things or pre-program at home.

 

[MNicolai]

I've not seen educational programs that require students to purchase their own software, and most of the software in question has student trials available. Vectorworks and AutoCAD are probably the most substantial ones.

Back when I was an engineering student, we did have to pay an $1100 annual fee to lease laptops loaded to the brim with software (Microsoft Office, Autodesk Building Design Suite, MatLab, and an absurd number of miscellaneous programs). Every 2 years they gave you a new laptop and turned the old ones into loaners. When you graduated, you got to keep the laptop but had to wipe the hard drive of its software and operating system.

Many universities have programs worked out with software providers to allow their students to purchase discounted software licenses. This is how I got the full Adobe Production Premium CS6 suite for $600 instead of $2000.

When I saw software that wasn't otherwise available to me in some form, I could justify the purchase by knowing after graduation that it'd make me able to freelance after my educational licenses were up. I also wrote the purchases off on my taxes as business expenses, though many undergrads don't make enough annually and have enough tax liability that their write-offs will add up to much. Good trick to know for after graduation though.

 

[zmb]

At my university, Windows and Office are provided free of charge to all students. Currently, I have Solidworks for free being in a class that requires it, but you have to be in class that uses it to receive the campus subscription code. For most software that isn't available for installation on personal computers, it is available for free over Citrix/Remote Desktop. Which in some cases works better being able to run simulations on machines with 32 cores and 128 GB of RAM available.

Otherwise you'll have go through each company's educational pricing if you need a local copy, which I might have to do for Matlab which comes out to $100. Parallels and Creative Cloud are heavily discounted through the university.

 

[josh88]

My understanding in regards to office and some of the other windows stuff is they're giving away things to all educational groups/ students to compete with chrome books because they're losing ground and trying to keep people. At least that's what the sense was when they gave us all access.


Via tapatalk

 

[sk8rsdad]

Micro$oft has been giving away software to students for decades. Lots of vendors do it. The marketing game is to hook 'em while they are young and hope that they can't shake the addiction.

 

[zmb]

Micro$oft has been giving away software to students for decades. Lots of vendors do it. The marketing game is to hook 'em while they are young and hope that they can't shake the addiction.

Same with Apple providing equipment in K12 schools even if nothing running on it is Mac-specific. Even though educational pricing is way less than retail, it still has to drive up costs unnecessarily considering there is no such thing as a low-end Mac when it is mostly going to be used productivity apps and web access. Kicker is that when I was in K12, technology and business classes had to use Windows, so the district ends up supporting both brands and systems.

My Windows and Office isn't 100% free. I do have a tech fee on tuition that goes to funding it in addition to ad-free Google Apps and Office 365 with gobs of storage.

What I've noticed is that my university is very specific about buying and purposing computers based on what they're going to be used for. Ones in the physics labs running some ancient data collection and analysis program are base models with an i3 processor and 4 GB of RAM while the ones the ME Lab with SolidWorks get an i7 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and discrete graphics. And there's the video Mac Pros with dual Xeon processors.

 

[josh88]

Micro$oft has been giving away software to students for decades. Lots of vendors do it. The marketing game is to hook 'em while they are young and hope that they can't shake the addiction.

When I was in college we got tons of discounts on windows stuff ( and apple stuff) but not completely free. So the turn in giving away all of office for free is at least a newer step.


Via tapatalk

 

[0HZ]

That is more or less what I was trying to get across, hand drafting is perfectly valid form of communicating the details, but not always practical to do, especially in an educational setting where we are being put under tight time constraints due to poor faculty decisions with a diminishing pool of tech/design students.

In response to 0HZ: why not hand draft? Because it's 2014 and you can't email hand drafting very easily, especially when more often than not these days design teams are pulled from multiple cities and need to use the internet to communicate rapidly and effectively. You should learn how to hand draft to know how to do it, and know how painful it once was, but you should de facto be using a drafting program without a second thought. It's a bad education that pushes hand drafting these days.

 

[cmckeeman]

At my college where i am a student they provide the computer and the purchased Qlab. at the high school where i work the students use their laptop for the show and either we use the free version of Qlab or multiplay. If no students had a computer i would bring mine for them to use. with that said though i wish the theater had a dedicated Mac for Qlab.

 

[museav]

That is more or less what I was trying to get across, hand drafting is perfectly valid form of communicating the details, but not always practical to do, especially in an educational setting where we are being put under tight time constraints due to poor faculty decisions with a diminishing pool of tech/design students.

I don't think the educational world has anything on the business world in terms of dealing with tight time constraints, the results of other's decisions or diminishing personnel resources, they are common in both.

 

[0HZ]

When you are getting into debt to pay their salaries the education world has the benefit of asking why they are not serving the students academic interest.