| Developer(s) | Avid, formerly Digidesign |
|---|---|
| Stable release | Pro Tools 10 / October 21, 2011 |
| Operating system | Mac OS X Microsoft Windows |
| Type | Digital Audio Workstation |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | http://www.avid.com/US/ |
Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation platform for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, developed and manufactured by Avid Technology. It is widely used by professionals throughout the audio industries for recording and editing in music production, film scoring, film, and television post production. Pro Tools can run as standalone software, or operate using a range of external A/D converters and internal PCI or PCIe audio cards with onboard DSP.
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Fundamentally, Pro Tools, like all Digital Audio Workstation software, is similar to a multi-track tape recorder and mixer, with additional features that can only be performed in the digital domain. It supports 32-bit float audio at sample rates of up to 192 kHz, and can handle WAV, AIFF, mp3, SDII audio files and QuickTime video files. It features time code, tempo maps, automation and surround sound capabilities.
The Pro Tools mix engine has traditionally employed 48-bit fixed point arithmetic, but floating point is also used in some cases, such as with Pro Tools HD Native. The new HDX hardware uses 64 bit floating point summing.
Pro Tools was developed by UC Berkeley graduates Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks. Both majored in electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley. The first incarnation of Pro Tools started life in 1984 as Sound Designer, while the pair were creating and selling drum sound chips under their Digidrums label. Sound Designer was originally designed to edit sounds for the E-MU Emulator sampling keyboard.[1] Gotcher and Brooks discussed with E-MU Systems the possibility of integrating their renamed 'Sound Tools' software into the Emulator III keyboard released in 1987. E-MU rejected this offer and Gotcher and Brooks started Digidesign.[2]
Sound Tools[3] debuted on January 20, 1989 at NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers). At this stage Sound Tools was a simple computer based stereo audio editor. Although the software had the possibility to do far more, it was limited by the hard drive technology which was used to stream audio and allow for the non-destructive editing that Sound Tools offered.[4]
The first version of Pro Tools was launched in 1991, offering 4 tracks and selling for $6000USD. Digidesign continued to improve Pro Tools, adding a sequencer and more tracks, with the system offering 16 bit, 44.1 kHz audio recording. In 1997 Pro Tools reached 24 bit, 48 track versions. It was at this point that the migration from more conventional studio technology to the Pro Tools platform took place within the industry.[5]
One of the first albums to be recorded, edited and mixed entirely on Pro Tools was Summer in Paradise by The Beach Boys (recorded 1991, released 1992).
Ricky Martin’s "Livin La Vida Loca" was the first No. 1 single to be recorded, edited, and mixed completely within the Pro Tools environment by Charles Dye and Desmond Child.[6][7] Garbage's Version 2.0 was the first album to be nominated with Grammy for Album of the Year that had been entirely recorded and edited through Pro Tools.
Miami is widely believed to be the first city to broadly adopt Pro Tools in professional recording studios, and is often referred to as the 'Ground Zero' for Pro Tools.[8]
Bob Clearmountain once expressed concern that people would acquire Pro Tools system with little understanding of the editing process.[9]
Some artists are now making a point of recording without Pro Tools. Jack White of The White Stripes argues that "I think Pro Tools is highly inappropriate to record music... It's too easy to correct mistakes, it's too easy to fix things. We hear this sort of clean, plastic perfection that's been applied to all the tracks. That is not the kind of music we grew up loving and listening to and wanting to be a part of."[10]
Rapper GZA named his 2008 album after the program.
Pro Tools was used for creating the audio for the games DJ Hero and Guitar Hero, using the modeling plug-in Eleven for the guitar sounds.[11]
Most of Pro Tools' basic functions can be controlled within Edit or Mix windows. The Edit window displays audio and MIDI tracks, and provides graphical representation of the information recorded or imported. Here, audio can be edited in a non-linear, non-destructive fashion. MIDI information can also be manipulated. The Mix window displays each track's fader channel and allows for the adjustment of a channel's volume and pan, as well as being the usual place to insert plug-in effects and route audio to and from different outputs and inputs.
The creation of Pro Tools 8 added a MIDI edit window which enables the user to manipulate MIDI data in either piano-roll or score windows. It also includes MIDI edit lanes so that the user can see note, velocity and other CC data in the same window. These additions took Pro Tools from the long standard 2 edit window approach to having 3 edit windows.
Real-time effects processing and virtual instruments in Pro Tools are achieved through the use of plug-ins, which are either processed by the DSP chips as TDM plug-ins, or the host computer as RTAS (Real Time AudioSuite) plug-ins. Additionally, out-of-time processing is available in the form of AudioSuite plug-ins, which also enables time-domain processing.
In October 2011 Avid released the new version of DSP accelerated cards along with Pro Tools 10 software. This new generation of Pro Tools|HD -Pro Tools|HDX - gives users more tracks, more headroom, and up to 5x more dedicated DSP power compared to the TDM Pro Tools|HD systems. [12]With this release Avid has officially stated that Pro Tools 10 will be the final release for Pro Tools|HD Accel systems and that TDM technology is being retired as well.
With this addition to the Pro Tools|HD family, there are now two powerful system choices: Pro Tools|HD Native system for users that need the advanced workflows and sound quality of Pro Tools HD, but want to leverage their host computer to get the best performance and lowest latency. Or the new flagship DSP-accelerated Pro Tools|HDX system for users that require consistent peak performance and near-zero latency to handle extremely large and complex productions.
Pro Tools|HD systems represent the high-end professional product line. They rely on dedicated DSP processor chips that perform the audio processing in conjunction with rack-mounted interfaces which will handle the outgoing and incoming audio, Midi, and sync connections. The DSP cards are connected to the interfaces with a proprietary DigiLink cable.[13] While the DSP cards are manufactured exclusively by Avid Audio (formerly Digidesign), interfaces from numerous manufacturers feature DigiLink connectors.
Pro Tools systems have long relied on dedicated DSP cards to handle most audio processing, due to the fact that at the time Pro Tools was first developed, consumer-level computers were not powerful enough to process high-end digital audio.[14] An HD Core PCI card or an Accel Core PCIe card is required in a HD 1 system; the inclusion of one or two additional Accel cards upgrades the system to HD 2 or 3 respectively, and increases the system's overall processing power, allowing for higher track counts and more plug-ins. An 'Expansion HD' product increases capability up to a total of 7 cards using Digidesign's PCI-X expansion chassis product, which is available with both PCI-X and PCIe host cards for the computer.
All Pro Tools HD card variants contain a combination of 9 DSP chips from the Motorola 56k family. Some chips manage track playback, while other, different chips perform mixing and signal processing operations. At launch Pro Tools HD cards were called HD Process cards. Approximately 2 years later, the HD Process cards were replaced by the HD Accel card, which was designed around a faster variant of the Motorola DSP chip and provided approximately twice the signal processing power per card. When Apple changed the expansion slot architecture of the G5 to PCI Express, Digidesign launched a line of PCIe HD Accel cards that both adopted the new card slot format and also slightly changed the combination of chips. The PCIe HD Core is now an 'Accel Core', whereas the original PCI-X Core remains 'non-Accel'. There are TDM plug-ins that require the presence of Accel chips to run and therefore cannot run on the earlier non-Accel HD systems.
On October 6, 2010, Avid released Pro Tools HD Native, a low-cost ($3,500 USD) PCIe card system designed for host-processing with fully functional HD software.[15]
On November 4, 2010, Avid released Pro Tools 9, a lower-cost ($599 USD) application that can run natively without any special hardware assist or interfaces. Among several new features, Protools 9 has a new track feature named HEAT (Harmonically Enhanced Algorithm Technology), which is used for creating what many in the industry are calling HEDA (Harmonically Enhanced Digital Audio).[16]
When first available, Pro Tools systems relied exclusively on integral hard disks for storage and were thus limited to the storage options available on the Apple hardware platform. In 2002, AVID rebranded a proprietary SAN product called MediaNet and promoted it to Pro Tools users who were becoming aware of the benefits of network-based collaboration and workflows.[17] MediaNet was based on WindowsNT and could only be administered using Windows-based tools.
To date, neither Pro Tools HD Native nor Pro Tools 9 support commodity network attached storage, and MediaNet remains AVID's only supported option for accessing storage over the network.
The Pro Tools LE line is discontinued as of the release of Pro Tools 9. Formerly, it served as a scaled down, lower priced version of its HD counterpart.
Pro Tools LE systems performed data processing on the host CPU. Purchasers were required to choose from a range of proprietary audio interfaces, one of which was required for all audio I/O (recording and playback). The hardware thus doubled as a copy-protection mechanism for the software, as the software did not function without the specialized Digidesign interface.
The entry-level MBox range of interfaces typically connect via USB. All have a stereo audio output, and include a small number of line and microphone inputs. The more powerful 003 (formerly 002) interfaces use FireWire and have significantly larger I/O capabilities. The Eleven Rack, in addition to its many input options, includes in-box DSP processing that offloads the Eleven guitar amp/speaker emulation and guitar effects plug-in processing to the interface, allowing those plug-ins to run without taxing the host system.
Pro Tools LE had a similar look and feel to Pro Tools HD, but had a smaller track count and a lower maximum sampling rate. It also lacked many features such as the ability to export to MP3, SMPTE time code, Automatic Delay Compensation (ADC), ability to import OMF and AAF files, DigiBase Pro, and multi-track Beat Detective. These features, along with higher track counts, could be accessed via the purchase of the "DV Toolkit" and "Music Production Toolkit" or "Complete Production Toolkit" upgrade packages. Under Pro Tools 9, these upgrades are partially obsolete.
In 2010-11, Pro Tools HD and LE were effectively merged into a singular, hardware-independent software package.
When operating on a machine containing one or more HD Core, Accel or Native cards, the software will run as Pro Tools HD 9, with the full Pro Tools HD feature set. In all other cases it will run as Pro Tools 9, with a smaller track count and a number of advanced features turned off. However, non-HD Pro Tools 9 users can also gain access to the full feature set with the Complete Production Toolkit 2.
Pro Tools 9 also includes as standard many features which on Pro Tools LE were only accessible via additional "Toolkit" upgrades.
Pro Tools 9 is unlike any previous version in having no proprietary hardware requirement, allowing use of the software with any interface. It can operate using the internal sound card of a PC via the ASIO driver and a Mac using Core Audio. Mac Core Audio also allows, for the first time, the use of aggregate devices, allowing the use of more than one interface at the same time. This can also be achieved on a PC by using the third party application ASIO4ALL. Pro Tools 9 also included a new keyboard shortcut for "New Playlist."[18]
Pro Tools 9 uses iLok for copy-protection. Pro Tools 9 is the first version to have one 'unified' installer for the software, with the iLok licence determining which elements of the software are unlocked.
M-Audio, formerly Midiman, was acquired by Avid Technology in 2004–2005, and Digidesign soon released Pro Tools M-Powered, which brought Pro Tools LE functionality to a subset of M-Audio USB, FireWire and PCI interfaces. Pro Tools M-Powered uses an iLok license as copy protection and was formerly the only way to run Pro Tools without using Digidesign/Avid hardware.
This is a scaled down version of the M-Powered system. It was aimed at the starter market, and offers very limited scope, with only 16 tracks, no 3rd party plug-ins & limited USB device support.
Pro Tools SE is a stripped down version of LE, also targeted at beginners. The software is sold in one of three bundles with a hardware unit for guitarists, keyboard players and vocalists. It also comes with the Avid MobilePre interface. This device (aka "dongle") may function with Pro Tools as well as Garageband. There is no option to upgrade to the full version of Pro Tools from Pro Tools SE.
Digidesign/Avid control surfaces attempt to bridge the gap between old style analog desks and modern DAWs by providing physical controls for the Pro Tools software. These include the C|24, a 24-fader surface with 16 built-in Focusrite pre-amps, and the ICON: Integrated Console Environment, combining a tactile control surface and a Pro Tools|HD Accel system in one unit. VENUE, a similar system, was released for live-sound applications. The Command|8 is a smaller eight-fader control surface.
Pro Tools compatible control surfaces have also been developed by other companies. For example, the Audient ASP2802 has integrated DAW control, and is compatible with Pro Tools as well as Logic Pro and Cubase.[19] It therefore provides an external analog mixing interface for the computer.
In April 2010, Avid acquired Euphonix, a manufacturer of high quality control surfaces.
An official Pro Tools training curriculum and certification program, which includes a full range of Pro Tools–related courses in music and post production, was introduced by Digidesign in 2002. The curriculum is delivered by a number of schools and universities around the world.
The Music Production and DV tool kits increase the capabilities of non-HD Pro Tools systems. Both increase the maximum number of tracks and highest possible sample rate to 96 kHz and include numerous additional plug-ins. The LE only DV tool kit adds feet and frames and timecode timelines and functionality.
In August 2005, Avid acquired the German company Wizoo, developers of software based virtual instruments. They further announced the creation of AIR (Advanced Instrument Research) a strategic development which meant Avid would be developing virtual instruments and plug-ins for use in Pro Tools.[20]
This was a move which saw the landmark redevelopment of Pro Tools in Pro Tools 8, which relied heavily on the inclusion of AIR plug-ins to bring it closer to its competitor Logic Pro. This was the first version of Pro Tools to see the inclusion of an entire virtual instrument library to assist those composing music and included:
AIR also contributed reverbs, dynamics, modulation and other effects as part of the Pro Tools 8 bundle, all of these work in RTAS only.
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