AVID PRO TOOLS 10 PREVIEW

Posted on Fri 21 October 2011 in entries

To me it seems like only yesterday when Pro Tools 9 was released, but having learned that it is indeed almost a whole year since the last major update, I prepared myself to find out more…

PRO TOOLS 10 – INTRODUCTION

I’m guessing that most of you will be familiar with Pro Tools, but just in case you are new to the whole DAW game, here is a little introduction.

Ever since it was first introduced almost ten years ago, Pro Tools has remained the industry standard software for audio recording and post-production. Whilst it now has a number of other rival products (e.g. Logic, Cubase, Ableton, etc.), Avid's Pro Tools|HD systems remain the most powerful and flexible options for professional studios.

However, Pro Tools|HD set-ups are very expensive as they require additional hardware to run. Hence, Avid also offer a standard Pro Tools version, which packs in most of the features and the same basic architecture as the HD version, but is not as powerful or quite as feature-rich. Nevertheless, this version of Pro Tools is still highly flexible and is packed with tools that rival all other professional DAWs, making it a popular product with universities, colleges and with professional and home studio users alike. It provides you with everything you need to create professional recordings and mixes and includes a host of software instruments and effects, as well as a MIDI editor and the ability to perform complex automations.

Prior to Pro Tools 9, all users of the DAW were required to own a specialised piece of Digidesign hardware to make use of the software, regardless of whether they were using the HD system or not. Luckily, the company who now owns Pro Tools (Avid) decided to fix this issue with the release of Pro Tools 9, meaning that Pro Tools became more accessible (and hence more popular) than ever before!

Now, Avid are proud to announce Pro Tools 10, but how can they improve on this already highly polished product? Let’s find out…

PRO TOOLS 10 – WHAT’S NEW?

Now, there is nothing in the new Pro Tools 10 that I would describe as revolutionary, but in my mind it certainly gives you enough to warrant an upgrade, with some excellent new workflow features and plug-ins. In this section of the article I am going to take you through the main new features of Pro Tools 10 and give you a brief explanation on each. Here goes:

• Record and mix using 32-bit floating-point file formats. This essentially allows you to capture and work with audio at a higher resolution than ever before for top-of-the-range sound quality.

• Use multiple file formats in the same project. Avid Pro Tools 10 now allows you to incorporate different file types and audio with different bit-depths, in one project! No need to waste time performing countless conversions to make sure that everything in the project matches up… you can just get on with the most important task… making music! As far as I can tell, this doesn’t work for files of differing sample rates though – these will still need to be converted to the fixed sample rate of the project, although this does make perfect sense if you think about it!

• Improved Disk Cache and Disk Scheduler. Pro Tools|HDX comes with an improved disk cache, which allows the software to access any unused RAM on your system, giving Pro Tools mind-blowing responsiveness and speed! Honestly, if you thought that Pro Tools 9 was quick, just wait until you see this! The standard version of Pro Tools 10 does not include this disk cache feature, but instead it gives you improved disk scheduling, which gives Pro Tools 10 quicker and improved performance for your local and network-attached storage.

• Clip Gain. This is an extremely useful new timesaving/workflow feature of Pro Tools 10. It essentially gives you a control for quickly setting pre-mixer levels. In Pro Tools 10, the term ‘clip’ now refers to a segment of audio, so the clip based gain lets you set the individual gain levels per clip, independent of volume automation on the main volume fader. It lets you do this in an extremely simple way, using a small level fader than appears over each clip. Plus, Pro Tools 10 even allows you to convert volume automation into clip-based gain, which could quite possibly save you a whole load of time when it comes to the post-production stages of your project. Personally, this improvement excites me quite a lot as I often find that I want to adjust the levels of certain audio parts after I have created automation data. Obviously I cannot quickly do this with the main channel fader as it is being controlled by my automation settings, hence, it is hugely useful to have this clip-based gain feature at my disposal.

• More ADC. In fact, that’s 4x more ADC for bigger mixes with more plug-ins!

• New plug-ins! The highlight of these new plug-ins is the awesome Avid Channel Strip, which uses the same algorithms as the famous System 5 console, which is used by industry professionals all over the world. You will no doubt have heard the System 5 in action before as it has been used on numerous professional productions, including the soundtrack for The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

As well as the new Channel Strip, Pro Tools 10 also now comes with Native versions of the Revibe, Impact and Reverb One plug-ins, a new Down-Mixer plug-in (for monitoring down-mixes of multichannel audio), plus most of the Pro Tools 10 plug-ins have undergone a bit of a makeover, sporting swanky new interfaces!

• Audio Suite enhancements. You can now open multiple Audio Suite plug-in windows and recall plug-ins and settings with the touch of a button, plus Pro Tools 10 gives you user definable handles. In addition to this, the included reverb and delay based Audio Suite plug-ins provide a new ‘Reverse’ option, allowing you to perform reversed reverb and delay effects with the touch of a button – a technique that I often use in my tracks, but which up until now has taken a lot more time and effort to achieve.

• Sharing Improvements. Firstly, exporting tracks becomes a whole lot easier with Pro Tools 10, as you can now simply select the tracks that you want to perform an export on if you don’t want to export them all. Plus, you can now set the session start time based on an incoming session or AAF file, import clip-gain from Media Composer to Pro Tools 10, import volume automation to Pro Tools 10 and Pro Tools 10 also now includes a 24 hour timeline! Plus, there are a number of other handy sharing features, allowing you to bounce mixes straight to iTunes, a ‘send to Soundcloud’ feature, and a right-click reveal in finder function.

• EUCON enhancements. Pro Tools 10 features almost 500 new Pro Tools functions in the Appset and it also features support for VCA slaves, HEAT, Satellite Link and XMON.

• Advanced Complete Production Toolkit. If you can’t afford to upgrade to the full version of Pro Tools|HDX then you can now purchase the Complete Production Toolkit, which will now upgrade your system to include exactly the same toolset as the HD version! Of course, it won't be as powerful though as you won't be running it alongside the dedicated hardware.

So, those are what I feel are the main improvements to Pro Tools 10, although there are also a number of others that I haven't mentioned (e.g. improved delay compensation, etc.) I haven’t got time to run through them all though, so that’s your lot for now!

PRO TOOLS 10 – GRACE PERIOD AND SPECS

The news so far from the Avid camp is that anyone who bought Pro Tools 9 or Pro Tools|HD 9 from 1st October 2011 will receive a free upgrade to version 10! This includes customers that bought Pro Tools 9 in a bundle with M-Box hardware. Click here to go to the official Avid website and find out more about these free upgrades for yourself.

The minimum specifications for the new Pro Tools 10 are as follows:

• OS:
- Mac: OS 10.6.5 or higher and 10.7x
- Windows 7
• Works on 32 or 64-bit operating systems (although currently still cannot run in 64-bit mode… I have a feeling this will change in an upgrade though).
• RAM: 4GB minimum, 8GB recommended.

PRO TOOLS 10 – CONCLUSION

As I stated at the beginning, there is nothing particularly revolutionary or game-changing about Pro Tools 10, but it certainly gives you enough new features to warrant the upgrade. My personal favourites are the inclusion of the awesome Avid Channel Strip, Clip Gain and the improved Disk Cache, which, if initial feedback from beta testers is to be believed, is something that is seriously impressive and significantly speeds up the workings of Pro Tools, especially in the new HDX version.

For more information we have also compiled a list of 10 commonly asked questions about Pro Tools 10 and Pro Tools|HDX - click here to read them!

I hope that gives you a decent idea of what you can expect from this new release! That’s all you're getting for now! For more information on Pro Tools 10 or to make a purchase, click the relevant link below! Thanks for reading!