Should i get pro tools 10

Even though it's a global setting, rather than session-specific, it would still be helpful, since Pro Tools only allows one session to be loaded at a time anyway. Overall, though, disk caching is a brilliantly obvious way to improve the performance of audio playback in Pro Tools.

We tend to forget that in the early days of audio software, the only reason for recording directly to disk was because computers didn't have the memory capacity to store enough audio to be useful.

When Pro Tools was released in , for example, a Quadra typically shipped with 4MB memory — enough for less than one minute of mono, CD-quality audio. But with modern systems having between 4GB and 64 GB of memory, redressing the balance between memory and disk usage seems like a sensible way forward.

Another apparently humble feature that may nevertheless have users reaching for the Champagne is that you can now change the gain of individual regions — sorry, I mean clips — without having to resort to automation, which is tremendously useful. By making the Clip Gain Info visible, the gain of a clip can be adjusted with a click on the fader icon that appears in the bottom left of a clip. As you adjust the gain from the default 0dB, a handy decibel label appears next to the fader icon, reporting the gain change that's been non-destructively applied.

Better still, right-clicking the fader icon provides a series of related options, where you can clear or bypass the clip gain, or even render it to an audio file.

Both static and dynamic gain adjustments can now be made to clips. The upper clip has dynamic gain applied, while the lower clip has a static In addition to what Avid describe as 'static' clip gain, Pro Tools 10 also offers 'dynamic' clip gain. As you might be able to guess, dynamic clip gain allows you to have what is, in effect, gain automation within a specific clip.

This automation can be seen and edited by making the Clip Gain Line visible, whereupon you can use the pencil tool to create gain breakpoints, either by clicking to create single points, or dragging to draw multiple points.

Once you've created additional points on the Clip Gain Line, the decibel label disappears from the clip. However, what's particularly neat is that you can then click the clip's fader icon to trim the entire Gain Line. And, as well as using the on-screen fader, you can also 'nudge' the clip gain by a value specified in the Editing Preferences, using key commands, your mouse's scroll wheel, or a EUCON-compatible controller.

If Avid had stopped there, clip gain would already be pretty indispensable, but the company's developers have gone a few steps further. Not only is it possible to cut, copy, and paste clip gain settings between different clips, but Pro Tools HD and Complete Production Toolkit users can convert between clip gain settings and track volume automation.

While competing applications have had the ability to apply per-clip gain settings for some time Nuendo had this feature on its release 10 years ago, for example , Avid's implementation is incredibly thorough, and should be welcomed by anyone who edits audio in Pro Tools. To complement the new clip gain functionality and the new disk engine, clip fades in Pro Tools 10 are now calculated in real time, rather than having to be written and played back from disk. This is another welcome improvement, since it renders — no pun intended — the regeneration of fade files when you forget to copy the Fades folder a thing of the past.

When Avid acquired Euphonix in , the company gained a great deal of expertise and technology relating to mixing consoles and control surfaces. Although it had previously been possible to use Euphonix's products with Pro Tools, users had to resort to clunky workarounds involving Mackie's HUI protocol. So it was perhaps no surprise that Pro Tools 9, released towards the end of , incorporated native support for Euphonix's EUCON control surface protocol, making it much easier to control Pro Tools' mixer from Euphonix's Artist and Pro series products.

EUCON support has been further enhanced in Pro Tools 10, so that almost every Pro Tools command, such as those normally accessed via menus or keyboard shortcuts, can be assigned to the Soft Keys on your Euphonix surface.

Over commands are exposed, so you can now create and manage groups, for example, or adjust the edit selection without having to touch a keyboard or mouse. Another Euphonix-related improvement in Pro Tools 10 is the new Avid Channel Strip plug-in, which is based on the EQ and dynamics algorithms from the System 5 console's channel strip. For those unfamiliar with the System 5 console, it's a high-end, modular digital console now sold by Avid, but originally released by Euphonix in Although the System 5 is popular in a many different fields, it has become a particular favourite for post-production work, being used to mix both the music and the final dub for major Hollywood feature films.

If you've watched a film in the last 10 years or listened to a film soundtrack , there's a good chance you'll have heard audio signals that have passed through a System 5 console. This may well be the last channel strip plug-in you'll ever need. Channel Strip comprises four sections — EQ, Filter, Dynamics and Volume — which can be arranged in almost any order you like, except that the filter always follows the EQ.

Each effect has its own section in the interface, which can be collapsed if you don't wish to see certain settings that might not be in use. The interface for the EQ and dynamics sections comprises tabs for each of the components of the given section, whether bands of EQ or specific dynamic processes.

However, the dynamic section also offers an 'All' tab, so you can see all dynamics parameters on one page numerically, which is really handy. One particularly neat aspect of the Channel Strip plug-in is the Listen mode, which is available for the side-chain component of the dynamics section and each component of the EQ section.

Enabling Listen mode on the side-chain lets you hear the input signal, while clicking Listen on a given band or filter in the EQ section solos and inverts that band or filter so you only hear the affected frequencies. This allows one to be incredibly surgical when trying to find the appropriate frequency and Q. In fact, that word pretty much sums up the System 5's channel strip. It's perfect for shaping a sound without adding a great deal of extra and perhaps unwanted colour.

In addition to the new Channel Strip plug-in, there's also Down Mixer, which simplifies the process of creating stereo fold-downs of surround material, and a new version of Mod Delay. But, as well as new plug-ins, Avid have also made a number of other mix-related improvements that will be helpful to those who use Pro Tools for large-scale mixes. There are now Solo and Mute indicators on the Edit window's toolbar, so if any track in your session has been soloed or muted, the appropriate indicator will light up to show that a solo or mute is active somewhere.

Clicking the Solo indicator will clear the solo status of any tracks, but, unfortunately, clicking the Mute indicator does nothing. According to the Pro Tools manual, a 'clear mutes' function is impossible because Mute is an automatable mix parameter.

Even so, it would have been nice if clicking the Mute indicator would at least scroll you automatically to the first muted track in the list, just to make it easy to track down a rogue mute, if you'll excuse the pun. The Edit window now features Solo and Mute indicators bottom right.

Here you can see the Solo indicator lit up to show that there's at least one soloed track in the session. A particularly neat touch is that the Solo indicator works across multiple Pro Tools systems synchronised via Satellite Link.

This means that if a session on any linked system has a soloed track, the Solo indicator will light up, which is pretty cool. The only slight complaint is that the Solo and Mute indicators are only visible on the Edit window, and it might have been nice to find some way for them to be accommodated on the Mix window as well.

Staying with the theme of making things easier to see when mixing, another neat feature in Pro Tools 10 is called Bus Interrogation. While the name sounds a bit like some kind of forceful public transport inquisition, it's actually a way of quickly seeing all tracks sharing a common assignment. For example, say you have a number of tracks routed to a Drums bus and you want the Mix window to show only those tracks. In past versions, once a plug-in was launched it was drawing power from the CPU, even if you had no audio on the track.

Pro Tools 11 is smart enough to detect the presence of audio on the tracks and when there is no audio passing through the plug-ins they are using any power even though they are active in the session. This time saving feature can really come in handy when long mixes need to be printed. To further expand on these new abilities, Pro Tools takes it a step further and allows you to print mixes from several sources simultaneously as well as the ability to print.

In the past we would have to cycle through several windows to achieve this. This feature is complex enough that we will be looking at this by itself in a future article. This engine also allows Pro Tools to support a wide array of Video Interfaces, allowing you to view video playback on an external monitor. The also allows you to select between different playback resolutions to balance between image quality and system performance.

However, in my opinion, the most important change regarding video in Pro Tools is that you can no longer capture video to the Timeline in Pro Tools. Video has become very prevalent in the past few years allowing for more capabilities across a wide range of products.

Even the iPhone allows for basic video editing right on the phone, not to mention the many apps available for these devices. Bottom line, there are numerous ways to Capture video. The software engine enabling all of this goodness to happen is so radically different than any previous version of Pro Tools, and Avid has also taken into account the apprehension you might feel about jumping ship.

For the first time in Pro Tools history, you get 2 licenses: Pro Tools 11 and 10 as well. The PT11 license includes an additional license for PT You can even have both versions installed on your computer at once! One of the most professional-minded new features of Pro Tools 11 are the new Metering Scales and Ballistics. To accommodate the wide range of professionals utilizing Pro Tools such as Broadcast, Post Production, Music Mixing, we now have up to 17 different metering types.

Yes, you read that right, 17! The most useful new feature is Clip Gain. Note that what were formerly referred to as 'regions' in Pro Tools are now called 'clips', and the Region menu has been renamed accordingly. Each clip can have its own gain setting, independent of the track volume, automation settings or whatever.

At the bottom left of each clip, you can display a small fader icon by selecting Clip Gain Info from the View menu. Every clip has its own gain fader and the waveform will look bigger or smaller when you raise or lower the gain, which is great visual feedback. You can display a Clip Gain Line on each clip, selectable from the View Menu, and just use the trim tool to drag this up and down to set the level. Clip gain settings can also be automated by setting breakpoints on the Clip Gain Line using the Pencil tool.

This is a big deal for those working with real recordings, especially things like vocals, as you can make each phrase or even each word into an individual clip, then conveniently adjust its level to make the entire vocal 'sit' properly in the track. Lots of technical enhancements make Pro Tools 10 much more responsive to use, and generally speed up the workflow. Sessions open faster and fades are now calculated and played back in real-time, so there's no more waiting for them to get re-built.

Automatic Delay Compensation ADC now has four times the number of samples 16, , so you can pile on more latency-inducing plug-ins. You can also record and play back using different bit-depths within the same session, work with interleaved stereo files, use bit floating-point files, and import WAV, AIFF and SDII files within the same session without converting to the session format.

Pro Tools can bounce a file and then import it directly into iTunes or upload it to SoundCloud, which could be useful when you need to share a work-in-progress. If you use the bounce to iTunes option, Pro Tools puts the file into iTunes in the background, ready for you to play whenever you like. The new Avid Channel Strip should be another crowd-pleaser for users, featuring EQ, Dynamics, Filter and Gain sections that use processing algorithms plucked from the highly regarded Euphonix System 5 console.

In action, the Strip was great for working on lead vocals, providing much better visual feedback and control than the standard plug-ins. For large-scale projects such as film scoring, the more expensive Pro Tools HD10 software and its accompanying high-end hardware comes into play.