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.
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. 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.
Sound Tools 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.
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.
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. 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.
Bob Clearmountain once expressed concern that people would acquire Pro Tools system with little understanding of the editing process.
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."
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.
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.
Kulcsszavak: soundtrack recording, enregistrement de musique du film, soundtrack studio, recording of cd albums, symphony orchestra, recording area, control room, mixing console, pro tools.
