Following the launch of Pro Tools 9 earlier this month, Avid held an audio event for press yesterday to run through and demo the newly improved functionality of the industry-standard audio toolkit.
The overwhelming feeling following the event is the latest version is quite a leap forward in providing users with options for using Pro Tools with a much wider assortment of control panels and audio interfaces, or even on the move on a laptop with no hardware at all.
One of the key upgrades as part of Pro Tools 9 is it is now available as a software-only version. This is the first time it’s been available as a standalone piece of software, enabling full access to Pro Tools for audio prepping, mixing and editing on a laptop.
Another significant improvement is Pro Tools 9 now supports a much broader range of control surfaces (through the Avid EUCON open Ethernet protocol), including (naturally) Avid’s newly acquired Euphonix consoles and controllers, which have been rebranded as Avid Artist Series and Pro Series consoles.
Added to this, Pro Tools 9 also supports a much larger range of audio I/O interfaces, as a result of new Core Audio and ASIO driver support.
At yesterday’s event, Avid announced it is no longer going to sell a handful of its formerly separately available Pro Tools add-ons, including the popular Music Production Toolkit. These are now bundled in with Pro Tools 9 as part of its expanded features set.
The functionality added to Pro Tools 9 by the addition of these add-ons includes automatic delay compensation, ending the need to manually compensate for latencies from hardware I/Os and plug-in algorithm processing.
Other improvements to Pro Tools includes the ability to do OMF/AAF/MXF file interchanges and MP3 exports, there’s also enhanced accuracy when syncing audio to video in post, through a new built-in time code ruler, and an updated 7.1 surround sound paner.
Pro Tools 9 is available as a software-only version at around £500 or packaged with different audio interfaces at increasing price points.
Here’s a collection of music and audio post people giving their first impressions on the upgraded system…
Staff Reporter
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