AVID PROTOOLS

> Pro Tools is a curious proposition these days. As its creators Avid rightly claim, it’s legitimately still an industry standard in a sense. It’s rare to find a large-scale studio or post production house not making use of Pro Tools. Elsewhere in the industry its dominance is considerably less apparent though, and Pro Tools has never really made an impact with the solo producer or electronic musician market.

The road to this point in Pro Tools’ existence is a fairly winding one. It began life in the early ’80s as Sound Designer, a tool for editing samples for hardware from the likes of E-MU, Akai and Roland. Sound Designer evolved into Sound Tools, a two-track digital recording system complete with outboard converters for editing DAT tracks.

The 1990s saw the introduction of Pro Tools, which for the first time featured multitrack digital recording, editing, DSP and mixing. Version 1 supported between 4 and 16 channels and was priced at a whopping $5,995.

Throughout its history Pro Tools software has been associated with a variety of hardware systems. Typically, large studios will use compatible interfaces or DSP acceleration to run mammoth, complex projects. Setups like these can regularly run into four or five figure territory. Pro Tools is now sold on a subscription basis, with prices starting at £249 per year.

WHY IT’S WORTH A TRY:

For post production or scoring there are numerous benefits. No other app is quite so deep when it comes to surround sound or immersive audio, and the ability to work with multiple video files is a must for many TV/film producers. It offers powerful cloud collaboration tools for working remotely with other studios too.

DOWNSIDES:

A single year’s subscription will set you back almost twice the cost of a copy of Logic, and you still don’t own the DAW at the end. Unless you’re working in a larger studio or want to dip in and out of a subscription for work, it’s probably not worth it.