Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/74632
review Avid's Pro Tools 10 L adies and gentlemen, Clip-Based Gain! (Thunderous applause, whistling, peo- ple fainting.) If you haven't had the By LUKE HARPER Owner/Engineer Audio Altimeter Minneapolis www.audioaltimeter.com "Better with every iteration, and this is a major one." pleasure, your experience will probably go something like this: First, you will notice the little fader hanging out in the corner of your audio clip and think, "Oh yeah, that gain thing-y." You will then gra- tuitously gain something up or down, like a transient or a snare hit and think, "Hmm. Neat. I probably could have done that with automa- tion, but that's cool, I guess." That's the start, though. Soon you will be totally hooked. Every syllable will become an excuse to avoid compressors and automation, as you swoop through tracks pulling miniscule volume maneuvers. You will be hooked. I've got only 900 words, so I'll try to just hit the most salient points. Pro Tools 10 is a big, serious beast with serious implications. There is a lot to love. Obviously, Avid listens to its customers. It gets a little better with every iteration, and this is a major one. Fundamentally, I feel like Pro Tools 10 is a kind of bridge…to Pro Tools 11, which will be a whole new experience. There are ups and downs, but when you make moves as major as Avid is with 10 and 11, that's the nature of the game. We're going to a 64-bit platform with 11. What does that mean? Well, your old Digi "Blue" hardware (192s, etc.) will no longer be supported. They've had a good 11-year run, but Avid is moving on. Not that your 192s will suddenly stop working or anything, but they are moving on and away. So there's that. But, Pro Tools 9 was the Statue of Liberty for third-party devices. Pretty much any old inter- face will work with it. Or no interface at all. For the majority of this review I am addressing Pro Tools 10 holistically. It should be noted that there are three main versions: Pro Tools 10, which is the basic version, doesn't use RAM caching and doesn't require hardware. There are some missing aspects, such as VCA channels and a trim plug. Pro Tools 10|HD is only available via an upgrade path, and starts in the $1K area. It is fully fea- tured and uses the RAM caching technology. Finally, there's Pro Tools HDX, based on the new Avid HDX PCIe card, which is drastically more powerful than the older Accel cards. All of the specifics are available on the Avid site. VERSION 10 I have Pro Tools 10|HD chilling on a laptop right now with nothing but a skimpy little dongle occluding but one USB. All that power 48 Post • July 2012 right there with my plug permissions. Acces- sible, easy and smooth. Not since the tempo- rary and sweet 8-channel Pro Tools Free (2000) has anything like this been possible with Pro Tools. The closest they've been was the Mbox micro, Pico. It was small, but you still needed another USB for your plugs. You really PRODUCT: Avid Pro Tools 10 WEBSITE: www.avid.com PRICE: V.10, $699; Upgrade/cross- grade $299+; Pro Tools|HD bun- dles,$4,999; HDX, $9,999 · RAM streaming for crazy fast editing/maneuvering · Clip-based gain makes ya wanna shout, call your neighbors can work anywhere that is below a dull roar on anything your processor will allow. Avid put their code where their sales lit- erature is with Pro Tools 10. While the basic playback engine and disk handling in Pro Tools 10 has been improved upon, 10|HD now uses your RAM cache for playback and rendering. This means you can do neat things like real- time fades. Everything is streaming out of RAM, so playback is snappier, edits are real- time, and moving around the timeline is signifi- cantly more fluid and efficient. Pro Tools tracks where you are in your ses- sion and keeps a certain amount of material, before and after where you are working, all buffered up and ready to go. Once Pro Tools 11 is introduced, you will be capable of using…well… all the RAM you have. You can go higher than 128GB of RAM, should you have the urge. All of this means that your host- based processing will be far more efficient and speedy, although with PT 10|HD it already is. Avid knows that speed and efficiency are cru- cial to an effective workflow. Streaming mas- sive sample libraries from RAM will get a whole lot more powerful in Pro Tools as well. AAX There's also a new plug-in format, AAX. The big news here is it's capable of working in a 32-bit space, thus giving you massive amounts of headroom and a hilariously lower noise floor. The other nifty thing about AAX is that Avid did everything they could to make it easy to code, so you are about to see a lot more plugs from a lot more developers. Which is great for everyone. More toys! www.postmagazine.com easy tool, and I've found myself throwing on a lot of basic channels and letting it go. It han- dles up to 192 kHz and 7.1 surround chan- nels. Fundamentally useful. There's more automatic delay compensa- tion, so you can have more plugs going — there's a higher track count and higher buss count, and everything is snappier. So far I've done a commercial and tracked/mixed sev- eral songs for various people, and I'm never going back. Being able to pull the iLok from my main studio machine and throw it into the laptop for busy-work editing is glorious. FINAL THOUGHTS My laptop is a reasonable one, certainly not obscene in terms of specs, and hasn't had a single hiccup with either the short film or any of the mixes. I am ludicrous with track counts. (Automate? Nah.) (Create a new track at a different volume.)(We all have our weird techniques.) (Don't judge me.)(Go ahead, judge.)(Apparently I'm going for a par- enthetical record here.) I know my editor is going to be thrilled. And frankly, I'm pretty impressed. [Editor's Note: Hmm. Well, I wasn't "thrilled," and my editing muscle memory is hav- ing some issues, but I'm going with it.] The new experience makes Pro Tools feel very eager. That might sound odd, but seri- ously, there's a free 30-day trial on it. So pull it down and revel in the novelty of power. *No one will confirm or deny Pro Tools 11, or even if it's going to be called Pro Tools 11. Maybe they'll call it Pro Tools Mega Super Thun- der Fighting. But to make things easier, assume 11 is the next major iteration. Speaking of more toys, Pro Tools 10 ships with a nifty new AAX System 5-based chan- nel strip, which is pretty darned useful and doesn't hog much of anything resource-wise. It's a mellow little beast sonically, and gives you a lot of power and options with dynamics and a 4-band/2-filter EQ. It's a pretty solid and VITAL STATS