What is Avid Pro Tools music maker software?
Avid pro tools is a DAW (digital audio workstation) used for production, creation, recording, mixing and mastering of music. This software is compatible with both MacOS and windows and operates in connection with external analog-to-digital converters as well as a standalone unit.
Like other DAWs, Pro Tools can perform various functions of a mixing console, multitrack recorder, and some other features in the digital domain, such as non-destructive and non-linear editing, time expansion and compression, track compositing, pitch shifting, and mixdown in real-time. Avid pro tools is one of the most popularly used audio editing software in the world.
Table of contents
Versions
There are three main versions of the Pro Tools software:
1. Avid Pro Tools First
This is the Avid Pro tools free version of the DAW which consists of 16 MIDI tracks and 16 audio files along with an ability to do 4 recordings from 4 different inputs at one time. It will act as a free recording software and free music production software and help you understand the user interface of the software and learn you way around it. But in this version, you can only save three genuine projects and they must be stored in the cloud with an avid account.
2. Avid Pro Tools
The second version is known as the Pro Tools only and it costs $599 with an upgrade plan for one-year for a perpetual license to get started. You can purchase this subscription annually or monthly as per your needs. It comes with 5GB included sounds and audio, a total of 32 audio inputs and 128 audio tracks, virtual instruments and 60 effect plugins, 128 aux tracks and a year of software updates and much more.
3. Avid Pro Tools Ultimate
Then comes the Pro Tools Ultimate is formerly known as Pro Tools HD. This allows up to 1024 MIDI tracks, 192 inputs, 512 instrument tracks, 7.1 surround sound, 64 video, 115 additional plugins, ambisonics and Atmos mixing and unlimited busses and sounds of size more than 5GB adding up to 32-bit 192 kHz.
Audio Recording
As soon as you wrap your head around these different versions and understand their workflow. That’s where you’ll start enjoying the process. If you are new to pro tools, it won’t be much difficult. The interface consists of two windows, one for editing and one for mixing. The editing window will handle all the arranging, recording and MIDI editing for detailed audio. If you have used the software before, you are already aware of the seamlessness and precision of the audio editing.
From recording loop, to combing tracks together, to sample-level editing, you can easily edit a track and assemble using Smart Tool cursor as well as apply crossfades- all of this within the main edit window itself. With Clip Gain, you can adjust volumes with the help of a pop-up volume slider on the fly, and for this you don’t require Gain plugins or additional data to be added manually anywhere. Beat detective takes up the groove in audio tracks and enables you to fix timing issues throughout different instruments. You can maintain proper positioning of grids for copying, pasting and cutting MIDI clips and unquantized audio with a new groove editing capability.
MIDI Recording and Instrumentation
Pro tools comes with an ample supply of virtual instruments. Some of the newly added instruments are UVI Falcon, which comprises an amazing factory sound set, Plugsound avid Edition, which is a collection of synthesizer samples and instruments of size 2.6 GB along with 1000 preset sounds. There are expansion modules also available in the market for these plug-ins.
Apart from this, you will also get the previous instruments such as a sequencing drum machine, a boom, a mini grand, DB-33 which is a townwheel organ having rotating speaker, a grand modeled piano with many reverbs and sounds, plus variable dynamics along with one knob, structure free which plays sample-based instruments, a multitimbral workstation plugin, Xpand2 and a Vacuum as well as a monophonic vacuum tube synthesizer.
Mixing and Post-Production
The mix window which is the second window of pro tools is a great place to work at especially if you have one of the control surfaces of Avid. The mix window will display all your songs in a mixing style and it will look a lot like studio one or Logic. The way pro tools manages aux busses, returns and sends is also very similar to logic and studio one. Although it is a lot faster to send and return in studio one, Pro tools are still preferable because as a mix engineer, you can pick and automate any parameters across the track.
One of the most widely used tool
Although it has its own quirks, Pro Tools is still the most fully featured and robust as DAW (digital audio workstation) there can ever be. However, if one is looking to buy a sequencer, they have to look for many aspects, but Pro tools remains the most standard and suitable DAW to be used in the recording studios across the globe. If you buy this music making software, you are opening up your projects to a greater potential and capability base if you aspire to work with other music artists, forward your work to producers or you are looking to hire a mixing engineer who wants to have a look at the track data and plugins that you used and not just your stack of songs that you exported as audio files individually.
Wrap up
Power your sound with the tools that power the music industry. Avid Pro Tools redefines what’s sonically possible in film and television. Pro Tools has an option for everyone, right from students who have just stepped into the industry to artists, experienced musicians, music producers, mixers, audio professionals and many more.
