In the highest echelon of professional music production and recording studios, you will undoubtedly encounter Avid‘s Pro Tools. While its praise and fame are a bit intimidating, it has been around for a substantial time in the industry (+25 years) and has set an example and frame for all the other acclaimed DAWs.
The first iteration of PT was introduced all the way back in 1984 under a different name. At the time, the founding engineering duo (Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher) were creating and selling digital drum sound chips under their Digidrums label. Seven years later, the first version of PT was launched, offering only four tracks and selling for six grand! Comparatively, Pro Tool and other DAWs are incredibly affordable, especially when accounting for inflation since the early nineties. Even in PT’s infancy, it garnered popular support- Ricky Martin’s infamous “Livin’ la Vida Loca” (1999) was the first No. 1 single to be recorded, edited, and mixed fully within the Pro Tools environment.
Nowadays, Pro Tools is the industry standard. Artists from Alan Walker to The Chainsmokers swear by the program for mixing and arranging tracks. While Ableton, Logic and Fruity Loops are amazing for sequencing, MIDI, and audio-editing, Pro Tools main forte is the high level of integration across high-end studios.
You will be hard pressed to find professional educational, LA, or NYC-based studios without the program at the helm of their operations. It has seamless, practically latency-free audio recording abilities that excel in tracking live bands, instruments, and vocalists. Not that other DAWs can’t do this very well. It certainly comes down to preference at the end of the day. However, PTs proliferation makes collaboration easier for digital producers and engineers.
The most recent version of PT brings cloud collaboration features to its users. Cloud collaboration enables users of the newest version the ability to work on projects together with other Pro Tools users around the world. It also offers a set of integrated tools for sharing all or some of your Pro Tools session so other people can add their own parts or mix tracks from their own studios or laptops.
Pro Tools will look familiar for any producer familiar with Ableton, Logic, or the like. (cred: Avid Pro Tools)
We hope you enjoyed our brief introduction to Pro Tools and we encourage you to try a free 30-day trial from Avid if this piqued your interest whatsoever. We’ve been a little late to the PT club and so far we are absolutely loving it. The most recent version is very stable, a nice change from the previous DAWs we were regularly using.
We’re looking forward to providing more Pro Tools-related content to our readers in the future. Expect some tutorials on the horizon!
What do you think of Pro Tools? Do you think it’s deserving of its acclaim or do you prefer another DAW? Let us know!
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