Our sister sites are running the A-Z of their DAWs, we thought it was a nice idea so here goes.
The A-Z of Pro Tools, some letters will yield deeper articles than others, but it will be fun to do.
A is for AAX.
The AAX plug-in format was announced on 20th October 2011, AAX being the acronym for Avid Audio eXtension. AAX was developed to replace the RTAS and TDM plug-in formats which were 32 bit and made it impossible for Avid to create a 64bit DAW.
AAX is a 64 bit plug-in format made exclusively for Pro Tools 10 and 11. 32 bit versions of AAX plug-ins worked in Pro Tools 10. It took a little longer to implement it into Avid’s video editor - Media Compser but as of v8.1 Meda Composer now supports AAX Native plug-ins too.
AAX Native And AAX DSP
There are 2 types of AAX plug-in:
AAX Native for use in Pro Tools, Pro Tools HD Native and Pro Tools HDX systems
AAX DSP for use in Pro Tools HDX systems.
With AAX, you can share sessions between DSP-accelerated Pro Tools systems and native-based Pro Tools systems and continue using the same plug-ins. Your sessions will sound exactly the same, regardless of the rig you’re using.
How Many Developers Have Ported To AAX?
AAX has been a huge success for Avid with many vendors porting to AAX Native, there are now several hundred AAX plug-ins and instruments for use in Pro Tools 11.
AAX DSP porting has been less popular with around 50% of developers who made TDM versions of Pro Tools plug-in only porting their TDM plug-ins to AAX native formats. However some other developers have created AAX DSP plug-ins for the first time. In reality there are far more AAX Native plug-ins than there are AAX DSP, this is partly due to the efficiency of the new Avid 64bit audio engine making DSP less of a requirement for many Pro Tools users.
Where I Can Find AAX Plug-ins?
Pro Tools Expert started the first AAX database on the web and we continue to maintain it to make sure Pro Tools users can find out what AAX plug-ins are available, check the AAX plug-in database here