10 years ago the current version of Pro Tools was Pro Tools 10. This is significant because it marks the last days of what I see as the ‘Old’ Pro Tools and is the pivot point at which Pro Tools moved into its next phase. With the release of Pro Tools 11, in many ways the modern Pro Tools as we recognise it today came into being. So what would a Pro Tools user of 2012 make of Pro Tools 2022.4?

I’ll head off the inevitable comments about perpetual licences. The Pro Tools user of 2012 lived in a world of integer releases. Every two or so years a paid for upgrade was released, hopefully with a slew of compelling new features. There were point releases, and occasionally these were more memorable than their integer releases - I’m sure more of us who were around at the time remember Pro Tools 7.4 more than 7.0. But usually the integer update was “the one”. This is in sharp contrast to the ‘little and often’ model Avid moved to when they adopted the current year-dot-month way of doing things in 2018. Whether or not they are releasing enough often enough I’ll leave to you to comment on.

Integer Updates - Pro Tools 8, 9, 10, 11…

Pro Tools 8 was a great example of the kind of feature-packed release we expect from an integer release. New toys, sharp new look etc. Other releases are just as significant but leave the software looking much the same, Pro Tools 9 was such a release. It broke the requirement to use Avid hardware with Pro Tools - a huge change but transparent to me at the time with my Digidesign interface…

So Pro Tools 10. A weird release in that it was the crossover release which supported the new AAX format and the new HDX hardware as well as the old TDM hardware and RTAS plugins. As such it has hung around for a long time. Owners of TDM systems have to stay on this version as TDM support was dropped in Pro Tools 11.

The first thing which has to be said about Pro Tools releases beyond Pro Tools 10 is that they are 64 bit and feature a redesigned replacement for the old Digidesign Audio Engine, the Avid Audio Engine or AAE. Remember that prior to the AAE bounces in Pro Tools were real time! HDX users gained the ability to bounce up to 16 sources at the same time, Stem mastering of music projects was yet to become a ‘thing’ but for post production users this was very welcome indeed. 64 Bit freed Pro Tools of the restrictions of memory addressing 32 bit entailed, it’s hard to remember now but this was a big deal at the time and a fundamental issue with Pro Tools.

Real Time Bounces And Limited Memory

So Pro Tools 10 was a world of real time bounces and memory limitations. One of the most striking things about Pro Tools 10 if you look at it today is those faders. The modern fader caps in the Pro Tools UI are based on the design found on the Eucon control surfaces like the S6 and S1. The faders in Pro Tools 10 look suspiciously like the faders from a D Control, a flagship control surface at the time. Although Avid had bought Euphonix at this stage, the chances were that if you had invested in a serious worksurface for Pro Tools it was going to be Diginet based and the visual feedback through the use of colour which was so striking about the System 5 surfaces of the time was yet to propagate through the Pro Tools world to give us the power, deep integration and value of the S1 and Pro Tools Dock which offer S6-style power for Command 8 money.

Speaking of power, the fact that computers become more powerful year on year isn’t in itself a surprise but the user of 2012 would surely be impressed by the power of a modern Pro Tools system and probably equally unsurprised that we are still finding ways to run out of power in spite of all these gains. Much like the old adage “expenditure rises to meet income”!

Apple Silicon And Native Power

Moore’s Law is no longer something which can be taken for granted but the announcement and development of Apple Silicon really is changing expectations around what a modern computer can do. With these leaps in performance have come corresponding changes in workflow. For example, Dolby Atmos, itself a development which would be a huge surprise to the Pro Tools user of ten years ago, as well as a fundamental change in the way audio is mixed, has also achieved the supposedly impossible. It’s a new format which has actually gained traction and widespread adoption from production all the way to the consumer. But returning to the expectations we have of our computers, when it was introduced back in 2017, Pro Tools users expected to have to run the Dolby Atmos renderer on a separate computer, today mixing and rendering can all be achieved on the same machine.

HDX - In Its Second Decade And Still Going Strong

In 2012 HDX was still ‘new’. Released in 2011 this next generation was a welcome update to the unbelievably long lived Pro Tools HD TDM cards released in 2002 which preceded it. Eight years was a very long career for a generation of hardware. What then would a user of 10 years ago make of the fact that HDX is now over 12 years old and, while it’s dwindling relevance in the face of such power from native systems has been much commented on, the announcement of the new Hybrid Engine in Pro Tools 2021.6 effectively sidestepped the dichotomy between the native and DSP worlds of Pro Tools, allowing Pro Tools not only to properly, and flexibly harness the power of native processing, but also to magically boost the performance of the DSP hardware to give massive performance gains to hardware through a software update.

The L Word

Latency and how to mitigate it when tracking with a DAW is every bit as much an issue as it was in 2021, but ten years have brought more solutions and lowered the price of entry for those looking for useable ways to monitor through your DAW. In 2012 the options were an expensive and complex HDX system and associated hardware, or using the workaround facilities offered by your interface, from a simple direct/DAW mix control through to DSP mixers built in to the interface. Pro Tools 11 introduced dual buffers, one for playback tracks which was "set dynamically according to what the session needed for reliable playback”, and a separate input buffer for record-enabled or input-monitored tracks. This could be set to a much lower value, allowing low-latency monitoring of input signals through plug-ins, and immediate response when soft synths were played live.

The alternative for proper, near-zero latency monitoring remains HDX but whereas in 2012 there was a lower priced alternative in the form of the confusingly named HD Native hardware system with its single zero latency monitoring path, a user from 10 years ago who needed a practical, low latency solution for typical band tracking would surely be very happy to find the Pro Tools Carbon, a system which I think of as what my 003 Rack of 2012 wanted to be when it grew up!

Native IO

Thinking of that 003R and all the other 19” interfaces of a decade ago, the biggest restriction for a user who wanted to track bands but wasn’t in the market for HD/HDX systems was the native IO limit in Pro Tools, track counts have risen steadily but until comparatively recently the IO limit of 16 was in place. The move to 32 really helped, 16 was often not quite enough. But with the middle tier Pro Tools Studio 2022.4 offering native IO of 64, all but the biggest tracking jobs are well within the capabilities of what not all that long ago was a Pro Tools LE system with 16 inputs.

Ultimate Only Features

Looking at developments in the last 10 years in Pro Tools, most of what I’ve highlighted here involves things getting more powerful. More processing power, more tracks, more I/O. However, I suspect that something which might surprise the 2012 user more is the fact that Pro Tools Studio, a product that in previous years was the equivalent of Pro Tools LE or Pro Tools M-Powered looks to all intents and purposes like Pro Tools HD.

The only way it was possible in 2012 to get Pro Tools HD features without buying a Pro Tools hardware system was by buying the now-defunct Complete Production Toolkit. Nowadays, Pro Tools Studio has surround capabilities, VCAs and advanced automation. All of the software features, which back in 2012 I would have missed moving from an HD system to a native system, are now all there. Those are the things which would have surprised me in 2012!

Of course, there are negatives. The way Pro Tools is sold in 2012 is different and for many this is controversial. However, set aside the subscription dogma and you can now get a powerful version of Pro Tools for less than $300 over 3 years!

And of course, there are still those features we seem to have been waiting for forever. For example, if you’d told me we still wouldn’t have folders in the clips list in 2022 I’d have spat my coffee.

What do you think? Would you have been pleased or disappointed if you’d had a sneak preview of Pro Tools 2022.4 back in 2012?