Avid Pro Tools 2022

This year heralded a product line refresh GEORGE SHILLING avidly downloads and installs…

Since we last looked at Pro Tools in early 2020 (Resolution V19.2), there have been some significant updates, and earlier this year a complete revamp of the product line. There are now three distinct versions, each with a different subscription rate. New users can no longer buy Perpetual licences; they must subscribe. The standard version of Pro Tools is now named Pro Tools Studio — a sensible move to avoid confusion when referring to ‘Pro Tools’. A new entry-level version is named Artist. And the top level version which is needed for HDX-based systems is still called Ultimate, but — slightly confusingly — the package needed to obtain it is called Flex. Inspiring new MPC-style sampler and analogue synth VIs (GrooveCell and SynthCell) are included with all versions to entice music makers. The names are reminiscent of the ancient SampleCell sampler from the Digidesign days. Also reminiscent of Pro Tools LE (and perhaps less welcome) are the track count limits in the Artist version including only 32 tracks of Audio. But for professional users, the Studio version provides pretty much all you need unless you already own HDX hardware — even including new Dolby Atmos capabilities.

Here are some of the improvements since our last review: 2020.3 finally brought folder tracks to Pro Tools. These ‘Basic’ or ‘Routing’ flavours are a great bonus to keeping big sessions organised. These are useful with certain mixing projects, enabling visual categorisation, and with Routing Folders you have similar functionality to audio subgroups along with that useful organisation.

2020.9 added handy options for Record enable latch/cancel behaviour between audio and MIDI/ Instrument tracks, usefully added support for Ableton Link, and reintroduced support for SDII files, allowing conversion and importing, along with the BW64 file format. 2020.11 added the new Dark Theme. Melodyne Essential was now included with subscriptions and support plans, adding slick conversion of audio to MIDI, simply by dragging audio to a MIDI track. The Hybrid Engine allowed offloading of AAX DSP processing to the Carbon interface for low latency monitoring while recording. There was a new Bounce window with added functionality, the return of QuickTime, and the ability to export Dolby Atmos ADM files directly. 2021.6 added support for M1 Macs via Rosetta. Hybrid Engine was implemented for HDX cards so that native and DSP processing could be used “more harmoniously”. This makes better use of the host computer’s processing, with more voices available, but allowing use of the HDX DSP when low latency is needed. Voices, Tracks and I/O limits were increased. The latter especially was long-awaited and much requested, enabling third-party interfaces to now access 64 channels of I/O (previously limited to 32).

Track count was also doubled, and doubling sample rate no longer meant halving track count. The Dark and Classic UI Themes were comprehensively enhanced with customisable brightness and saturation of different parts of the interface, using an expanded Color Palette window. And you no longer had to restart to switch themes. And finally, from 2021.6 Pro Tools adds correct delay compensation for side chains — great for your EDM bass drum pumping, or TV dialogue enhancement where you need to dynamically EQ music or atmosphere pads.

2021.10 added further customisation to the UI themes and colours. Routing multichannel audio was simplified with automatic down-mixing and mapping without creating sub-paths. And you could now control your Carbon preamps from within Pro Tools. Support was also added for Komplete Kontrol MIDI keyboards, with automatic sync with the selected track, and control Pro Tools functions with buttons, knobs and the 4D encoder. 2022.4 introduced the revamp of Pro Tools with three distinct subscription tiers. Additionally, Soundflow Cloud Avid Edition provides shortcuts and 1,600+ pre-built macros and commands that can be triggered various ways. And 2022.4 brought custom keyboard shortcuts. A number of menu items without shortcuts can finally be assigned a time-saving keyboard command. There is also a separate new Search window for finding commands, tracks, clips, AudioSuite plug-ins, memory locations and Track Groups within Pro Tools. There were also further Dolby Atmos enhancements, and increased Video Color Space options and automatic detection. 2022.6 added more Dolby Atmos improvements including offline bounce re-renders. Sends can now be pre-set to default to a useful setting (rather than off or 0dB). MIDI improvements include a setting to quantize to the grid setting (with a new shortcut to do this).

The many enhancements and improvements are welcome. However, with Apple Silicon being available for more than a year it is disappointing that there is no native support, even if Rosetta allows Pro Tools to run smoothly. And there are long-standing bugs not fixed. The Score editor feels forgotten, with limited functionality, and still doesn’t correctly display certain note lengths. And the ‘Select Assignments to…’ [a particular output] command still annoyingly un-hides hidden and inactive tracks that have that assignment. But although changes seem to come slowly, new features are usually extremely well thought-out, and the latest revamp of the range seems targeted to bring new users to the fold while keeping the pros happy.

VERDICT

PROS Dolby Atmos support, folder tracks, MIDI improvements, customisable keyboard shortcuts, many small but useful enhancements

CONS Some old bugs not fixed, no Apple Silicon support