Then, the very idea that anyone might actually buy a Pro Tools system for the software would have seemed laughable to many. Things have come a long way since I joined Sound On Sound back in 1998.

At a stroke, Pro Tools 9 removes nearly all of these - and with the addition of the new Complete Production Toolkit 2, a native system can acquire all the features of an HD rig apart from those that are hardware‑dependent, making such gems as VCA groups and advanced automation available to native users for the first time. Users of the more affordable native Pro Tools packages, LE and M‑Powered, had long griped about the artificial limitations that kept those packages feature‑poor in comparison with Pro Tools HD. No longer would their market‑leading Pro Tools DAW be tied to Avid's own hardware from now on it would work with any interface that supported the ASIO or Core Audio driver protocols, from the Apogees and Prisms of this world to the built‑in inputs and outputs of a cheap laptop.Īnd that wasn't all. This year's AES show in San Francisco saw the announcement most of us thought we'd never hear: Avid, for so long the most insular manufacturer in the business, were embracing openness. For the first time ever, Avid have made the full Pro Tools feature set available on native systems - and you don't even need one of their interfaces to run it!

Avid Pro Tools 9