The A‑D and D‑A converters on that card are far superior to those on a typical Power Mac and, most importantly, you also get a pair of stereo S/PDIF digital inputs and outputs. Once you start using the software seriously, you may want to consider getting a Digidesign Audiomedia III card, which will give you two tracks of simultaneous recording and eight tracks of replay. What you don't get is the ability to run software plug‑ins - big‑league Pro Tools systems have DSP farm cards that allow sophisticated TDM plug‑ins to be run without loading extra work onto the host computer. The actual number of tracks varies according to the speed of your CPU and hard disk - from eight tracks with a 75MHz machine up to 16 tracks with 100MHz or faster machines. Using the Pro Tools software with a PCI PowerMac's built‑in audio facilities (note that Nubus machines can't be used with this software) will get you straight into using the same software interface that the big boys use, and most Power Macs will let you replay enough audio tracks to do serious work. The basic operating principles of v3.4 are, however, pretty much the same. Obviously Digidesign hope to attract new users who will eventually progress to their fully pro systems based on Pro Tools hardware, which is supported by a huge range of third‑party hardware peripherals and software. and it's available from Digidesign's web site. It's largely intuitive, although anyone who is new to using computers for audio will face something of a learning curve. Pro Tools is based around two main windows - one that looks like a mixing console with faders, pans, mutes, routing controls and insert points, and one that shows the waveforms of the audio in each track for cut‑and‑paste graphic editing. You can also record MIDI into Pro Tools, but the editing facilities are so basic that you're better off importing a MIDI file to replay from within Pro Tools - or, better still, run a MIDI sequencer on your Mac at the same time as the Pro Tools software, synchronised via OMS. The latest version of the 'paid for' version of Pro Tools is now up to 4.1 the version that Digidesign are giving away is 3.4, which will run using either a Mac's native audio hardware or an Audiomedia III card, providing better recording and editing facilities than the audio side of many audio/MIDI sequencers. ![]() You can, however, acquire a slightly older version of the Pro Tools software for free direct from Digidesign. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to set up a professional Pro Tools system, which will give you between eight and 32 tracks of audio plus almost unlimited virtual tracks depending on your choice of Digidesign audio card and your computer configuration. Mike Collins looks a gift horse in the mouth.ĭigidesign's Pro Tools is one of the most widely‑used multitrack digital audio editing systems on the planet. ![]() If the best things in life are free, then perhaps Pro Tools 3.4 is one of them - Digidesign are now giving away this version of their Mac audio recording and editing software. Pro Tools v3.4 has the same sophisticated software interface as Digidesign's pro systems.
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