Pro Tools 8 – DigiDesign Finally Gets It

DigiDesign recently released Pro Tools 8, and we have now added a new training course for Pro Tools 8 as well as updating our DAW Shootout.  For years I’ve seen people asking the same question in forums: How can Pro Tools be the market leader when it can’t do so many things that Cubase or Sonar or Logic (or whatever their favorite DAW is) can do? In the past I too have found the relative lack of functionality in Pro Tools disappointing. However, there are a lot of encouraging signs in Pro Tools 8 that DigiDesign is finally getting it. Here are some of my comments about the new features in Pro Tools 8.

AIR Creative Collection – Virtual Instrument Bonanza

In the past unlike other DAW’s there were only one or two freebie virtual instruments packaged with Pro Tools, and the sounds available with those were pretty limited. A couple of years ago DigiDesign purchased Wizoo Sound Design which then became their Advanced Instrument Research division. Until recently AIR had been cranking out new virtual instrument plug-ins which DigiDesign sells separately. However, for Pro Tools 8 AIR has developed the Creative Collection which contains a ton of both virtual instruments and audio FX. Six virtual instruments are included in the AIR Creative Collection. We have added a new tutorial in our course on how to use all six. Let’s take a brief look at two of them.

Probably the most exciting of these new instruments is Boom, a drum sequencer. Boom can be used in two different ways: (1) As a drum kit. Boom contains ten different drum kits which you can access with MIDI notes. (2) As a pattern sequencer. Using a pattern sequencer is a very intuitive way to create beats since you can enter them in real time as the pattern is playing. You can then save the pattern and trigger patterns for your session using MIDI notes. Here is our YouTube video which demonstrates how to do this.

Score Editor – A (Very) Small Sibelius

Another major enhancement in Pro Tools 8 is the Score Editor. Several years ago Avid (DigiDesign’s parent company) purchased Sibelius, one of the leading manufacturers of professional staff notation products. As with AIR, the synergy is finally showing up in Pro Tools. The Score Editor has a subset of the Sibelius functionality. You can export scores from Pro Tools in the Sibelius file format so that you can refine them into professional scores using Sibelius. Although I didn’t really expect a full-function score editor in Pro Tools, I must say the subset is pretty limited compared to the other DAW’s that have staff notation editors. For example, there is no drum kit and tablature notation. The Score Editor does have a very complete set of guitar chord symbols. There is also no time-anchored text, meaning you cannot add lyrics, and no embellishments such as crescendo or staccato. Nonetheless, for those of us who prefer to compose using staff notation instead of a piano roll the Score Editor is a welcome addition.

Elastic Pitch & Melodyne Essential – Real Time Pitch Shifting

If that weren’t enough, Pro Tools 8 also includes Melodyne Essential. Melodyne has gained popularity in recent years as an algorithm for note identification and processing on monophonic audio material such as vocals. Melodyne Essential is really a bare bones version of the full Melodyne processor. It does provide note identification and pitch shifting, but not automatic pitch and time correction or formant and expression editing.

Audio FX Galore

DigiDesign also included a truckload of audio FX in Pro Tools 8, once again mainly from the AIR Creative Collection. This collection has a total of 20 plug-ins and gives Pro Tools a selection much more comparable to other DAW’s.

In addition to the Creative Collection plug-ins there are a few audio FX that DigiDesign has previously sold separately. One key component for mastering is the Maxim loudness maximizer. In the past Pro Tools and M-Powered out of the box have had practically no mastering plug-ins, and we have had to turn to iZotope Ozone for our Pro Tools mastering tutorial. Finally this time we were able to come up with a mastering tutorial using all-Pro Tools plug-ins. Pro Tools still does not have one essential ingredient for mastering, a multiband compressor, so we used the Bomb Factory BF76 for mastering compression in the tutorial.

Finally, one plug-in that will be of interest to guitarists is Eleven Free, a scaled down version of DigiDesign Eleven. Eleven is a guitar amplifier and speaker simulator that is roughly the equivalent of IK Multimedia’s Amplitube or Native Instruments Guitar Rig.

A Run for the Money

While many of you who are familiar with other DAW’s can see that a lot of these enhancements are still playing catch-up, for the first time in memory Pro Tools is beginning to give the other DAW’s a run for their money instead of just coasting on its market position. No longer do you have to have one DAW for your professional work and another one for your creative efforts.