Recording - January 2014 - 28

&
Avid Pro Tools 11
Avid giveth and Avid taketh
The new engine and its 64-bit operation
are nothing but good news, but for some
users there may be gotchas. The big one is
that any DAW running 64-bit requires all
of its components to also be 64-bit compatible, and that means plug-ins! And not
just the included ones-all third-party plugins and VIs must be 64-bit as well. This
may be problematic for some users who
depend on certain older 32-bit plug-ins for
their work, because not all companies'
plug-ins have been ported over to 64-bit
operation. This is the case despite the fact
that the changeover has been anticipated
for well over a year; especially for smaller
developers, the port is not a trivial matter.
Anticipating that the loss of some plugins, even if only temporarily, might be a
deal-breaker, Avid has taken the step of
allowing for a dual installation of Pro Tools
11 and Pro Tools 10, which runs 32-bit
and can still use any older plugs that may
not be available to the newer version. The
version of 10 must be the latest, 10.3.6
(or higher), and while sessions started in
Pro Tools 11 might not play properly in
v10 (if they use newer plug-ins or features), sessions in progress, or sessions
that require older 32-bit plug-ins, can be
run in 10, without having to forgo the
advantages of 11 for new fully-64-bit projects. (Incidentally, Pro Tools 11 is not the
only DAW to have this issue-the 64-bit
Logic X upgrade also breaks with the 32bit past-it's the new normal.)
Pro Tools 11, like Pro Tools 10, supports
Avid's new AAX plug-in format, which
replaces the older TDM and RTAS formats.
However, Pro Tools 10 still also supported
those older (32-bit) formats, while 11 will
only run 64-bit AAX plug-ins. Avid's own
branded plug-ins have been converted,
and up-to-date versions of the usual bundled plug-ins are still installed with the
application; Avid's add-ons like the Bomb
Factory compressors and Moogerfooger
processors are also available as 64-bit
AAX. Most third-party plug-ins have been
ported over as well, with a few notable
exceptions; for example, at the time this
article was submitted, Native Instruments
Komplete was still not yet compatible with
Pro Tools 11. [Avid reports as of press time
that NI Komplete is now good to go.-Ed.]
Additionally, keep in mind that AAX plugins that you may have running in Pro Tools
10 are in fact 32-bit AAX, and are not compatible with the 64-bit AAX requirement of
11-they must be upgraded. Fortunately,
Avid maintains a comprehensive compatibility page at www.avid.com/plugins,
which should help users get up to date.
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RECORDING January 2014

Another possible gotcha due to the 64-bit
requirement of Pro Tools 11 is the loss of
compatibility with some older Digi/Avid
hardware. As mentioned above, most of the
recent interfaces (003, Mbox2, current HD
hardware) are supported, and some older
ones, though not officially supported, may
work as well. The Avid website has support
pages that provide a full list of what will
work, what may work, and what definitely
won't work, for both the native and the
hardware (HD) versions of Pro Tools 11.

that much CPU juice to be used elsewhere,
reclaiming it only when the track starts processing sound again. For sessions with a
high track count, but a lot of tracks that
only play in parts of the arrangement, this
could open up a lot more resources-how
much will depend on the user and the
arrangement, but it's another factor contributing to the increased performance of
this new version. With my own typical
arrangements, I'd expect this feature to
enhance CPU performance quite a bit.

Fig. 2

Dynamic host processing
Along with the new 64-bit engine comes
another feature new to Pro Tools-dynamic host processing. This feature, which can
be found on some other DAWs as well, is
a welcome addition-another under-thehood enhancement that should contribute
to greater operating efficiency. In the past,
when you created a track, or an Aux, or
instantiated a plug-in in Pro Tools, the CPU
usage would immediately increase, even if
that track or plug-in was not currently processing audio. If you opened the CPU
usage meter, you'd see it-an idle session
reserving a significant amount of CPU
power. You could always make those
tracks inactive to save CPU, but that didn't
help if you had a track with a lot of CPUhogging plugs/VIs that only played at a
few places in the session-precious CPU
resources were gobbled up even when the
track was silent.
Now, in 11, Pro Tools is smart enough to
dynamically allocate CPU resources in
such situations. An idle track won't waste
computing power; likewise a track that hits
a silent patch with no regions will release

Testing the waters
So, with all these technical improvements, what can an eager Pro Tools engineer expect when he/she powers up 11,
with its new engine? Certainly a higher
track count, more plug-ins, especially virtual instruments, smoother overall feel,
and better responsiveness in larger sessions. But just how much of a difference
will it make? Well, that will, of course,
vary from system to system and user to
user, but I decided to run a little test on
my home system to see what kind of benefits would accrue with a modest setup.
The machine was a 2011 iMac with a
2.5 GHz quad-core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM
(the recommended minimum for Pro Tools
11), and a 7200r RPM FireWire 800
audio hard disk. I set a 128-sample
buffer size (the largest I can stand as a
player) for low latency during recording,
and had at it.
Using only the bundled plug-ins and
instruments, I first created a session in Pro
Tools 10.3.6, loading it up with a number of
audio tracks, each loaded with five CPUhungry reverb plug-ins just to push things;

http://www.avid.com/plugins

Recording - January 2014

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