Introduction

If you are involved in recording audio today whether for music or post-production you cannot fail to have heard of Digidesign s Pro Tools. There are plenty of digital audio recording, editing and mixing systems out there , but Pro Tools is just everywhere these days! And not without good reason. It is, in my humble opinion, simply the most well-integrated system available today. Now, chiming with the new millennium, Pro Tools has truly come of age bringing just about every conceivable type of recording technology into its ambit, whether by software simulation or by hardware add-ons.

Possibly the biggest breakthrough has been the explosion of software plug-ins which can be used to extend the system to incorporate just about every kind of signal processing imaginable. And, having sucked the whole studio into the computer, Digidesign and its partners have gone on to develop a range of control hardware which can be connected to the computer to provide the tactile control required in professional studio situations which the QWERTY keyboard and mouse simply cannot provide faders and knobs to mix with, panels with buttons to allow direct access to editing functions, joysticks for surround panning, and so forth.

The latest development is to provide synthesizers, samplers and drum machines as software modules from which the audio can be routed directly into the Pro Tools mixer. So now we truly have the whole studio in a computer-shaped box!

Perhaps the next step is to have simulated producers, engineers and musicians in there as well and let them...