The strengths and limitations of Pro Tools HD as a music production system - Essay Example

Pro Tools is basically an audio digital workstation that works on Microsoft Windows and OS X. This digital workstation is the product of Avid Technology who are responsible for both the development as well as manufacturing of the final product. This tool is widely popular and is used by experts and professionals. It is well known all throughout the audio industries all over the world for recording purposes and for editing functions in the music production industry, as well as in film scoring, and television as well as film post production, in musical notation and for the purpose of MIDI sequencing. The major benefit Pro Tools is that it can be run alone, and can also operate very well using a large assortment of external A/D converters and/or internal Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) (Webopedia) or Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) audio cards with onboard digital signal processor DSP (Dyer and Harms). In essence, Pro Tools similar to most other softwares of Digital Audio Workstation is very much like a tape recorder that is multi-track and has a mixer. There are several other added features that can perform their function only in the digital domain. Pro tools supports all of 16-bit, 24-bit and the 32-bit float audio at several different sample rates of which the maximum is 192 kHz. Pro tools can also well handle Waveform Audio File Format (WAV) ( IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation), Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF), AIFC, WMA, mp3 and SDII audio files as well as the QuickTime video files. A prominent feature of Pro tools is its time code, elastic audio, tempo maps, automation and the surround sound capabilities. Pro Tools was initially developed by Peter Gotcher and Evan Brooks, both graduates of UC Berkeley. Majors of computer sciences and electrical engineering, Pro Tools began in 1984 as just a sound designer whose original purpose was to tidy up sounds for the E-MU keyboard (emulator archive). Both Brooks and Gotcher tried merging Pro Tools with E-MU. This proposition was rejected and lead to the invent of Digidesign (Brooks) now known as Avid technology. Sound Tools originally began on the 20th of January in the year 1989 at the National Association of Music Merchandisers (NAMM). Initially, it was just a simple tool that was computer based and was uses as a stereo audio editor. The software had tremendous amount of potential which was limited by the technology of hard drives (NAMM.org). The first album which was recorded and edited as well as mixed entirely with the aid of Pro Tools was The Beach Boys ‘summer in Paradise’ in the year 1991. The album was released 1992. "Livin la Vida Loca" a song by Ricky Martin was released in the year 1999 and was the first ever song edited and mixed on Pro Tools to reach the stature of the No. 1 single. Version 2.0 of garbage was the first ever Pro Tool edited album to win a nomination for Grammy awards in the category of ‘Album of the Year’. The entire album was solely edited and mixed with the help of Pro Tools. Eventual successes as these go on to prove the success and usefulness of Pro Tools. There are several recording artists that now prefer to record their songs without the help of Pro Tools. A prominent such name is Jack White belonging to The White Stripes who argued that this tool was not highly appropriate for the purposes of recording music. He was perhaps right in saying that tools such as these were destroying the true essence of recorded music. It made fixing of the mistakes too easy recording artist and the end result or the recorded song was more of a Pro Tool fix up then the artistic effort by the recording artist. He was also right to say that Pro Tools produced the end result so perfect that music instead of sounding like it was sung by someone sounds all the same because of the near to perfect qualities added into it. He was of the opinion that this was not what music was about and it shouldn’t be what people have to hear. They had a right to know music in its true essence and love music, not just a software produced recording (Webopedia) (Vinnicombe). Pro Tools|HD systems is the top of the line and highly professional product of Pro Tools. It majorly relies on the digital signal processor (DSP) processor chips that are able to perform the function of audio processing in combination with the rack-mounted interface, which can also handle incoming as well as outgoing MIDI, audio and the sync connections. The Digital Signal Processor (DSP) cards are joined to the interface which has a proprietary DigiLink cable (avid.com). The major reliance of all Pro Tools systems has been the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) cards which aid most of audio editing and mixing process. This major reliance is based on the fact he when Pro Tools was initially developed, there were not many computers especially at the consumer level and those that dis exist were not powerful enough to handle audio softwares and professional audio auditing[13]. All the Pro Tools HD card varieties contain a different grouping of 9 Digital Signal Processing chips all from Motorola and its 56k range. Some of these chips are used to run track playbacks while the other different chips are used to perform mixing and the signal processing operations. When Pro Tools HD cards were initially launched, they were known as HD Process cards. 2 years later however, these HD Process cards were substituted by the HD Accel card which was a quicker alternative to the Motorola digital processing chip and had twice the amount of processing power. Avid released pro tools 9 in late November 2010 which was a lower cost application and did not also required any hardware assist or interface. The pro tools 9 have many new features in it also having a track feature named as HEAT. The technology used is the harmonically enhanced algorithm technology which makes similar products like HEDA. Initially the system exclusively relied on the hard disk for storage purposes and hence the options available for storing the system were extremely limited with only apple’s hardware platform being compatible. In the year 2002, AVID renamed MediaNet, a SAN proprietary product and encouraged its use by all those who used Pro Tools and were increasingly conscious of all the advantages associated with collaborations that were network based. MediaNet was basically supported by WindowsNT and it could only be manage by using tools that were Windows-based. There are several positive experiences that people have recounted because of the use of the remote storage feature in Pro Tools. These benefits were reaped because of the iSCSI technology incorporated in Pro Tools. Pro tools HD is one of the finest and the high end professional product in the product line. The DSP processor chips make the audio processing more clearly and in conjunction which helps to clear the quality of both, the incoming and the outgoing sound. The DSP chips are connected to the interface through a cable to give out the maximum output. These DSP cards are manufactured by Avid Audio and the interface is bought my many other manufacturers by Avid. Pro Tools system have had heavily relied on the DSP cards, especially at the time when it was newly introduced in the market. The reason it was used the most was because mostly systems did not had the capacity to run HD sound and also the computers at that time were slow. But now the updates have made the computers like lightning have made the systems more powerful. In today’s world, the DSP chip manufactured only by Avid would not matter much as the demand of these chips are slowly going down because of the advancement in technology. Secondly, Avid might face a huge amount of loss as well as lose its market if it did not find an alternate product to cater the industry. Without any advancement, Avid would put itself down and very quick. Coming to the specification of the DSP chips, the pro tools contains in it 9 DSP chips from Motorola family. Each chip has its own system and function to perform. One chip is responsible for the playback of audio while one is responsible to transmit the signals, one decodes the signal, and one helps to send the audio. The reason to make Motorola their partner in manufacturing chips was that the chips of Motorola are of higher speed then any other company. All Pro Tools HD card variants contain a combination of 9 DSP chips from the Motorola 56k family. The cards were first known as HD process cards and it was later replaced to HD process cards. Technology had always been a sensitive market. The advancement in technology is very quick and rapid. Those who do not cope up with the technology losses themselves out and face huge losses. Avid should learn from them. IBM Corporation and Microsoft Corporation. Multimedia Programming Interface and Data Specifications . August 1991. avid.com. PRo Toold HD1. 2013. online. 9 March 2013. Brooks, Evan. Interview. March 2006. EQ magazine. Dyer, S. A. and B. K. Harms. ""Digital Signal Processing." Advances in Computers (1993): 104-107. emulator archive. sound designer page. n.d. online. NAMM.org. Interview. Evan Broks. 2012. Vinnicombe, Chris. http://www.musicradar.com/news/guitars/jack-white-to-record-solo-album-in-2009-209392. 10 june 2009. online. 9 March 2013. Webopedia. PCI. 2013. online. 9 March 2013. Read More