Avid Pro Tools 11 ‘A Quantum Leap In Creative Power’

pro-tools-11Musikmesse 2013: Avid has announced Avid Pro Tools 11, a major upgrade of the popular digital audio workstation.

Pro Tools 11 features new, high-powered audio and video engines, 64-bit architecture, expanded metering, and direct HD video workflows.

“Pro Tools 11 represents a quantum leap in creative power,” according to Avid’s Chris Gahagan. “The newly designed architecture turbo-charges production with more plug-in processing, the ability to run more virtual instruments—and a host of new features – letting users create ambitiously, without holding anything back.”

Here’s a preview of Pro Tools 11:

Key Features:

  • Fully redesigned audio engine and 64-bit architecture
    • New Avid Audio Engine – Delivers multiple times the processing power of Pro Tools 10 on the same hardware configurations.
    • 64-bit architecture – Exponentially increases the number of simultaneous virtual instruments and the performance to handle the most sophisticated sessions.
    • Offline bounce – Delivers mixes up to 150 times faster than real time.
    • Low-latency input buffer – Ensures ultra-low latency record monitoring without sacrificing plug-in performance.
    • Dynamic host processing – Maximizes plug-in count by reallocating processing resources as needed.
  • Expanded metering
    • Extended standards support – Features a broad range of built-in metering standards, from peak and average to VU and PPM, to maintain adherence to regional broadcast requirements.
    • Gain reduction – Shows gain reduction for all dynamics plug-ins on each channel.
  • Direct HD video workflows
    • Built-in Avid Video Engine – Enables audio post professionals to play and edit a wide range of HD video formats includingAvid DNxHD, directly in the Pro Tools timeline without transcoding, using the same core engine as in Media Composer.
    • Video interface support – Enables monitoring of DNxHD and QuickTime media through Avid Nitris DX, Avid Mojo DX, and other video interfaces.

Availability & Pricing

Pro Tools 11 and Pro Tools HD 11 is expected to be available later in Q2 2013.

Pricing:

  • Pro Tools 11 software (full version) – $699 USD
  • Pro Tools 10 to 11 upgrade – $299 USD
  • Pro Tools 9 to 11 upgrade – $399 USD
  • Pro Tools Express to Pro Tools 11 cross grade – $499 USD
  • Pro Tools HD 10 to 11 upgrade – $599 USD
  • Pro Tools HD 9 to 11 upgrade – $999 USD

25 thoughts on “Avid Pro Tools 11 ‘A Quantum Leap In Creative Power’

  1. Are you serious? Hundreds of dollars for the upgrade just to bring it up to date with what other DAWS have had for ages. Seriously, if you’re still using protools and haven’t looked at what the completion has on offer, you really should. I personally switched to reaper and have never looked back. There’s so much more than protools.

  2. Thing is, the other daws don’t really have the things that professionals need. Sample accurate video ref, playlists / take support, sub-millisecond latency, reliable pull up / down, phase-coherent multitrack timestretching, etc.

    The disk caching that came with protools 10, and the low latency recording with plugins enabled that’s coming in 11 already put it ahead of lots of the competition.

    Which is why if you go to any large studio anywhere in the world, or any dubbing theatre, or any scoring stage, or most post houses, they will be using protools.

    Agree though though that this promo video is lame, lame, lame. And the upgrade fees are a pisstake

    Wats more worrying is that avid is in serious financial doo – doo

    1. >Thing is, the other daws don’t really have the things that professionals need. Sample accurate video ref, >Which is why if you go to any large studio anywhere in the world, or any dubbing theatre, or any scoring >stage, or most post houses, they will be using protools.

      Yet every other musician in the world is using something other than ProTools, and they represent the majority by a long shot. They earn money and make great things too. Don’t call yourself “professional” just because the people you give money to say you are!

      1. thank you for your odd reply.

        since you didn’t read or didn’t understand what i said, i’ll try to be more clear. i did not say that other DAWs are “worse” or that you can’t make amazing music with reaper or ableton or whatever. you can make amazing music in garageband. nowhere did i say that protools users were a majority. i think they are in a massive minority.

        what i said was that engineers in studios, post, dubbing, etc use protools because it has features that are *required* for them to do their jobs properly. you can be a professional and use reaper or ableton or cubase or whatever. of course you can. just not in a commercial recording studio, or commercial post house or a dubbing theatre.

        and for what it’s worth, i call myself a professional not because i buy tools from people who patronise me by calling me professional, or because i think using a particular piece of kit conveys professionalism upon me, but because people pay me to do what i do. it is, and has always been, my living.

        you think abbey road and air lyndhurst have protools installed (and nothing else) installed in their rooms because they get a warm glow from “feeling professional” by using protools? no, it’s because nothing else is up to the job at hand, and it’s what their clients expect – and their clients are about as professional as it is possible to be.

        1. >thank you for your odd reply.

          And thanks for your touchy reply! I’m sure mentioning Abbey Road has made you feel more professional again. Congratulations.

          1. @xtopher,

            i mentioned abbey road because it’s a perfect example of what i’m talking about, which again, you’ve failed to understand. go there, or look at their website. does it mention reaper or ableton anywhere? or does it state in detail what the specifications of their protools systems are? – because that it what people who are booking the place (professionals- unless you think the average person spending £4k a day is a chancer with an inferiority complex) need to know about. in fact, it’s a given that they’d be running protools. and on a mac, for what it’s worth. just like in the old days, it would been a given that they had either studer analogue or sony digital machines.

            i made a simple (and true) comment about the status of protools in commercial recording studios, and you implicitly questioned my professionalism (when you literally know nothing about me), got defensive about the fact that other daws are awesome (they are, i never said they weren’t, again i made this perfectly clear). so, who’s touchy?

            1. @Swarmboy:

              Don’t sweat it, they probably just can’t understand anything you say because they surely have no idea of what commercial recording studio is, and how it does actually work.

              Otherwise, they would know ProTools is the only real tools Pros use in commercial recording studio and it’s not gonna change anytime soon… and anything else (Cubase, Logic, Live, etc…) are surely great for composing/producing… or even recording/mixing for small non-commercial structure (to record your rock band in your garage home studio), but definitely not suitable for real time commercial usage.

              This is not something they will ever get until they will step inside a real commercial recording studio. And I’m even sure that most of them probably even never use ProTools at all…

    2. “Which is why if you go to any large studio anywhere in the world, or any dubbing theatre, or any scoring stage, or most post houses, they will be using protools.”

      It may be true that many established studios use Pro Tools. But please try to look at the bigger picture why it is that way – I’m quite certain that the reason is not some “professionalism” that only Pro Tools and no other DAW has to offer.

      I’ve already had talks with a number of studio owners about this topic and every time we have come to the same conclusion: the main reason why Pro Tools has its title as “industry standard” is, because it was the first (or one of the first) reliable digital audio workstations. And because its DSP-support enabled computers many years ago to perform tasks that were to demanding for the common computers back then.

      If a studio exists for many years and invests in software and hardware upgrades for the products of a single company, there has to be a grave reason to change to a completely new system, invest in new software and get acquainted with a new working environment. I can completely understand such a reasoning – and in my opinion, this is the main reason why Pro Tools is still so widespread in large studios.

      But I don’t think that’s its because of some special qualities that set it completely apart from all other DAWs. It’s just the oldest established DAW around and it would not be profitable for large studios to throw away their investments in this software.

      1. with the greatest respect, it’s not the case that the bigger established studios “may” use protools. they *do”. it’s an important distinction.

        some of the reason is, as you suggest, pure legacy, although the transition from tape happened after the other big DAWs (logic, cubase, dp, even nuendo) were already well established. but most of it is not

        the only truly low latency (i’m not talking 64 samples buffer size low latency, but hardware-based, true input to output low latency) solution to multitracking is protools. you can fudge it with other boxes, but it really is the only one. it’s the only one that can reliably support 64 or more channels of i/o. it’s the only one apart from nuendo that supports proper video sync (critical when tracking anything to picture).

        sure, if you’re a medium sized room tracking bands for a couple of hundred quid a day, anything will do.

        but if you want to record 150 musicians across, say, 40 microphones, with half a dozen different headphone mixes, all locked to a video ref, protools is the only computer based (i.e. not hardware based) system that can reliably do it. if you’re a sucker for punishment you can use logic or dp or something else as a front end for it, but it’s still protools doing the grunt work.

        but since i’m regularly misunderstood, i want it to be clear that i use all these tools, and they are all better at differnet things. logic and cubase are *much* better compositional tools. ableton is a lot more fun, creatively.

        but, for multitracking anything with real musicians in a real space, with real money being spent, protools is, for good or ill, still way ahead of the competition

        1. Okay, I’ve never head the pleasure to talk with someone who has done orchestral multitracking. So it might well be that Pro Tools had an advantage when it comes to recording 40 microphone inputs simultaneously. I guess you have a point there.

          But still: as long as you only do conventional overdubbing for normal-sized bands, where a drum kit with about 10 microphones is already the most input-demanding step of all, I guess Pro Tools does not really have a relevant advantage over any other DAW for such a task. Don’t you think? 🙂

          1. it’s been a few years since i did any actual multitracking myself, but all the engineers i use wouldn’t touch anything but tools, and again this is partly just legacy / familiarity, but also lots of the other reasons i gave.

            i was an engineer (mainly one-mic-at-a-time pop music, but sometimes larger scale tracking) at the crossover point between tape (mainly sony 3348s) and daws, with brief dalliances with things like radar. once we started using tools, there was no going back. i knew of one (extremely successful) engineer who used DP but everyone else used tools. most of the composers used logic for writing (some used cubase) but it all went into tools in the end.

            i totally agree that other daws are amazing, and actually, if i was with a band where writing and recording were sort of the same thing, i’d use whatever they were used to, or had started the project in, and print stems into tools at the end to mix.

            i still think tools has the edge in lots of other ways, but like you say, not enough to make a difference for most purposes. but that was kind of my only point really. if you’re at the commercial coalface, “perfecly good for most purposes” isn’t good enough.

  3. Swarmboy is right, however much I dislike pro tools, they do offer things no one else does end of story, and for those who need those features they have to buy pro tools. And considering the general lack of enthusiasm towards all things avid in the past few years and their deteriorating financial situation leaves me wondering why apple or steinberg haven’t made logic or neuendo PT killers. I mean come on, apple has thunderbolt, now that would be low latency! if apple made logic X, with rock solid everything and sample accurate video, along with apogee they could totally kill pro tools (maybe not because its mono platofrm) but Steinberg and RME could do the same thing. I’m naming hardware companies becuase they already exist, but these software companies could make their own high end interfaces and clocks just like avid.

    I know its a big undertaking but I think one of the companies that is better than avid could totally swoop in on a dissatisfied market.

    1. Swarmboy is completely right.

      And anyone that is just bitching about Protools and claiming any other DAW could do the same is just completely wrong and has no idea on how professionals work and probably never put their feet in a professional recording studio.

      From a multi-tracking recording, editing and mixing, ProTools is by far the best DAW a professional and commercial structure can use. It didn’t became the “Industry Standard” because it was the only one… but also because it does the job done, with several restrictions only professional and commercial structures have.

      Of course, Protools is just completely lame for production (No support of AU/VST, lame Midi workflow, etc…). So if you’re looking for a DAW to produce music, just forget it and go use Logic, Cubase, Live, Reason, Fruity Loops or whatever you like the most. For production, it doesn’t really matter you can use any DAW you like. Same if you’re recording your rock bad in your garage home-studio, etc… You’ll have better features and better workflow with those DAWs than with ProTools. No doubt about it.

      But when it comes of serious multi-tracking recording, editing and mixing… the only suitable alternative solution would be Nuendo (mainly now with the hardware done by Yamaha). But it’s not the “Industry Standard” and it’s not gonna become it anytime soon (unless Avid is going out of business).

      That’s why ProTools is and will be the only solution for professional. In despite for slow and expensive updates and improvements.

  4. I do like that they have console style metering built in, because im a firm believer that every DAW should have the option to change your metering

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