The most important of these included support for Avid’s HDX hardware and AAX DSP plug‑ins, higher I/O counts, and the ability to work in multichannel formats including Ambisonics and Dolby Atmos. Some of the features exclusive to Ultimate were oriented towards post‑production, such as the ability to work with multiple video tracks, but there were also Ultimate‑only features relevant to music. Separated by another steep price barrier, the top tier of the old line‑up was Pro Tools Ultimate. Known simply as Pro Tools or Pro Tools Software, this was a fully fledged, professional, cross‑platform DAW that could work with any Core Audio or ASIO‑compatible hardware, and was the obvious choice for most hobbyists, studios and music production professionals. However, it was quite a step up from there price‑wise to the first paid‑for version. Pro Tools First was a useful educational tool and taster for the real thing, but was too limited for most real‑world production tasks, especially as it could only work with cloud‑based Projects and not with the locally hosted Session format. For quite a few years now, Avid have offered two paid‑for versions of the software alongside a free version called Pro Tools First. Hand in hand with this move came a reconfiguration of the Pro Tools product line. The most widely used digital workstation software in professional music circles is now effectively a subscription‑only product, though of course existing perpetual licences won’t cease to be valid. Earlier this year, however, they announced a major overhaul of the Pro Tools pricing structure, and by the time you read this, it will no longer be possible to buy a perpetual licence. It’s been a bumpy ride at times, but on balance, I think most users would agree that there’s merit to this approach, and Avid have continued to offer perpetual licences to the unconvinced. No longer would they have to save up new features for a big integer release every couple of years instead, they could make them available as soon as they were ready. One of Avid’s stated reasons for moving Pro Tools to a subscription model was to adopt a ‘little and often’ approach to updates. Is the most affordable version of Avid’s DAW still a serious music production tool? Incidentally, it seems that Dark mode is now the default, though the classic Pro Tools grey look is still available. A major focus in the development of Pro Tools Artist has been smoothing the learning curve for new users.
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