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M powered pro tools review9/8/2023 Whilst Pro Tools M-Powered does open up welcome new hardware options for Pro Tools devotees, though, I can think of one group of users who will remain frustrated. Well, it is slightly disappointing that the integration between Pro Tools and M Audio hardware is, in some ways, less complete than you get with an ASIO-based application such as Cubase SX. To use virtual instruments in Pro Tools, you simply create an audio track or Aux track and add the instrument of your choice as an insert plug-in. Whereas programs such as Logic began life as MIDI sequencers and added audio recording at a later date, Pro Tools has gone the other way. We encountered more than our fair share of problems on the day, the low point being a power glitch which took out an eight-channel analogue-to-digital converter and a ring main. Pro Tools is a versatile piece of software, but its central application is still recording, editing and mixing multitrack audio, and I took the opportunity to test the M-Powered version in a real session. What will be more annoying for many users is that the Direct Monitoring options in interfaces such as the Firewire 1814 are not supported in Pro Tools M-Powered. Once you've created some tracks, they should be available for recording straight away, with input and output routings automatically assigned by Pro Tools and visible in its mixer. As well as audio and Aux tracks, there are also 16 mono audio busses, which can be paired to make up to eight stereo busses as appropriate. Unlike most DAWs, Pro Tools doesn't include any template setups for typical tasks like multitrack recording or stereo editing, so the first time you start it up and open a new Session, the Edit and Mix windows will be blank until you create tracks to fill them. The basic features of Pro Tools have been covered in SOS many times before, so I won't go into detail here except on points that are specific to the M-Powered version. Also included on the CD is Ableton's Live Digidesign Edition, but the other 'lite' programs bundled with LE versions of Pro Tools are absent here. As with all current versions of Pro Tools, you also get a selection of plug-ins from the Bomb Factory line, which was bought up by Digidesign a whille back. These days, it seems that no self-respecting MIDI + Audio recording package can be competitive without the sweetener of free effects and processors, and Pro Tools M-Powered is no exception. I tested Pro Tools M-Powered on a Centrino laptop running Windows XP, with an M Audio Firewire 1814 interface. The LE and TDM versions of Pro Tools have just been updated to 6.9, but the new features in that version don't appear in Pro Tools M-Powered. Previous versions of Pro Tools have, in effect, used Digidesign's hardware as a dongle, with PACE's iLok system employed as an adjunct for authorising third-party plug-ins.Īs well as the dongle itself, which comes in a fetching shade of red, the box includes Windows and Mac installation CDs, a brief Getting Started manual and an even briefer Basics Guide. Well, the first fruits of the marriage were announced at the Frankfurt Musikmesse, in the shape of a version of Pro Tools designed to run on M Audio hardware. The takeover thus led to plenty of speculation about how the two companies would work together. There was also something of a clash of corporate philosophy, in terms of the two companies' approaches to open standards. From humble beginnings as Midiman, makers of handy gadgets such as format converters and MIDI interfaces, M Audio's growth is the stuff of business legend. For the first time ever, Digidesign's Pro Tools recording software is available as a stand-alone product, which can be used in conjunction with any of five audio interfaces from M Audio.
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