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The benefits here are obvious, especially in a somewhat historical context, since your typical desktop, in 2000, was not packing the power to handle the required processing on its own. Rather than leave all the processing to your computer, HD’s hardware is composed of DSP acceleration chips, which offset many of the computing tasks required by the software, famously supporting its Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) and now AAX DSP plug-in formats.
#Pro tools hd pro#
"HD systems are a combination of an advanced feature-set version of Pro Tools software and specific external hardware." Needless to say, these machines were not going to be able to hack 32-track recordings by themselves with low latency and stability. We take for granted current laptops and desktops that can handle our 60-plus track mixes today, but go back just 15 or so years ago, and top-of-the-line computing saw you limited to dual 500 MHz processing. A long, long time ago, before the era of iOS devices and computers with 64GB of RAM, engineers and musicians lived in a place known as the late 1990s. However, to understand where Pro Tools HD systems are today, it helps to take a look at their origins. The short answer is that HD systems are a combination of an advanced feature-set version of Pro Tools software and specific external hardware, besides converters or an audio interface.
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Since no DAW provides an inherent “sound” (the audio being digital at that point), what’s the deal here? What is the difference between “standard” software-only Pro Tools and Pro Tools HD? While many are familiar with Pro Tools from home and project studios, thanks to the host-based versions of Pro Tools (meaning they require no external hardware outside of an audio interface), most studios running Pro Tools are using a Pro Tools HD system. Walk into the typical professional recording studio, and chances are very likely you are going to see Avid’s Pro Tools running as the DAW of choice, even among increasingly stiff competition from other software and recording systems.