Chapter 1. About Pro Tools

If you’re just starting in the digital audio production world, this chapter and the next will help you get a grasp on basic concepts. They introduce Pro Tools, providing a very basic overview of the digital-recording process, digital audio file formats, and MIDI.

If you’re experienced with audio production but completely new to Pro Tools, prepare yourself for a revelatory experience. In linear methods of working with music and audio (like digital and analog tape recorders, for instance), everything has to be assembled and mixed in real time. You can’t change the order of recorded events without creating a new copy, or worse yet, destructively cutting up the tape in order to switch things around! Digital audio workstations like Pro Tools, on the other hand, allow you to alter the order of audio events on any track, at any time—while still laying down takes, or even during the final phases of mixdown. Pro Tools provides microscopic editing precision (down to the sample level—44,100 or 48,000 time slices per second, or even more with Digi 002 and Pro Tools|HD systems), so you can easily create seamless edits almost anywhere within the recorded audio. (And trust us, we’ve spent enough time meticulously eliminating breaths, lip smacks, chair squeaks, and other noises to assure you that the editing power of Pro Tools is limited only by your perseverance!)