Now that Avid have integrated the Dolby Atmos Renderer into Playback Engine, you no longer have to leave Pro Tools to mix in Atmos.
Access to other apps in Pro Tools is a game changer.
When Avid release a new version of Pro Tools, they are always careful to make sure it continues to be able to do the things it has done in the past, and not to disrupt existing users and workflows. For example, the 2024.10 release added a huge amount of extra functionality to the Import Session Data window, to allow selections of tracks to be matched with tracks in the open session. But rather than change the window’s existing behaviour and disrupt users’ muscle memory, they chose to introduce a new mode to facilitate this new feature. This kind of retrospective compatibility has long been a strength of Pro Tools: I just opened a Pro Tools session created in Pro Tools 6 on a PC in 2003, on an Apple Silicon Mac running a current version of Pro Tools, without incident!
Occasionally though, features do disappear. A good example is the ability to drag and drop clips from the timeline to virtual samplers. This was possible back in the days of Pro Tools 8: editing samples on the timeline and dropping them into AIR’s Structure sampler was a fantastic workflow. This was broken with a subsequent update, but after a long wait it was finally reintroduced in Pro Tools 2024.10, which I was very pleased to see.
In this article we’ll explore some things which you can now do directly within Pro Tools, which you couldn’t until very recently.
Dolby Atmos
Pro Tools has been central to the development of Atmos mixing, but while big post‑production mixers have been using Pro Tools to mix Atmos right from the beginning, it used to be necessary to route multiple audio channels out to another computer running the Atmos Renderer. When Avid introduced the Dolby Atmos Bridge to the Playback Engine, it became possible to route audio out of Pro Tools and into the Renderer application running on the same computer, but this still required a lot of setting up. It’s only for the last year that Pro Tools has had an Atmos renderer integrated into Pro Tools itself (other DAWs have had this feature rather longer). This makes it significantly easier to mix Atmos in Pro Tools.
Vocal Tuning
Vocal tuning was probably the most frequent reason in music production for round‑tripping audio out to an external application and back into Pro Tools. Well, Pro Tools now finally has ARA2, and there’s a slew of software titles that have received the ARA integration treatment. Some of these are ready to go if you own the software, while some have ‘lite’ versions which you may have access to as part of your Pro Tools subscription plan.
Although there has been a bundled version of Melodyne offered with Pro Tools for some time, round‑tripping audio out to another application is a complete flow‑killer. ARA fixes this, and alongside Melodyne, you can now use Synchro Arts’ RePitch within Pro Tools via ARA2. As many Pro Tools users (including me) discovered, there simply is no comparison between tuning in ARA and round‑tripping.
Alongside Melodyne, you can now use Synchro Arts’ RePitch directly within Pro Tools, using ARA2.
Stem Separation
Only a few years ago, the idea of un‑mixing audio or ‘stem separation’ was little more than an audio dream, but it’s now a standard feature in many DAWs. While Logic Pro and Studio One have integrated these features into the DAW itself, Pro Tools offers a bundled ‘lite’ version of Steinberg’s SpectraLayers. The applications for such technology include DJs playing live, removing spill from live recordings, and making it easier for musicians to analyse performances when trying to learn. These legitimate uses of the technology sometimes get mired in questions around legality and audio quality, but surely everyone who has tried this technology would rather have it than be without it, even if the results can be frustrating. SpectraLayers Go, the version bundled with Pro Tools, is limited to separating vocals from the rest of a track, but the results are best in class, and while the a cappellas it can create don’t yet sound great in isolation, it is great for the reverse: creating instrumentals by muting the vocals.
SpectraLayers Go lets you extract the vocal from a complete mix.
Spectral Repair
Another task that used to require round‑tripping to another application is spectral editing and repair. iZotope RX made this process as painless as possible with RX Connect, but with ARA integration it’s all much easier and more immediate.
We take for granted the detailed editing we’ve become used to carrying out in the amplitude domain ever since we’ve been able to display a waveform on a computer screen, but the ease with which previously tricky frequency‑based issues can be fixed by directly editing a spectrogram is addictive. Post‑production users have long valued this technique, and all it took to convince me was a particularly obnoxious guitar string squeak, which would previously have required some precision EQ work to address. Spectral editing from the timeline is available in Pro Tools these days, with a choice of ARA plug‑ins offering it, and I wouldn’t be without it.
Fix Corrupted Audio
Unlike most DAWs Pro Tools, has never had a dedicated sample editor. Instead, if you zoom into an audio waveform far enough the waveform can be edited directly on the timeline using the pencil tool. In theory this is great for fixing clicks and pops, but in practice this isn’t as useful as it sounds. Unless the glitch in the waveform is little more than an instantaneous spike, the usefulness of drawing in waveforms by hand is limited. Of course, issues of longer duration are best fixed using conventional edits, patching the offending glitch with audio from elsewhere with suitable crossfades, but there is a more sophisticated alternative: resynthesizing a suitable replacement waveform. This is one of many features which can be found in the second of Steinberg’s ARA integrations, WaveLab. The bundled WaveLab Go includes this feature among many others.
WaveLab Go includes a number of very powerful features, such as loudness normalisation and waveform resynthesis.
Good Loudness Workflow
Another feature in WaveLab is a far more complete loudness workflow than that offered by using the Momentary, Short Term and Integrated loudness meters found in Avid Pro Limiter, and the included offline Loudness Analyser. Mixing to loudness targets using these tools is actually pretty efficient once you have enough practice, but it can take multiple attempts to get things bang on, with a repeating cycle of tweaks sometimes taking much longer than is welcome. WaveLab Go offers both analysis and processing options, including loudness normalisation presets for the main streaming platforms.
Sometimes it’s only when a better way of completing tasks comes along that we really appreciate just how clunky the previous method of achieving the same thing really was.
Sometimes it’s only when a better way of completing tasks comes along that we really appreciate just how clunky the previous method of achieving the same thing really was. I can remember printing hardware reverbs back onto audio tracks in Pro Tools and having to laboriously print them again with each mix revision. At the time it felt like a sensible way to have the advantages of both Pro Tools and my Lexicon reverbs... With Pro Tools only offering real‑time bounces in those days, a bounce that would take moments today using offline bounce and fantastic quality reverb plug‑ins could easily take half an hour for a four‑minute song.
In exactly the same way, working entirely within your DAW and being able to address issues and complete tasks without relying on external software is something from which there’s little temptation to return. We’re very used to third‑party plug‑ins bringing specific processing options into our DAWs. We rarely think of the meaning of the word ‘plug‑in’ but the more advanced features made possible by ARA means that features equivalent to an entire alternative DAW can be made available from within our DAW of choice. With sufficient ARA cross‑compatibility, entire workflows are able to be plugged into our DAWs.