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Also Inside:
March 2012
entertainment, presentation, installation
www.lsionline.co.uk
Snow Patrol
Live at the Motorpoint Arena
Perfect Platform
UAL’s new Kings Cross theatre
Swedish Theatre
The Helsinki venue reborn
Singin’ in the Rain
Making a splash at London’s Palace Theatre
PLUS!
Preview: ProLight&Sound & PLASA Focus: Leeds • TF: Martin’s MAC Aura
Review: ISE, Amsterdam & SIEL, Paris • Autograph: Setting Standards
Islington’s Union Chapel • Video Matters • The Rise of Synergy
PR Lighting in the Optical Valley • Andy Huffer In Profile
ICA Cinemas Revamped • . . . and more!
Download our FREE iPhone & iPad app now at www.lsionline.co.uk/digital
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Classic Gear: Avid Pro Tools
Phone +44 (0 ) 1604 827500 Fax + 44 ( 0) 1604 70 6777
dus
See us on Stand RAC18 at PLASA Focus
Rob Halliday takes a nostalgic but instructive look back at the tools that have shaped the industry . . .
The best classics are often those first made to solve some particular
need of their creator. This is one of those - a digital-age classic made
classicgear
possible by the power of the personal computer, a piece of software
that has revolutionised the world of sound: Pro Tools from Avid.
Today, Pro Tools is a multi-track recorder, hugely powerful mixing desk,
visual waveform editing station and versatile effects system all rolled into
one. It began life as something much simpler. Its creators, Evan Brooks
and Peter Gotcher, were high school friends and University of California
graduates. Their shared interests in music and electronics had led them
to found a business called Digidrums, making and selling EPROM chips
containing alternative drum sounds for the popular Drumulator drum
machine. Each sound had been recorded on the Sony PCM-F1 digital
recorder, but the duo wanted a more flexible solution.
Debuting at about the same time was Apple’s Macintosh: Brooks and
Gotcher realised its potential and set to work on their own editing system
for short digital samples grabbed by the new breed of samplers. Called
Sound Designer, they released it to the public in 1985. Four years later
came Sound Tools, a direct-to-disc stereo recording system for which they
created their own 16-bit convertor hardware for the new Macintosh II’s
expansion slots, giving higher quality audio than the Mac’s own 8-bit D/A
system.
The first Pro Tools followed two years later, in 1991, a combination of
hardware and software that, for $6000 plus the cost of the Mac, gave you
a four track, 16-bit, 44.1kHz system with separate programs for recording
and editing. 1993 saw the first Pro Tools application that would be familiar
to today’s users, integrating all of the functionality in one app and offering
non-destructive audio editing. Its capabilities have expanded ever since
as the power of computers has increased - 48 tracks at 24-bit by 1997,
768 tracks and up to 192kHz/24-bit resolution today.
Particularly clever was
that the Digidesign
team realised they
would never be able to
offer every effect every
user wanted, so they
created a plug-in
architecture allowing
others to extend Pro Tools’ functionality. They also offered interfaces to
external controllers when more hands-on control than a keyboard and
mouse can offer was required. And they realised that not everyone could
stretch to the full cost of the system, offering light versions to draw people
into the Pro Tools world. Plus it can now run on PCs as well as Macs in both cases, all that functionality now available on even a tiny,
highly-portable laptop.
As a result, Pro Tools can be found everywhere sound is recorded, made
or manipulated: in recording studios, in movie sound and editing suites
(the company was acquired by film editing specialist Avid in 1995 and is
now called Avid Design), in television control rooms, in theatres. It is just
taken for granted - so much so that no-one even thinks about how they
would have achieved the same results two decades ago, if they could
have been achieved at all. It’s Photoshop for audio. Though there is, of
course, now a backlash, with some musicians proclaiming that they make
their work more organically, without the ‘artificial’ aids Pro Tools offers . . .
A revolutionary classic, then - but also, as it moves beyond version 10,
something even harder to achieve: a practical, even dominant, classic
that has survived and continues to thrive.
Pro Tools today: www.avid.com/US/resources/digi-orientation
L
earning Pro Tools: www.showmeprotools.com
S
Broadcast
People | Power | Partnership
HARTING spotlights broadcast
The broadcast market is enhancing the consumer’s entertainment exper ience with the move to digital
tec hnology providi ng hig h-definition television, digital ci nema with 3D and video-on-demand IPTV serv ices.
Theatre and concert productions are also becomi ng increasing ly visua lly spect acular t hr ough applic ation
of the latest ‘l ight & sound’ and automation techniques.
provide the
latest advancements in interconnect tech nology to ensure that “the show goes on”!
HARTING
’s connectivity and networks systems
www.lsionline.co.uk
38
HARTING Ltd
LSi - March 2012
Caswell Road
Brackmills In
trial Estate
gb@HARTING.com
Northampton
NN4 7PW
www.HARTING.com
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