Dealing with track counts

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by hoppesdn

Hello, I recently upgraded to PT12. Opened an 8 LE session with only 26 tracks and was greeted with,

"There are more active audio tracks than allowed maximum. As a result, one or more audio tracks will not play."

No luck with support yet. Anyone have experience with this?

Thanks for any information you may have.
Best Regards...

Sample Rate? 26 stereo tracks? Mono?

[weezul]

Just making my voice heard that this feature is ridiculous, and it tripped me up yesterday. I recorded a session with the wrong external clock set at the studio (2nd time in 6 years! **** my life, external clocks) and took the session home to re-import session data to a 48khz session (without SRC) and realised I couldn't. The studio is still on PT9 and it's a slow machine (the original mac pro!) so I decided I would end the session, fix the pro tools session at home and fwd to the band.

To get around this, import session data.... for half the tracks, and save that session. Import the second half, save that session. Then whoever has PT HD will have to import session data from session 1 to session 2.

Obviously, having two sessions isn't ideal. Even just picking which tracks are extraneous is difficult when you can't hear the entire song. Even if I could pick which tracks to enable/disable I could have got the track count down. So I won't explain how I actually solved my problem, but I have an internet connection and a spare boot drive so use your imagination. It brings me no joy to do this, and if we could just have the tracks visible but inactive that would be a lot easier. We also can't even rent HD for a month, which could have worked as well. Once again paying customers are punished in ways that don't really seem fair. The key point being because tracks used to get disabled instead of DELETED. It's nothing but a money grab, but surely AVID can see this won't make people upgrade. It just pisses them off, and people will find other ways to solve this brief problem.....

[RossWooldridge]

OK, so I posted this in another area of the forum, but I came across this thread and thought I'd post it here too.

I'm very concerned - I am in the production business, and have been used to using studios with their own PT systems and operators, and have never needed to have a home system up to now. That being said, I've recently embarked on the quest to do more of my post production at home. I took the plunge and had a custom computer built (see my signature for basic specs), bought the latest PT I could afford (PT2018.4) and am in the process of getting it all set up. I've never had to do any of this before - I've always been in a situation with an operator running the studio and the software who could do what I asked him. I just wrote the arrangements, produced the sessions, coaxed the best performances out of the musicians, and make decisions on the mixing and editing processes etc etc. I am an old school guy who for the last 40 years has done all his producing with his ears and a pencil and manuscript! I left the computers to the engineers and assistants. But times change, and I need to evolve. The difficulty is that I'm a bit of a computer newbie...

So, now I'm preparing to take tracks home from the studios and do my editing on a computer at home, compiling tuning, etc etc... the thought process is that perhaps I can be more productive and have less issues dealing with busy high end studios who are tough to book.

My sessions are often very large. When dealing with orchestras and larger groups, one can EASILY approach and exceed 128 tracks - say you've got a 60 piece orchestra, with multiple room microphones as well as individual mics and such, plus overdubs, plus several takes, plus plus plus... projects with large track counts become very commonplace. Therefore, comments from those who feel that having track counts that high are unnecessary for music production have no idea what they're talking about, however high up in the biz they are. Comments like those are not helpful. You track what you track to realize one's vision, plain and simple - if there's a need for high track counts, there's a need. Our studios and software are evolving to permit that more than ever.

So, all that being said, as I get this system up and running, here's a link to my first post that shows what kind of things I'm dealing with...

http://duc.avid.com/showthread.php?t=399563

[The Weed]

Ross, double posting is against the forum rules and also makes it difficult for people to follow with any help. Please delete the text and just put a link in the post to your other Thread. I've answered there.

Thanks,

[RossWooldridge]

Thanks Bruce - done. I didn't know that I've already broken the rules, but hey, that's nothing new for me!

[WombatStudio.Org]

Originally Posted by RossWooldridge

...snip... When dealing with orchestras and larger groups, one can EASILY approach and exceed 128 tracks ...snip... if there's a need for high track counts, there's a need.

Buy HD (or whatever Avid is calling it nowadays) or get your money back and use ANY other DAW. No other DAW limits tracks.

[RossWooldridge]

I'm definitely considering it!! However, I'm going to give this a good old college try first. The financial outlay for the PT wasn't that bad, so I can always write it off to experience if it doesn't work out. It was the custom computer build and all the peripherals that have added up, but they're good with any DAW I wind up using, so that part of it was money well spent ultimately.

The future likelyhood of my needing more than 128 tracks on a regular basis is low, but not impossible.