New to 2020 user questions

[L-Dogg]

Hi all. I'm getting back to using PT in my studio after a long time away from it. Feeling my way along, not completely in the dark........but just some initial questions. I'm trying to do a lot of research online so as to not have to bother y'all with too many dumb questions....however......


1) Why no numbered scale on the faders anymore?



I thought my old PT 9 and 10 (w/CPTK) had more track type options than shown in this screen grab? Like surround?

2) Has that changed?





3)Is the 2020 Perpetual license the same full version of PT that the high end PT system users/studio's work with......or is it a sort of lite version.... like LE was before?

I haven't tried to bounce to disk yet-I'm only just getting everything installed etc. Before......I had to purchase an mp3 decoder option. I see mp3 is there but it also has an unchecked box next to it that says Add MP3. Yet when you check that...the mp3 option goes away leaving only .WAV and AIFF.



4)Is the mp3 option just there now, I don't have to buy anything else to use that?

I created a test session but when I tried to do this and selected an external USB 3 hard drive as the destination........it said I did not have permission to use that or something....it wouldn't do it. However if I just selected Desktop as the destination.......it ran great (well......4 stereo tracks only and zero inserts/plug in's etc. ) Played back fine etc.


5)Is it still advisable to record to a separate dedicated audio drive like you always had to do with PT 10?

NOTE: ( The external drive I tried to use has a bunch of other data on it like photos etc. It is not partitioned...so I was just trying to put the PT session file on it along with all the other stuff. Also.......it was connected to a USB HUB containing all my iLok which is connected to a USB port in my laptop.)

Thanks good folks!!

[Southsidemusic]

Depends on your purchase. If you bought ULTIMATE for 2500 dollars you have what the big boys use as you said but I doubt it is a HD Ultimate and you have the vanilla non HD 2020.

Also right click on the fader and choose what thp of metering you want.

And you choose your track type as usual. Dunno what was in CPTK but your license if not Ultimate is a normal (LE) but better version with less features thsn HD ultimate.

All PT versions are able to record to separate Harddrive so make sure you have permissions read and write enabled on the drive you wanna record and bounce to. It is like your PT9 with more features so you should do the same as you have done in the past with recording drives and bounces.

As far as MP3 options we have it in our HD Ultimate so I am not sure how it works with the non HD Ultimate version.

Check here: https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare...-in-pro-tools/ and below. Took 1 minute to google that.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OqFpFeEYF1I


And Look in the manual as thats what it is for We all hate it but it is very well written.

Good luck

[albee1952]

Hmmm
1-Not sure. Maybe its part of the Meter selection(you now have many more meter options than the old days).

2-Surround is routing and would be under the menu that defaults to Mono on your screen shot

3-there are 3 "flavors" of Pro Tools. Free(the limited free version), Ultimate(what used to be called HD) and plain old Pro Tools(often referred to as "Pro Tools "Vanilla". Each has its own iLok license. Ignoring "Free"(which I wish didn't exist) the installer is the same and its the iLok license that tells PT software which features to enable when PT opens.

4-mp3 is built-in now

5-it depends. Recording to a separate drive is the best for performance(assuming the recording drive and connection is fast enough). If your system drive is an SSD, then you probably will be fine recording to it(a good thing for laptop users), but there are still good reasons to avoid that and a backup plan is crucial in all cases. Here is my backup method:

My system drive is a 500GB SSD, and I have a second SSD that is a clone of the first. If anything goes bad, like a virus, or a new piece of software hoses the system, I can install the clone and go right back to work. I can also clone the other way(so my good clone overwrites the messed up drive, putting it back to working order). I also keep a 2TB USB drive that holds nothing but drive images of my system drive(got an image with PT 12.4, another with 12.5, another with 2018.1, etc). I can restore back to several points in time(will I NEED to? Maybe not, but I CAN). For backing up sessions, I have them copied to multiple hard drives(2 internal recording drives, 2 separate USB drives and NAS storage). That may seem like overkill, but trust me, it has saved my bacon many times(and a recent file corruption caused me serious problems when I got complacent on my usual backup strategy)

[L-Dogg]

Ah guys....Pro Tools Preferences of course....got the meters sorted. Also.....DUH..........I was in narrow mix view. What a dork.....sorry!!

My old 'how did I use PT' memory is coming back in fragments guys.

Thanks Southsidemusic.....I am trying to do my own research so I'm not too much of a bother.....

I've actually bounced 100's of tracks and know how to do it well......but just wanted to know if I had to buy that daggone Freudianhofflesteinvonkloffermeister (or whatever it was called) mp3 encoder thingy again......because the mp3 option used to be in the dropdown on the old PT5 LE (001 days )...but when you tried to use it, it told you you had to buy it. It was $49 back in the day I think. I just want to try tidy up all loose ends so when I do get busy with a sesh I don't find out when I want to mix it that I am missing this or that. Thanks man.

I'll check out those links.

Thanks Dave......much appreciated.

[Southsidemusic]

No worries and no bother.

Just a lot of great info in the manual and might be easier to find solutions but we are all here to help eachother and please post when you get stuck

Was this a new purchase or an upgraded license? What did you pay? The. We can find out what version you have (non HD or HD)