Audient Loopback - paid versions only?

[voicycle]

I was about to raise a ticket with Audient to troubleshoot the lack of audio from the ch11-12 system audio loopback feature in my iD14 mkII, but then suddenly wondered if it's actually a limitation of the free version of ProTools?

I'm sure I successfully demo'ed the feature at some point a few years ago by test recording some audio from a Zoom session into ProTools, but as it is now I'm not able to get any signal into ProTools from those two channels. I can't say for sure, but I think I probably had a paid subsciption version of ProTools at that time. Sometime after they moved to the current product tiers and replaced First with Intro I cancelled my sub and downgraded to Intro. As a VO artist I don't really need more than 4 tracks so it has worked pretty well for me so far. And loopback isn't mission critical for me so it's been low priority to troubleshoot. I genuinely don't know how the timeline stacks up in terms of the when I had loopback functioning successfully and the end of my subsciption though so it's very much an 'I wonder if...'

I note that in the version comparison chart for ProTools it says "Aux I/O inputs and outputs - N/A" for the intro version and a minimum of 4/4 for all the rest. Is that what my problem is here, or do I need to go investigate with Audient?

Screenshot of a test setup included for reference - Spotify (just because it was open) is playing successfully to the iD14's "DAW 1-2" and the audio is coming through fine on the monitors. iD app has DAW 1-2 selected as the loopback source. ProTools track 'Audio 2' has Loopback 1-2 selected as the inputs and is record enabled, but there's no signal tickling the meters for that track.

In the same session I can record enable a mic as normal and see the meter showing signal, so it seems like the issue is either with the interface routing the outs to the loopback ins, or with the way the inputs are coming into ProTools.

Any obvious signs to tell me whether the culprit is Avid or Audient?

Thanks!

[its2loud]

I note that in the version comparison chart for ProTools it says "Aux I/O inputs and outputs - N/A" for the intro version and a minimum of 4/4 for all the rest. Is that what my problem is here, or do I need to go investigate with Audient?

Yes, this is the issue due to the limitations of Pro Tools Intro.

[The Weed]

You get 8 Tracks, but only 4 simultaneous Recording Inputs. You do get 4 Aux Input Tracks, but not Aux I/O (which is similar to Loopback).

Pro Tools Comparison.

[voicycle]

Originally Posted by The Weed

You do get 4 Aux Input Tracks, but not Aux I/O (which is similar to Loopback).

Pro Tools Comparison.

Thanks - I would have initially assumed that Aux I/O is a Pro Tools software version of loopback and that if the interface is doing loopback at a hardware level then Pro Tools should see the inputs as bog standard Auxes rather than anything it knows to be "I/O".

What exactly is the difference between the two as far as PT is concerned?