New To Pro Tools - Basic Question

[DStorms]

I have been a Cubase/Sonar user for some time and have just recently moved to Pro Tools 10. Please forgive my lack of knowledge and if there is somewhere in the forum that this type of info has been discussed ad nauseum and you can point me there I would appreciate your help. I am having a bit of difficulty understanding the routing setups for Pro Tools in that when I solo a track it silences everything, so obviously there is something wrong with my groupings or routings to subgroups. This was a fairly simple task in Sonar where you would create a bus, assign the outputs of tracks to it and assign the output of the bus to the mains and you were done. Can someone either give me a brief explanation or point me to a site where this is explained? I can't really get my head around it reading the Help files.

Thanks
Dave

[Bushpig]

Dave,

Hi. If the audio track that you're trying to solo is assigned to an audio sub group ie: not directly to your mix bus, you need to "solo safe" the audio sub group. Hold the "Apple" key and click the solo for this aux group. The solo button will turn grey and you'll be good to go (in fact this works for any track you want to "solo safe", such as FX returns etc). If you're on PC, don't know the key command, but it should be fairly easy to figure out.

Once you get a bit more fluid with the workings of PT, you'll be able to get into using the track groupings in the little window lower left of the edit window, to do funkier groupings for controls like solo's, mutes, faders, edit groups etc. This is different from traditional "audio sub-grouping" as you would find in a straight forward audio console. It's more to do with grouping of controls to achieve different tasks.

Hope that helps mate.

Cheers

Steve Bush
www.music180.com/pros/5887

MacPro 4.1 (Nehalem) 2.26 8 Core, OSX 10.6.8, PT10HD, 14 Gig RAM, PCIe HD3, 192, Sync I/O, Midi I/O.

[Bushpig]

Dave,

PS. There's also a set of solo mode controls under the main "Options" menu. 'Solo in Place' means it "mutes" all the other channels so you hear the track in it's correct mix balance. This is where 'solo-safe'-ing the FX returns and audio sub groups becomes important.

You can also choose to have the solo's accumulate, ie: just keep adding more tracks to solo, or 'X-Or' which will switch off other solo'd tracks and switch to just the one you've now clicked. In this mode, hold down (I think) the "shift" key to add more channels. If I've got the modifier key wrong (not in front of PT just now) check the manual for this and more info on solo modes.

Cheers again.

SB

[DStorms]

Thanks so much for your help SB, I've got it working now where I can solo individually or as a group. I haven't figured out yet if I can simply solo the subgroup to hear all of the drums assigned to the internal bus that is the input to the subgroup master. If I solo the subgroup master (which has a main output assignment), it is silenced, regardless of the solo safe state. Does that make sense? I've tried to follow the routing setups in a Pro Tools 10 book I bought, I haven't found where it gives a good explanation of the scenario I've described above.

Regards & Have a happy and prosperous New Year!
Dave

[Stig Eliassen]

Originally Posted by DStorms

Thanks so much for your help SB, I've got it working now where I can solo individually or as a group. I haven't figured out yet if I can simply solo the subgroup to hear all of the drums assigned to the internal bus that is the input to the subgroup master. If I solo the subgroup master (which has a main output assignment), it is silenced, regardless of the solo safe state. Does that make sense? I've tried to follow the routing setups in a Pro Tools 10 book I bought, I haven't found where it gives a good explanation of the scenario I've described above.

Regards & Have a happy and prosperous New Year!
Dave

You have to solo the group, not the solo-safed aux. If you click the solo button for the kick, and the rest of the drums doesn't solo too, you just modify the attributes for that group (right-click the group name, and choose Modify).