Im running 11.3 HD on Native - Will the current vanilla PT open old HDNt files?

[End Over End]

Im running 11.3 HD on Native - Will the current vanilla PT open old HDN files?

IOW:
If I have some huge sessions from the past made in HDNative 11.3, what will happen if there aren't enough tracks or lanes in the current Vanilla version of PT?

Is is necessary to use Ultimate?

When responding please do not send best guesses, if you have seen Old HD files open in Vanilla and witnessed the "bork" please chime in. This comment was to save all the viewers of this time and get straight to the facts. LOVE You!

Win 10
I9900k
32gb
PT Native - analog 16/16

[albee1952]

Sessions will open fine. Worst case is that some tracks will be made inactive.

[JFreak]

Opening old sessions on current is generally speaking pretty much trouble free, it is the other way around you need to be concerned. As in if you use a feature introduced later and open the session on an older system (.ptx is compatible down to 10.0.0) you might lose some features and once you save the session the use of new features is lost forever (which is why if you go down on PT version first thing you do is Save Copy In and work with that).

Another thing is going from ultimate to standard software. Most notable differences are lack of greater-than-stereo, smaller i/o count, smaller track count but as said you would most likely only notice that last tracks are made inactive if your session exceeds the limit.

Nothing to worry about, just go for it and if you suspect anything may be going wrong first thing you do is Save Copy In and test with that session.

[The Weed]

IIRC, there was a version or two that, instead of making the Tracks over the limit inactive, actually deleted them. Can't remember which versions, but there was a Thread or more about it. Here's one from this year, start at Post #22.

That said, starting with 2021.6, Standard Pro Tools gets 256 TRACKS mono or stereo, and Ultimate gets 2048 VOICES. But I don't know what happens if one goes from 2021.6 and above Ultimate to Standard and there are still too many Tracks. Do they go inactive or are they still deleted?

[JFreak]

One of my pet peeves since PT7 beta team days, just implement a keystroke that could downgrade HD/Ultimate to standard features.. not happening yet.. if that was a possiblity, I could test that for you. But no. I only have Ultimate, cannot say what happens when something is opened in standard software.

But with that said, the huge voice count of ultimate has little to do with TRACKS but just simply think about 7.1 track taking 8 voices, 2048 voices would be 256 tracks. This is mainly telling that standard and ultimate both have 256 tracks regardless of track width (standard software being limited to stereo, ultimate allowing greater-than-stereo).