>Tracks vs. Voices? help!

[megahurt]

I've searched and not come up with much...

it was my understanding that PT 6 did not have a 32 TRACK limit, but rather 32 simultaneous "voices" or parts playing at any one time. My session just hit 32 tracks, and it imported the next track turned off or something. How does this work, and exactly what is the limit... and actually, what the hell is a voice if not a track?

=P

[RinnyTin]

PT LE 6 has no track limit, but only 32 voices, so that means only 32 tracks can be active/heard at any one time, if you go over, the additional tracks will show up, but be greyed out. Think of it as unlimited tracks but only a 32 channel mixer.

[froyo]

Hello. RinnyTin Pro Tools LE 6.x does have a track limit. You can only have 128 tracks in a session. If you import a session say with 134 tracks, the last 6 would disappear. You are correct that anything above 32 will be inactive. You can however have the 128 tracks, and pick and choose which 32 will be active. So while a bit cumbersome, you can work with all those tracks.

Voices represent a discrete 'channel' or 'virtual track'. In TDM systems you can assign many different tracks to one voice. So you can have for example 80 tracks of foley assigned to a stereo pair and those 80 tracks are only taking up two voices, as if it was only two tracks. You can not do this in LE. The software hard assigns the first 32 tracks to the 32 voices. Track 1= Voice 1, etc. Even if you wanted for kicks to have Track 1= Voice 5 you couldn't do that. The majority of times voices are used in TDM to comp lead vocals, guitar solos, etc.

For more information on this look through the pertinent section of your Pro Tools Reference Guide

[megahurt]

"The software hard assigns the first 32 tracks to the 32 voices"

so like... we're limited to 32 tracks. Right?

At no point in my song do anywhere close to all 32 tracks play all at the same time, so... what am I missing?

[megahurt]

...

[Rail Jon Rogut]

Froyo answered your question.. LE has 32 active voices only.. you can't share voices in an LE system.

Rail

[megahurt]

So, just to bee 100% sure... this is exactly the same as saying we have 32 tracks? Correct?

I see no difference.

[citi]

Well maybe it's because you are not understanding. There is a difference between having a 32 tracks limit and 32 voices. Yes you can have only 32 voice tracks playing at the same time. This is the limit. BUT let's say you were working on a multi track session with 50 tracks that you got from a tdm session. In 5.xxx if you pulled your session up in LE you would LOSE at 18 other tracks. They would be gone. But in 6.2 you can now have them displayed but inactive. You are confusing "sounds" with voices. They are very different. If you have 32 singers singing in a session at different time in the song you are still using 32 voices on EACH track. Not 32 voices per second.

But for you. You can only play a maximun of 32 tracks at a time. You can have 128 tracks total within your session

[megahurt]

So Digi now lets us LOOK at more tracks, but not hear them. I see.

seems kinda gay... but if anyone gets use out of this, cool.

I thought that we could have 32 "sounds" playing at any one time... so lets say I have 4 guitar tracks that only play on the chorus of a song. At any part of the song other than the chorus, those 4 tracks would be free... hard to explain.

thanx for the info.

[citi]

I completely understand what you are saying and that would be cool. Kinda of like a synth that allows a maximum amount of voices, not tracks, but unfortunately, it does not work that way.