Windows 11 Pro Tools still has Windows Vista style box

[Undead Goat]

This post will be a slightly more comprehensive list of the pro tools optimizations for the Windows platform, or lack thereof. Although most of the issues that will be listed here are superficial, there are some problems that have an adverse effect on the usability of Pro Tools itself. Moreover, I cannot stress enough just how important it is for a well established piece of professional software such as Pro Tools having a considerable amount of problems with UX design (specifically on Windows) that ultimately does not bode well for what should be regarded as a modern, reliable, and ultimately stable experience.

OS Edition: Windows 11 Pro x64
Version: 21H2
OS Build: 22000.194

Pro Tools version: 2021.7.0

Firstly, the elephant in the room: the title in this post describes an underlying element of the way Pro Tools windows are managed. Nowhere else in the OS is this Windows Vista element shown, which initially led me to believe that Pro Tools itself was specifically coded to have the vista style borders. So it stands to reason that, the way you get rid of the Vista borders is to just update the UI. However, every subsequent pro tools update then on that changed the UI, including the addition of a dark theme overhaul, it did not change the vista borders at all. Upon further reading, I believe this is actually the result of how windows are managed within Pro Tools. Unlike most modern creative apps, Pro Tools does not offer a meaningful degree of multi monitor support at all. Instead, it relies on a parent / child window style of management that forces this legacy element onto the Pro Tools experience. This is only restrictive and counterintuitive for production and efficiency, seeing as having multiple monitors is not something that pro tools has the ability to take advantage of. It seems that the way to solve this is to redesign the pro tools windows to have multi monitor support.

Secondly, the new additions to window management in Windows 11, have added a comprehensive set of features to split screen UI between two or more apps. This part’s a bit more difficult to put into words so I’ll provide some screenshots. In Windows 11, you can “pin” each window to the left or right side of the display. There, you can drag the line between each window like a seam to resize both windows simultaneously as if the seam glues both windows together. Because Pro Tools is not designed to take advantage of this feature, attempting to pin Pro Tools to one side of the display monitor will not let you resize the window with the seam.

Thirdly, retina displays and high DPI or high resolution monitors do not play nice with Pro Tools. This is a more prominent example for how one of the more superficial attributes adversely affects the functionality. When you leave everything in its default state, with Pro Tools adhering to the native resolution, everything is simply too small to see globally. So, the solution is to set display scaling preferences from within Windows to whatever its recommended setting is (i.e. 150%). In my experience, Pro Tools is the only program I have ever used that would distort the UI to such an extent that the file menu and other context menus get cut off, thus making it impossible to actually use. (Screenshots will be provided). Thus, the only way to get Pro Tools in a usable state is to dig into the properties menu and force the program to run in a special low-res mode. This is a known bug in Pro Tools that has persisted for a considerable time and has not been fixed or addressed.

Here is a link to the Avid knowledgebase detailing the known issue with Pro Tools and high DPI settings: https://avid.secure.force.com/pkb/ar..._US&popup=true

I continue to be baffled how Pro Tools natively supports 4k video playback, but Pro Tools itself cannot run properly* in 4k. I can only speculate as to why this is an ongoing issue that has never been properly addressed, and I believe it might have to do with how plugin windows work. Perhaps some plugins are able to run with a high DPI setting while others do not. If that’s the case, just let us adjust plugin window scaling independent of Pro Tools window scaling.

Lastly, this is more of an aside. When I first upgraded to Pro Tools HD many years ago, I was disappointed to see that Windows does not natively see the HD / HDX pcie cards as a Windows sound device. That is to say, there really is no elegant way to use a Pro Tools HD interface with anything other than Pro Tools. It’s possible to use the HD / HDX cards in another DAW, but for routing audio through anything else, be that of conference calls, lectures, podcasts, or anything else, it’s a lot more cumbersome. It’s certainly possible, but unnecessarily restrictive. There could be a special driver that allows Windows to “talk” directly to the HD / HDX cards and, by extension, the audio interfaces connected to those pcie cards, and then it would just be possible to toggle between taking advantage of all the hardware acceleration you get for Pro Tools, and then switching back to Windows audio without additional hardware or routing.