Help this old Pro Tools dinosaur

[brianhummel]

Long time Pro Tools user. Finally transitioned off a legacy Pro Tools system to the Pro Tools Artist 2022.09 and am having issues with what used to be a very basic system configuration in previous versions. Perhaps the cutting edge wizards on this forum can quickly set me straight.

Merely attempting to edit audio in-the-box (no interface) on an M1 Max Macbook Pro running OS 12.0.1 using headphones plugged into the Macbook headphone jack.

My main objective which I am struggling to acheive is simply: to monitor session in audio with headphones, have track signals route through the master fader and the master fader's output feed the Mix Bounce.

I have a single audio track and a master fader and need assistance confirming correct settings for settings in Hardware Setup, Playback Engine, I/O and then the input/output assignments for each track (photos attached of current settings are linked below).

I've noticed that each track in PT now has an Input Monitoring toggle and I only can get the signal from the audio track to the Master Fader if the Master's Input Monitoring button is Active (is that normal).

With my current Input and Output settings for each track, my Mix Bounces do not have any audible audio.

Therefore, I must be routing things wrong internally.

Thank you SO MUCH for assisting me in this set up!

[reflexson]

You are routing your voice track to another audio track. Then you are engaging input monitoring on that mix down track. Instead route the output of the audio track to the MacBook output. Then create a stereo master fader track with the same output. Transfer the plugins from your previous “master”.

[Top Jimmy]

First, you should configure the Pro Tools Aggregate as your interface. In the audio portion of your Mac’s AudioMIDI Settings, make sure you have both an input and the headphone output configured for use with the aggregate device. Once this is confirmed, you should use the Pro Tools Aggregate as your interface.

As the other poster stated, that’s not a master fader track you’re trying to route to.


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[Darryl Ramm]

There is no reason to use a Pro Tools Aggregate as the playback engine unless the user wants to use the mic inputs here. If all they are doing is mixing then just set the mac speakers or whatever the output is called as the playback engine.

I suspect the OP may be confusing things talking about "monitoring" and track "input monitoring"... that is recoding/tracking related stuff not mixing and all the confusion about master tracks makes me suspect they are really only mixing and have dug a deeper hole here because of that.

The best place to learn about track types, master tracks, track input monitoring (which you normally don't use when doing basic mixing ITB), etc. is in the Pro Tools Reference Guide, the pdf is already installed on your system. This is not a generic RTFM reply... the explanations of this stuff there is very clear and useful and a great compliment to tutorials you can find online, on YouTube etc.

[Top Jimmy]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

There is no reason to use a Pro Tools Aggregate as the playback engine unless the user wants to use the mic inputs here.

I’ve helped people having problems with Pro Tools where we traced the issue to not having both an input and an output available in the Playback Engine. Even though they weren’t using the input, Pro Tools wouldn’t behave if there wasn’t one. Maybe Avid has addressed this but I haven’t tested it to see.


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[Ben Jenssen]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

I’ve helped people having problems with Pro Tools where we traced the issue to not having both an input and an output available in the Playback Engine. Even though they weren’t using the input, Pro Tools wouldn’t behave if there wasn’t one.

Just for info; I've been using a hifi DAC for a few months now as output over USB, since I really don't need inputs. No problems with PT at all.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

I’ve helped people having problems with Pro Tools where we traced the issue to not having both an input and an output available in the Playback Engine. Even though they weren’t using the input, Pro Tools wouldn’t behave if there wasn’t one. Maybe Avid has addressed this but I haven’t tested it to see.

I am not sure of those problems, never seen them, and I often work with MacBook Pro speakers as my playback engine. Maybe something is there, I just have no clue what you are seeing.

But the reverse way of not having an output used to be a definite fail, used to hit cryptic asserts and I've been asking for a long time for Pro Tools to at least fail with a sane human understandable error if the playback engine has no output.... and I just checked Pro Tools Studio 2022.9 and 2022.10 and now it handles having no actual outputs just fine. Will let you play content etc. it just has no outputs. Yippee, thank you Avid, I'd missed any mention of this in release notes if it was there. (may have a slight bug with old I/O paths or meter paths that are not in the I/O setup Outputs showing up as output selector options, we'll see more later... only a potential issue as it might confuse a newbie user).