No Surround Tracks I/O In Ultimate

[sumnerd]

Hi All!

Longtime mixer here, scraping the rust off of my surround mixing chops in PT.

I just installed the free trial of PT 2021.7.0 on an M1 Macbook Pro / using Keith McMillen K-Mix (8-in / 8-out) interface.

I can't seem to get any surround busses (5.1, etc) or tracks to show up in my I/O - only mono and stereo paths.

Am I missing something obvious here?
Should I have access to surround I/O with 2021.7.0, MBP, and 8-out interface?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[cwsand]

Hi, Did you try creating them?

[sumnerd]

Hi Chris!

Yes, went to I/O, tried to create a surround bus - still only Mono and Stereo option available in the I/O there.

Same goes for creating a track - went to make a new audio track, only mono and stereo available there.

Let me know if you have any ideas what I'm missing here?

[Top Jimmy]

Surround mixing is is only found in Ultimate.

[JFreak]

If you have Ultimate license or trial, hit default on every page of I/O Setup, then relaunch PT. Watch closely, the splash screen would say Pro Tools Ultimate and if it does not, you will have zero chance of getting greater-than-stereo as Ultimate/HD is the only PT that can do it.

[sumnerd]

Thanks all.

I have a current PT Subscription, and just activated the one month Trial of Ultimate on top of that.

I uninstalled PT, then downloaded the new installer for Ultimate under my "Products" page.

It appears this installer is just re-installing 2021.7, and not actually installing Ultimate as I expected it should! Back to the drawing board...

[Top Jimmy]

If you have both licenses active, they could be interfering with each other. Move the standard license to your account and only have the Ultimate license active.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by Top Jimmy

If you have both licenses active, they could be interfering with each other. Move the standard license to your account and only have the Ultimate license active.

^^ this. Because standard and ultimate are the same install, there is nothing different software-wise, it is all about the license. PT either sees the ultimate license or not.

[sumnerd]

This totally worked!

Some re-configuring of iLok licenses and got my standard deactivated and Ultimate going on top of it.

My thanks to you all. Happy mixing!

[JFreak]

No problem, kudos to Top Jimmy post #7 which had the solution.

Which brings me back wondering why on earth us moderators are not having separate license bundles for standard and ultimate, perpetual and subscription, just to try these things out for you. Many times we can only guess because whatever license we have that is what is all we know. Would need to be able to swap between editions, but still no. On my beta testing days (PT7-10) actually I requested a keypress combination that on splash screen could deactivate then-HD-now-Ultimate features and start using standard software. So far it has not been implemented or at least I know nothing about it.

End ranting. Sorry and good night.