Pro Tools Native 11th Anniversary!

[Shan]

I guess we'll throw another party right here!

11 years ago today on September 24, 1999, Digidesign announced the Digi 001 for Mac OS and Win98 running Pro Tools LE 5.01 software.

I still have that box from 11 years ago along with the original PIII I built for it. Surprisingly, it still fires up and runs! Nothing like classic vintage Digi converters. I was pretty impressed with the simple work flow I was looking at after launching it for the very first time. A Mix and Edit window, straight to the point. Considering that most of the other DAWs of the time were nothing but multi pop-up window frenzies, PT 5.01 had a straight forward elegant simplicity to it. After spending an hour with it, I took my copy of Cubase 2.5 and fired it straight into the garbage bin. Seeking more info, advice and users, I jumped online and found the DUC which I became an "avid" reader and lurker for a good year until I finally created my DUC account, and made my first post. The forum was amazingly active with recording tips and advice from many pro recording veterans. It wasn't uncommon to make a post, go back an hour later, and find it down on page 5 with 20 replies of amazing advice and help from the diehards.

LE has come along way since that initial release and there's definitely more than one story to tell with many uphill battles along the way. Somehow, some very creative DUCers always seemed to push the app and hardware beyond it's intended limits. Though it only had a limit of 24 tracks at the time, a few of us were determined to fined solutions that would exceed this. I ended up bumping into an engineering oversight that actually gave us 32 tracks. It was quite simple really. Create a session with 23 tracks, go to import, then import 9 empty audio tracks from another session. The 9 audio tracks imported and remained active, which gave us our 32 tracks. I posted this tip on the DUC only to find it deleted hours later. Posted it a few more times and again, it got deleted. That's ok though, so many people saw the posts and with the communication of the Internet, I ended up with hundreds of emails, which I still have to this day, asking for the 32 track tip. Unfortunately, Digidesign decided to "fix" this engineering oversight in Pro Tools 5.3.

After it's end of life announcement by Digidesign, quite a few made an attempt to change that decision. I see some familiar names on that petition by the way. Though it was unsuccessful, many continued to creatively keep it running, and we'll leave that part of it's history at that. As a bit of trivia, this was the only LE product that could run without the hardware I/O breakout box attached, as the ADAT lightpipe I/O was on the PCI card(no firewire related error messages by the way). It looks like the original Digi 001 website is still around, but now parked by a new owner.

Upon this 11 year anniversary of PT LE, we see the birth of a new generation of Mbox hardware I/O. For the first time ever, the exlcusive proprietary modus operandi of the past decade has been removed, as it's now being promoted as an I/O box for use with all audio software and DAWs. This is quite a bold new move and a good indicator that Avid Audio has become a real hardware company with the proprietary shackles of the always in fear digidesign removed. A big two thumbs up for this new direction, which I hope they continue to move forward in.

Let's see what Avid Audio brings to the Pro Tools Native software to celebrate this 11th year of their native line. I'm pretty optimistic we'll see some more BIG changes.

Here's to another 11 years and the original first DUC PT LE pioneers!

Sincerely,

Shane Johnson


...and long live that 001!