48 voices?

[Snarf]

The Music Production toolkit gives you up to 48 mono or stero tracks, this means 48 voices, right?
So a total of 48 tracks playing back at any current time (including Audio, Aux and Instrument Tracks)?

I saw some guy claiming that ProTools LE had an unlimited track count for instrument tracks, but if you only have 32 or 48 voices, why the hell would they include that. I told him he had to be mistaken, and I coulden´t find anything about unlimited tracks in LE anywhere in the pdf files or on the website.

I´m not in my studio so I can`t really test it for my self, so if anyone else knows for shure, please feel free to explain it to me, being as condesending as you want to be. Sorry for looking like a complete noob with this question..


Snarf

[Shawn Simpson]

I don't know if I'd say it's unlimited, but aux tracks, midi tracks, instrument tracks, and master faders DON'T count toward your voice count. Never have. Only audio tracks count in that regard.

The Music Production Toolkit is going to allow 48 audio tracks, not voices. That means you can have any combination of mono or stereo tracks up to a total of 48 audio tracks.

[Snarf]

So you can have 48 tracks of recorded audio+ additional 32 instrument tracks with ie sampletank, and protools wil playback all 80 tracks at once?

That almost sounds to good to be true...

[Shawn Simpson]

If your machine can do all that, then PT will let you.

[Snarf]

Its a dual 2ghz g5 with 3gigs of Ram, so the total of 80 tracks shoulden`t be a problem, however, running 32 instances of Sampletank will probably crash the session. But if I was using a somewhat less cpu hungry virtual isntrument, it really makes protools alot more powerful than I thought. (I´ve been doing my sequensing in logic up until now. Just bouncing the midiparts to a stereo aif, and importing to protools. Maybe i don`t really need to:) )

Thanks for your input

[Snarf]

I read something in the PT7 poor performance petition, that PTLE infact has 96 voices. Can anyone confirm this?
And does that mean that I can have either 1. 48 stereo tracks or 2. 48 monotracks and 48 instrument/aux trax?

Again, Sorry for asking really stupid questions. But the pdf files are not too presise on these matters, and when you learn everything yourself, you sometimes need the advice of more experienced peers, no matter what field you are in.


<S>

[Slim Shady]

Sorry Snarf, that's a bit of incorrect information that was going around when the Toolkits were first announced, I think it was a mis-interpretation of the 48 limit - normal PTLE is limited to 32 'voices' whereas the Toolkit is limited based on 'number of tracks' - an odd but correct distinction.

The correct info is in this thread, 48 tracks total for the Toolkits, not voices. The 48 tracks can be any combination of mono or stereo AUDIO TRACKS.

Again, Instrument and Aux tracks don't count towards anything, you can use as many of them as your system can handle.

[JFreak]

Instrument tracks don't count towards anything, you can use as many of them as your system can handle.

...as long as you don't use more than 32 instrument tracks

[Snarf]

Thanks you guys. My G5 has been in for service, so i haven`t had the chance to experimnt with all this stuff myself. Great resource, this forum.

[demodigi]

Hi,

Here is the max number of tracks in PT LE/MP (since PT6 excluding instrument tracks) :

MIDI : 256
Audio (mono OR stereo) : 128 / 32 voices max (=16 stereo or 32 mono)
Aux (mono OR stereo) : 128
Instruments (mono OR stereo) : 32

Note : instrument track = aux+midi track in one BUT you can have 256 MIDI + 32 Instruments + 128 Auxes.

The max track count is different from the max nb of audio voices. The auxes and instruments tracks don't have any voice limit and depend on machines. After a certain amount of total audio flaw (audio voice + audio thru auxes or instruments) and before on CPU usage overloads, the audio engine simply stops (no audio at all).

With my old G4 bi1,25GHz I was able to have 32 audio tracks + about 60 aux stereo tracks. After that gap : no sound. Didn't try with G5 (to see if ot is linked to CPU or not).

The audio engine can stop when too much plug-ins are instanciated at the same time (then no CPU overload but also no audio at all).

Anyway, I don't know if the 48 "tracks" option will be 48 voices or real 48 tracks (48 mono tracks or 48 stereo tracks) which is not the same at all...

But now, if you use multi-out VSTi, you can easily break the 32 voices limit if your CPU is powered enough to play everything in real time.