Pro Tools LE 10th Anniversary!

[Shan]

I guess we'll throw the party right here!

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

My how time flies. I still have that box from 10 years ago 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.

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.

Upon this 10 year anniversary of PT LE, we see the birth of a new LE product announced almost to the day called the Eleven Rack, which definitely has a few eyebrow raising innovative features in it.

Let's see what Avid Audio brings to the Pro Tools LE software to celebrate this first decade of their native line.

Here's to another 10 years and the original first DUC PT LE pioneers!

...and congrats to Digidesign/Avid Audio.

Sincerely,

Shane Johnson


Oh, and long live the 001!



**edit - Thought I'd add some more Digi 001 and PT LE 5.01 trivia. 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.

[rqstudio]

He's alive! Hi Shane

[TOM@METRO]

Cheers.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by rqstudio

He's alive! Hi Shane

...and only one gray hair. Knock on wood.

Shane

[nod25]

Not the post I was expecting - kudos to you Shan

[Digitopian]

Does someone know something that we don't? any insider info going on....... something is up, I can smell it! Anyway, Happy B-day LE!

[Ryan Young]

Proud to say I started out with that system on Win 98, and had Robert Campbell as my instructor Happy BDay LE, thanks for making it possible for a kid to learn Pro Tools at home and have it be his career years later!

[sunburst79]

Happy Birthday LE,

Hopefully the best is yet to come.

Oh and there's 416 signitures in that petition now Seems like the best ideas never die.

[Shan]

Originally Posted by Ryan Young

...Happy BDay LE, thanks for making it possible for a kid to learn Pro Tools at home and have it be his career years later!

+1

Shane

[filosofem]

Originally Posted by Shan

Let's see what Avid Audio brings the Pro Tools LE software to celebrate this 10th decade of their native line.

Perhaps the 10th Anniversary of Pro Tools LE is marked with the release of Pro Tools LE Eleven Rack.

Congratulations Digidesign.




Aaron Mulqueen