We have had a lot of questions about Pro Tools 11 so we thought it would be helpful for the community to put them together as an FAQ.
Firstly do check the Avid’s own FAQ as it does cover a lot of the issues and also check their preliminary Pro Tools 11 compatibility information, which will be updated when PT11 is released.
Q. What are my upgrade options to Pro Tools 11?
Avid have announced provisional upgrade pricing with options for PT10 to 11, 9 to 11, and HD upgrades.
Amnesty
You are eligible for a free upgrade if you bought Pro Tools after April 7th. If you bought it before April 7th you will need to pay for the upgrade.
Complete Production Toolkit
Avid are simplifying the product range and killing Complete Production Toolkit. They are offering a path for owners of both CPTK and PT10 (you must be registered owners of both PT10 & CPTK) to upgrade to PT11HD and we should see a revision of the upgrade price initially put forward by Avid.
Pro Tools Academic - UPDATED SEE BELOW
Avid will honour the 4 year free upgrade offer for anyone who can prove they were given that offer and who are still students. However if you were a student when you bought Pro Tools Academic and was offered 4 years free upgrades (not all PT Academic users were), but you are now no longer a student, you wouldn’t be eligible for a free upgrade. Also teachers and institutions aren’t eligible for free academic upgrades. Other Academic users can upgrade at a special price.
Q. Is my system compatible with Pro Tools 11?
Avid have announced provisional compatibility information for Pro Tools 11 and please be aware that this is a work in progress, especially in the area of computer hardware support.
3 tiers of compatibility
Avid have started to use 3 groupings in their compatibility chats for Pro Tools 11. The 3 tiers are.
- Supported
- Not Officially Supported, but should work,
- Not Compatible and won’t work.
002 & 003 Families
When Avid announced PT10 they said it would be the last version to support the 002 and 003 families. However the good news is that the 003 and Mbox 2 families will be offically supported for Pro Tools 11 and that the 002 family are in the ‘Not Officially Supported’ group but they should continue to work. This is really good news for 002 and 003 users as there isn’t an obvious replacement for the 002 and 003 interfaces that are also control surfaces.
Control 24 & Command 8
The Control 24 and Command 8 are also in the ‘Not Officially Supported’ group so owners of these should be able to get some more mileage out of these units.
Pro Control
The Pro Control has finally hit the ‘Not Compatible and won’t work’ group after having been effectively in the middle group for a little while, so any Pro Control users will need to look for alternatives if you choose upgrade to Pro Tools 11.
Q. Will my computer run Pro Tools 11?
We have had a number of community members who have been concerned that their particular computer is not on the preliminary list of supported machines for Mac or Windows. We suggest that the key part of these lists to check is the ‘Not Supported’ sections. This is a list of computers that Avid have tested and found not to meet the very high bar they have set for computer compatibility with Pro Tools. Remember that although your machine may not be on any of the lists, it may be that either, it just doesn’t meet Avid’s high standards, or it is an older machine that Avid have not been able to test. The chances are that most computers that will work with PT10 will work with PT11, especially as PT11 puts much less load onto the computer, see our observations from the Avid demos at MusikMesse and NAB, and that they have been showing prospective clients PT11 running on a Mac Mini, with sessions that needed a fully loaded Mac Pro to run on PT10.
Mac Support
To run PT11 you will need to use Mountain Lion v10.8.3, they have not qualified Lion so you might want to consider upgrading to 10.8.3 in a quiet period to be ready for PT11 when it comes out. It may be that PT11 will run on Lion but Avid are not qualifying it.
Windows Support
Pro Tools 11 has been qualified for some versions of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Again check the Avid compatibility info for the exact versions that they have qualified.
Windows 8 support
We get a lot of questions about Windows 8 support and Pro Tools 11 will be the first version of PT that will have Windows 8 support. Also don’t expect earlier versions to get Windows 8 support, Avid, along with most software companies don’t do retrospective approval, for earlier versions on new operating systems.
Q. Will Pro Tools 10 & 11 work on the same machine?
PT10 and PT11 together with Media Composer 7 will co-exist on the same computer but they cannot be run simultaneously because they will be both trying to access the same hardware.
Q. What about Sound Designer II support?
Pro Tools 11 will not support Sound Designer II (SDII) files. If you need to open old legacy sessions that have SDII audio files you will need to have a version of PT10 installed to convert the session.
Q. Will I get the new metering support in PT11?
Pro Tools 11 and Pro Tools 11HD will both have the new high definition audio metering but the 17 options of different metering formats will only be available on PT11HD. Currently the ATSC A85 and R128 loudness recommendations are not included in those 17 options but Avid have said it will be possible to add these in a later version.
Q. Will my interface work with Pro Tools 11?
Non HD 3rd party Interfaces
Avid doesn’t qualify 3rd party interfaces, that is up to the 3rd party manufacturers and information will be limited until Pro Tools 11 is released and the 3rd party manufactures can complete their testing but the more recent interfaces that work with PT10 should be OK.
HD Interfaces
Pro Tools HD Native and HDX system are only qualified for use with Avid interfaces. Remember that the older ‘Blue’ interfaces are not officially qualified but are now in the ‘Not officially Supported but should work’ group. In the same group are a selection of 3rd party reverse engineered interfaces from companies like Lynx and Apogee, but you may find they have higher latency figures that the Avid interfaces. Also remember you cannot connect non HD 3rd party interfaces to Avid HD hardware like the HD Native or HDX systems.
Q. What Plug-ins will work with Pro Tools 11?
Pro Tools 11 will only support 64 bit AAX plug-ins. RTAS, TDM and 32bit AAX plug-ins won’t work. We recommend that you check that your favourite plug-ins are available in 64 bit before upgrading to Pro Tools 11. Check with the individual plug-in manufacturers or use our AAX Database to check on progress.
Hi Guys,
If you purchased the Academic Student version of Pro Tools then you are entitled to 4 years of software upgrades at no charge starting from the time of purchase. Owners of this version do not need to retain student status to keep their 4-year upgrade entitlement.
Hope this clears things up.
Thanks,
Tony Cariddi
Avid Marketing