Following our story on Pro Tools 11 “Exponential Gains” Claims - Marketing Hype Or Real?, a well-known software developer got in touch with a very simple explanation of why the term ‘exponential’ is a valid description for Pro Tools 11:

The reason for “exponential” improvement can be summarized as this:  The old engine was a simple design that treats all tracks the same using one audio engine buffer size, but the new engine has two audio engine buffer sizes, one for audio tracks and one for aux tracks.  The buffer size for disk tracks is exponentially larger than it was in PT 10.

The developers have been working with Avid through a significant proportion of the four years that Avid have spent working on Pro Tools 11, not just rebuilding from the ground up, but digging out the foundations and starting again, especially with the new Avid Audio Engine. There have been some of the recent improvements which they have been able to set aside and integrate into Pro Tools 11 but largely it is completely new application. This is why it is putting so much less load on the computer and is the reason the differences above are what they are.