For us one of the most welcome new features of Pro Tools 2023.12 was the introduction of custom colours in the IO Setup window. In this article Julian shows just how easy and useful this feature is.

Introduced in Pro Tools 2023.12 the I/O Setup window now lets you colour code Input, Output, Bus, Insert paths, and in Pro Tools Ultimate and Studio Dolby Atmos Groups. By assigning a colour in the new colour column in the first five tabs of the IO Setup you can introduce an easy to read colour scheme by colouring Input, Output, Send, and Insert Name plates in the Edit, Mix, Send, and Output windows.

Colour coding is easy. To colour code an I/O path you click to the left of the path name in the IO Setup window. These colours are saved with sessions and in .pio files. In the video we demonstrate how useful this is in a stereo session, with easy to read routing of bus assignments and aux sends.

The functionality extends to hardware inserts, though the routing of hardware inserts is necessarily simple, and to Dolby Atmos, with Atmos Groups being a particularly useful application of this colour functionality. Having colour coding available makes the complexity of multiple objects and beds much easier to keep track of.

A degree of customisation is available beyond the choice of colour with a saturation control being available in the Customise UI section of the Colour Palette.

Colour Inheritance

There is a degree of automatic inheritance of colour in the IO window, with for example the colour of output paths is inherited by their corresponding output bus unless that bus path is uniquely assigned a different colour from its default. Similarly if you colour code Dolby Atmos groups and assign a group to a path in the Dolby Atmos tab, it also colours the path. If that path is mapped to an output when using an external renderer, that output inherits the Group colour as well.

Multiple Paths

A nice touch which extends the information presented beyond that offered previously is how the IO plates display multiple colours when an output or send is assigned to multiple paths.

It has always been possible to assign to multiple paths. Selecting a second (or third or fourth) path to an output or send while holding Control on a Mac or Start on a PC assigns that output to multiple paths simultaneously. The multiple routing is indicated by a ‘+’ in front of the path name. With the addition of colour coding the colours of each path are displayed simultaneously, allowing you to see which paths are assigned without inspecting the selector menu.