Pro Tools is a digital audio workstation developed and released by Avid Technology (formerly Digidesign) for Microsoft Windows and macOS used for music creation and production, sound for picture (sound design, audio post-production and mixing)[3] and, more generally, sound recording, editing and mastering processes.
Pro Tools can run as standalone software or operate using a range of external analog-to-digital converters and internal PCIe cards with on-board digital signal processors (DSP), used to provide additional processing power to the host computer to process real-time effects—such as reverb, equalization and compression— and to obtain lower latency audio performance. Like all digital audio workstation software, Pro Tools can perform the functions of a multitrack tape recorder and a mixing console along with additional features that can only be performed in the digital domain, such as non-linear and non-destructive editing—most of audio handling is done without overwriting the source files—, track compositing with multiple playlists, and faster-than-realtime mixdown.
Audio, MIDI and video tracks are graphically represented in a timeline. Audio effects, virtual instruments and hardware emulators—such as microphone preamps or guitar amplifiers—can be added, adjusted and processed in real-time in a virtual mixer. 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit float audio bit depths at sample rates up to 192 kHz are supported. Pro Tools supports mixed bit depths and audio formats in a session: BWF (WAV), AIFF and MXF (SD2 format was dropped with Pro Tools 10). It also imports and exports in the lossy formats mp3, aac, m4a and imports audio from video files (mov). It has also incorporated video editing capabilities, so users can import and manipulate high definition video file formats such as XDCAM, MJPG-A, PhotoJPG, DV25, QuickTime, and more. It features time code, tempo maps, elastic audio and automation; supports mixing in surround sound, Dolby Atmos and VR sound using Ambisonics.
The Pro Tools TDM mix engine, supported until 2011 with version 10, employed 24-bit fixed-point arithmetic for plug-in processing and 48-bit for mixing. Current HDX hardware systems, HD Native and native systems use 32-bit floating point resolution for plug-ins and 64-bit floating point summing; the software and the audio engine were adapted to 64-bit architecture from version 11.