Pro Tools is used in such a wide range of environments that there are always several parallel lines of development running. The official release date is 'second half of this year', but the beta I saw was solid, with only a few behavioural bugs to iron out, so there's a good chance it'll be out not long after you read this. It's a HD release, and is particularly useful if you have an Icon controller (reviewed in last month's issue), but a number of features will inevitably make it into subsequent LE and M-Powered releases. Version 7.2 adds a large array of new things, but the biggest single theme is a suite of high-end mixing and post-production features. Since then, we've had 7.11 to add native support for Intel Macs, the beefed-up Music Production and DV Toolkit 2, and the Hybrid and Xpand! Instruments.

Version 7 was the big GUI overhaul, and saw great strides taken in the area of music composition. Only six months or so after the launch of Pro Tools 7 (see the review in January's SOS: jan06/articles/protools7.htm), the next major release is being previewed and shown at various trade shows, and looks nearly ready for release.

Digidesign unveil a suite of powerful new mixing and automation features with this major HD release of the Pro Tools software, and throw in a surprising number of other goodies at the same time.

Digidesign pro tools 7.3