If you – like me – are using an older computer for your productions you may be wondering whether Pro Tools 2019 works on less powerful machines.
I work on a Mac Mini 6,2 (late 2012) with a 2.3 GHz i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and a 480 GB Kingston SSD. I was positively surprised by the performance of the new version. The video below shows performance test results using the classic D-Verb test.
How to conduct the D-Verb test
You can download the Pro Tools sessions for the tests performed in this video from this post on the Pro Tools PC website. Here are the steps for the test, quoted from the above-mentioned post:
- Turn your interface audio DOWN
- Create a 24/48k session
- Set your playback buffer to 64
- Make sure “Ignore errors” is not checked
- Open the system usage window (which is under “Windows”)
- Create a mono audio track.
- Set the output to bus 1. Set the input to “none”
- Print a 5 minute, 1k sine wave on a new mono audio track (Do this by selecting 5+ minutes inside the mono audio track).
- Go to the Audiosuite menu and select the signal generator and hit “process”
- Create a mono audio track
- Set the input to buss 1, output to your interface output.
- Instantiate 5 mono D-Verbs on that track.
- Duplicate this track roughly 50 times.
- Record arm the tracks and “OK” through the warnings. (make sure the main source track is not armed for recording)
- Turn up your audio interface a tiny bit to allow you to hear the playback and listen for pops and clicks.
Test results
The D-Verb test was conducted using Pro Tools 2019.5 on a Mac Mini 6,2 (late 2012) with a 2.3 GHz i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM and a 480 GB Kingston SSD. Using the above-mentioned procedure I managed to record on 72 tracks (360 D-Verb plug-ins).
I’ve been using Pro Tools 2019 for about 2 months continuously in my mixing and post-production work. So far, it has performed exceptionally well.
That’s it for today. I hope this post helps you decide whether your system supports Pro Tools 2019.
If you liked the post, please check out my other posts and the Sound Tweakers podcast.
Make some noise!