Spanspek

Digidesign makes the world's best digital audio workstation: Pro Tools. But, as with any product, there are things that are wrong or just weird.

One that my students encounter quite often is the difference in I/O settings between Pro Tools LE with a 003 interface and Pro Tools HD with 96I/O interfaces. The default I/O for the 003 has sensible labels: "Analog", "ADAT", and "S/PDIF". These correspond to the three kinds of inputs and outputs available. The default I/O for HD, at least with 96I/Os, is to label each interface "A", "B", and so on, and then label each interface's 16 inputs and outputs with numbers from 1 to 16. That seems quite logical except that connections 9 to 16 are via the ADAT lightpipe port, not analog connectors.

Of course, one is free to customise I/O labelling and configuration. If we're using HD (the "professional" version), we're grown ups and should be able to cope. But I still don't see the harm of labelling the different types of inputs according to their type.