MusicRadar

• Related News
• Review

Pro Tools 8's new instruments add considerably to its out-of-the-box immediacy, and their easy interfaces mean you'll be making sounds in no time. Both Mini Grand and the DB-33 organ are very useable, with DB-33 including some cool cabinet settings (drive, character, spread and mic positions).

As a workstation synth you might expect Xpand! 2 to be the least inspiring instrument, but we think it's excellent. Admittedly, editing is limited to the default parameters that are given to you, but with two onboard effects, an in-built arpeggiator and four parts per instance, you can get pretty creative. And remember, there are hundreds of presets.

We also found Vacuum to be pretty good fun, with the vacuum tube sound adding an extra layer of interest. It's a shame that it's not polyphonic.

In terms of content, Structure Free offers less than we'd expected. With one drum kit taking up almost a quarter of the 885MB sample pack and only 60 patches in total you'll probably feel the same. However, we did find it imported Kontakt and EXS24 libraries easily. In all honesty, though, we hankered for the editing options of the full version.

Finally, Boom is an excellent retro drum machine, with some fine patterns and sounds. The only limitation is that patterns are only 16-step.

Effects in action

The 20 new AIR effects cover a lot of ground and it seems pointless to list all their capabilities. However, there are few gems in there worth mentioning.

First up, the Filter Gate offers great rhythmic gating (with 32 preset patterns), synced timing with adjustable swing, and overall mix balance. Throw in LFO-based modulation and a resonant filter, and a basic pad will never sound the same again.

Talkbox emulates the classic guitar effect, and although it's basically a self-modulating effect (so no external control) the various vowel options allow for some great sounds. In use we found this worked best on sounds with percussive attack and some decay – a bit like a guitar, unsurprisingly.

Non-linear reverb is often criticised as the source of the '80s gated snare' sound. But it's enormously useful for adding space and width to all sorts of sounds. The AIR version works great, and includes a neat feature for delaying the dry signal relative to the reverb. With reverb times up to 1.5 seconds and also a reverse option, this is one of the neatest specialist reverbs we've tried.

"The 20 new AIR effects cover a lot of ground, and there are few gems in there."

Multi Delay is a pretty complex multi-tap design. The five separate adjustable 'taps' have level and pan, while global controls include high- and low-cut filters, feedback and the option to sync to tempo. To round things off there's a cool cross feed selector.

Finally, it's worth mentioning Digi's Eleven Free amp simulator. This cutdown two-amp, two-cabinet version of the company's Eleven plug-in sounds excellent, though you'll probably want the full version after you've tried it.

Summary

There's no denying that Pro Tools 8 has absorbed a lot from its rivals, and we'd say that it's all the better for it. Even so, existing users should be able to carry on as before without any problems.

But it's new users or floating voters who should be most interested in PT8, as it now offers the creative, writing and programming musician so much more. Where MIDI once felt like an awkward add-on, it now feels fully integrated. And the ever-burgeoning AIR content, both the instruments and effects, bring an all-in-one simplicity that Pro Tools had begun to lose.

So does this make Pro Tools the leading audio MIDI sequencer? That is difficult to say. Up against Logic for example, it might win in the audio stability stakes, but can't match the sheer creative content that Apple's app includes, not to mention the other bundled software.

That said, if you're focused on audio and music production then this may not matter. What's more, the potential to start with M-Powered and ultimately move up to HD is very attractive. In an ideal world, we'd like to see Digi bite the bullet and include more of the existing AIR instruments as standard, but even so, we still think this is a very impressive upgrade and the most exciting change to Pro Tools for some time.