November 24, 2015 / Randy Coppinger

My Upgrade to ProTools 12

When anticipating an audio software upgrade, two major concerns are: familiarity, and stability. Having done a few small projects since an upgrade from ProTools 10 to 12, it doesn’t feel like a lot of things have changed, so I’m feeling good about how familiar it seems. Most of my focus has been on how well the software works or fails.

FADE OUT BUG
I started with version 12.2 and encountered a strange bug with fade outs. When a fade out was scrolled off screen then back on, sometimes it changed from the familiar outlined box with fade line and waveform to an opaque box. The audio played fine, but it prevented the fade from being edited. I found if I would close and reopen the session these fade outs were sometimes restored. Other times a new fade out of the same length was created AFTER the original fade, lengthening the edit. At first I was amazed at how strange this bug seemed, but after losing a lot of time to it I became desperate for a solution.

Luckily version 12.3 was available. I didn’t find any mention of this bug in documentation for either version, so I just had to hope using 12.3 would be better. I am happy to report that I haven’t had any weird fades since moving up.

DELAY COMPENSATION BUG
In 12.2 and 12.3 I’ve experienced a problem with delay compensation. I often buss through two aux inputs, one of which has a dynamics plug-in, for parallel compression. Every time I launched ProTools and then opened a session for the first time, there was a 1024 sample delay on the plugin channel (at 48k Hz rate). If I simply closed the session and reopened, the delay compensation worked fine again. It’s a minor annoyance.

RTAS
One of my session templates included the McDSP F2 filter plug-in. I hung onto the old version for as long as I could because sliders seemed faster than rotating knobs. My F2 was RTAS, but its AAX replacement was the F202. According to the helpful folks at McDSP, ProTools users need to have v6 of FilterBank installed in order to automatically convert old F2 plug-ins and transfer the setting values into F202.

MAGMA CHASSIS FAN NOISE
My ProTools 10 rig used a PCI card to connect to the HD Omni. The cost effective path to interface with a “trashcan” Mac Pro seemed to be the Magma Express Box 3T. Setup was pretty easy and it worked like a charm. But the fan noise was bugging me. The product literature explained that the fan speed was adjustable, and I even found a How To video on YouTube. Trouble was, that video was for a previous version. The new, improved model was easier to adjust slower, and quieter without getting significantly hot. While the information about how to adjust the jumper was well documented in the product literature, locating the jumper was a bit more challenging. So here’s a sequence of photos to help Express Box 3T owners access the jumper.