M-AUDIO Pro Tools Recording Studio - Manual (Page 33)

Chapter 2: Pro Tools Concepts 15
Playlist
A playlist is a sequence of regions arranged on an
audio, MIDI, or video track. Tracks have edit
playlists and automation playlists.
On audio tracks, an edit playlist tells the hard
disk which audio regions to play in what order.
For example, you can have separate audio re-
gions for a song introduction, the first verse, the
first chorus, and so on. You can also use the
same audio region to access the same piece of
audio multiple times at different locations and
not use additional disk space. Different versions
of the same original audio can be used in differ-
ent places and have different effects applied. On
MIDI and Instrument tracks, edit playlists can
store multiple MIDI sequences (or perfor-
mances) on a track.
A playlist can be made up of a single region or
many separate regions. It can be made up of sim-
ilar elements, such as regions from several differ-
ent takes of a solo, or dissimilar elements, such
as several sound effects.
You can create any number of alternate edit
playlists for a track. This lets you assemble differ-
ent versions of performances or edits on a single
track and choose between them from the Playl-
ists menu on the track.
Each audio, Auxiliary Input, Instrument, Master
Fader, and VCA track also has a single set of au-
tomation playlists. Automation playlists can in-
clude volume, pan, mute, and each automation-
enabled control for the insert and send assign-
ments on that track.
MIDI controller data on Instrument and MIDI
tracks is always included as part of the track
playlist.
Channel
The term channel is used to describe several re-
lated components of a Pro Tools system. The
first example of channel refers to a physical in-
put or output of your Pro Tools system. For ex-
ample, a 96 I/O audio interface provides up to
16 channels of audio input and output to a
Pro Tools|HD system, while an Mbox 2 audio in-
terface provides up to four inputs and two out-
puts.
The second use of the term channel refers to a
channel strip in the Pro Tools Mix window.
Each track in a Pro Tools session has a corre-
sponding channel strip in the Mix window.
Audio and MIDI channel strips have similar
controls, but those controls have slightly differ-
ent effects. For example, audio, Auxiliary Input,
and Instrument track channel strip faders con-
trol the output gain to the mix bus for that
channel, while MIDI channel strip faders send
MIDI volume data (MIDI controller 7) to the se-
lected MIDI instrument.
Playlist selector pop-up menu
The term ‘MIDI channel’ also describes a
separate aspect of MIDI operation. See
“MIDI” on page 9.