History
Pro Tools was developed by UC Berkeley graduates Evan Brooks and Peter Gotcher. Brooks majored in electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley. The first incarnation of Pro Tools started life in 1984 as Sound Designer, while the pair were creating and selling drum sound chips under their Digidrums label. Sound Designer was originally designed to edit sounds for the E-MU Emulator sampling keyboard. Gotcher and Brooks discussed with E-MU Systems the possibility of integrating their renamed 'Sound Tools' software into the Emulator III keyboard released in 1987. E-MU rejected this offer and Gotcher and Brooks started Digidesign.
Sound Tools debuted on January 20, 1989 at NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers). At this stage Sound Tools was a simple computer based stereo audio editor. Although the software had the possibility to do far more, it was limited by the hard drive technology which was used to stream audio and allow for the non-destructive editing that Sound Tools offered.
The first version of Pro Tools was launched in 1991, offering 4 tracks and selling for $6000USD. The core engine technology and much of the user interface was designed by and licensed from a small San Francisco company called OSC. OSC was known at the time for creating the first software-based digital multi-track recorder, called DECK, in 1990. That software, manufactured by OSC, but distributed by Digidesign, formed the platform upon which Pro Tools version 1 was built. The OSC designers and engineers responsible for that technology, Josh Rosen, Mats Myrberg and John Dalton, split from Digidesign in 1993 in order to focus on releasing lower-cost ($399) multi-track software that would run on computers with no additional hardware. Although the original design remained largely the same, Digidesign continued to improve Pro Tools software and hardware, adding a visual MIDI sequencer and more tracks, with the system offering 16 bit, 44.1 kHz audio recording. In 1997 Pro Tools reached 24 bit, 48 track versions. It was at this point that the migration from more conventional studio technology to the Pro Tools platform took place within the industry.
Read more about this topic: Pro Tools
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Throughout the history of commercial life nobody has ever quite liked the commission man. His function is too vague, his presence always seems one too many, his profit looks too easy, and even when you admit that he has a necessary function, you feel that this function is, as it were, a personification of something that in an ethical society would not need to exist. If people could deal with one another honestly, they would not need agents.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)
“Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind.”
—Thomas Paine (1737–1809)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)