Specifications

Chapter 13: Tracks 245
Track Priority
While your Pro Tools hardware allows a fixed
number of voices, Pro Tools software allows for
additional audio tracks beyond that fixed number
of voices. While all of these tracks can be recorded
to or imported, arranged, and cued for playback,
not all of them can be played back simultaneously.
When the number of tracks exceeds the number of
available voices, tracks with lower priority may
not be heard. For these situations, Pro Tools as-
signs priorities to tracks that compete for the avail-
able voices. Because there can be more tracks than
available voices, Pro Tools provides multiple ways
of adjusting the playback priority of audio tracks.
See “Changing a Track’s Playback Priority” on
page 245 and “Freeing up Voices on a Track” on
page 245.
With Pro Tools|HD systems, you can assign spe-
cific voices to multiple tracks such that those
voices are shared by more than one track. This fea-
ture is called voice borrowing. The combination of
playback/record tracks and shared voiced tracks
comprises the total number of voiceable tracks
available on a Pro Tools|HD
system.
To set multiple tracks to the same voice, see “Set-
ting Voice Assignment” on page 246. For addi-
tional information on voice borrowing, see“Voice
Borrowing” on page 248).
Changing a Track’s Playback Priority
Tracks with higher positions (leftmost in the Mix
window or topmost in the Edit window) have pri-
ority over tracks in lower positions in a session.
To increase a track’s priority, do any of the
following:
 In the Mix window, drag the Track Name button
to the left of other tracks in the session. Tracks
at the left of the Mix window have higher prior-
ity than those on the right.
 In the Edit window, drag the Track Name button
above other tracks in the session. Tracks at the
top of the Edit window have higher priority than
those below.
 In the Track List, drag the Track Name to a
higher position in the list. Tracks at the top of
this list have higher priority than those below.
Freeing up Voices on a Track
You can also adjust the relative priority of tracks
by freeing up the voices of individual tracks, mak-
ing them available to other tracks in the session.
To free up the voice of a track, do one of the
following:
 Click the Voice selector of the track and set it to
Off. See “Setting Voice Assignment” on
page 246.
 Deactivate the track by Control-Start-clicking
(Windows) or Command-Control-clicking
(Mac) its track type icon in the Mix window.
 Make sure the track does not have an Output
Path or Send assignment.
 With Pro Tools|HD systems, you can temporar-
ily free a track’s voice during playback by mut-
ing it (see “Mute Frees Assigned Voice” on
page 254).