Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide10
DAE
DAE, the Pro Tools audio engine, is a real-time op-
erating system for digital audio recording, play-
back, and processing. When you install Pro Tools,
DAE is automatically installed on your system.
In the same way that a computer’s operating sys-
tem provides the foundation for programs that run
on the computer, DAE provides the foundation for
much of the hard disk recording, digital signal pro-
cessing, and mix automation required by Pro Tools
and other products from Avid and its Development
Partners.
Playback Engine
Pro Tools lets you adjust the performance of your
system by changing system settings that affect its
capacity for processing, playback, and recording.
These system settings are available in the Playback
Engine (
Setup > Playback Engine).
Pro Tools takes advantage of your computer’s host
processor for certain tasks and optional host-based
plug-in processing.
Pro Tools uses host (CPU) processing to provide
audio track recording, playback, mixing, and ef-
fects processing. Both Pro Tools and Pro Tools
HD use host-based processing to run Native AAX
(Avid Audio Extension) and RTAS
®
(Real-Time
AudioSuite) plug-ins for effects processing. Per-
formance is determined by your system and its
Playback Engine settings.
The Playback Engine lets you set a hardware
buffer size and allocate a percentage of CPU
resources for these tasks.
On Pro Tools|HD systems, you can select the num-
ber of voices and voiceable tracks for your system
and its sessions. Voice count choices are based on
how much DSP processing you want to allocate for
voicing.
The Playback Engine is also where you assign ded-
icated resources for Automatic Delay Compensa-
tion.
Playback Engine for Pro Tools|HD system
For more information, see “Configuring
Pro Tools System Settings” on page 64. See
also “System Resources” on page 21.