Specifications

Pro Tools Reference Guide14
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 example, a 96 I/O audio interface (Figure 1)
provides up to 16 channels of input and output
to a Pro Tools|HD system. An 888|24 I/O audio
interface provides eight channels of analog in-
put and output to a Pro Tools TDM system.
The second use of the term channel refers to a
mixer strip in the Pro Tools Mix window. The
term channel strip refers to the mixer strip of any
track (audio or MIDI track, Auxiliary Input, or
Master Fader) in a session.
Audio and MIDI channel strips have similar
controls, but those controls have slightly differ-
ent effects. For example, audio and Auxiliary In-
put channel strip faders control the output gain
to the mix bus for that channel, while MIDI
channel strip faders send MIDI volume data
(MIDI controller 7) to the MIDI instrument.
Figure 1. Back view of 96 I/O, with eight analog inputs, eight analog outputs, and eight digital input/output channels
(using a lightpipe)
INPUTS 1-4
SW CTRL GAIN
INPUTS 5-16
+4dBu/–12dBV
OUTPUT
+4dBu/–10dBV
3
24
5
6
17
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
1
2
Figure 2. Channel strip in the Mix window
The term channel also describes a separate
aspect of MIDI operation. See “MIDI Con-
cepts” on page 19.