AVID Pro Tools Tutorial - 'Getting Started' Series, Lesson 2

Today's Topic: Download & Install

Date Written: March 13, 2024

Computer Environment Used for This Tutorial

Apple MAC Studio M1 Max, 32GB (2022)
13.6.4 Ventura
Pro Tools Ultimate 2024.03

macOS is set to English. Pro Tools will also be covered in English.

Today's topic covers the process of downloading and installing Pro Tools.

How to Download Pro Tools

Pro Tools can currently only be downloaded from the AVID website, and it is not available as a physical product.

The AVID homepage front page is currently promoting Pro Tools Sketch. With the 2024.03 update, MIDI functionality has been significantly enhanced, but personally, I still think that if you're going to work with MIDI, doing it in a different DAW is much better.

Anyway.. head over to the Pro Tools tab at the top..

Then navigate to the Download tab under Support.

Select Pro Tools Software, which is the second option you'll see..

You will need to log in.

Once you log in, you'll find that it's a download page listing everything from the current version all the way back to older legacy versions, regardless of your license or version.

If you need to download an older version due to compatibility issues with your computer's OS version or other concerns, you can use that page.

Actually, the most intuitive approach is to log in to AVID and check the My Products page under My Account.

You can get a clear overview of all the products you own at a glance. Since I manage all the company's Pro Tools licenses under the same account, I can see all three — Carbon, Studio, and Ultimate.

Let's go ahead and click on Ultimate to check the details.

As you can see, you can check the status of your license along with various other information here.

You might wonder: are the download files for Protools Intro, Protools Studio, and Protools Ultimate actually different?

Pro Tools is a single unified program, and it automatically loads the appropriate version based on the license you own.

Another Way to Download Pro Tools

There is an app called AVID Link, which serves as a kind of installation manager that makes it easy to manage plugins and Pro Tools version updates.

It looks something like this. You don't need to keep it running all the time — but when you receive an email or see a post announcing that Pro Tools has been updated, I recommend using AVID Link to update both the plugins and Pro Tools together.

Installing Pro Tools

Cubase installs all sorts of things along the way.. but with Pro Tools, you just run the installer and you're done.

If iLOK is not installed, it will automatically install it for you as well. While downloading Pro Tools can be a bit tricky, the installation itself is very straightforward.

Closing Thoughts

In the next session, we'll continue with a tutorial on iLOK.

Thank you.