Pro Tools: MIDI Plug-ins

The new Note Stack and Pitch Control MIDI plug‑ins are included in all versions of Pro Tools.

Pro Tools has upped its MIDI game. What can the new MIDI plug‑ins do?

It is widely held that MIDI isn’t something that Pro Tools does best. Looking at the history of the program and its counterparts like Logic and Cubase, this is understandable. Cubase and Logic started life as MIDI sequencers, which over time gained audio capabilities as computers became fast enough to handle multitrack digital audio processing natively. Pro Tools has a rather different history, in that it started life as a DSP‑powered audio workstation system at a time when computers weren’t powerful enough to perform these tasks without help.

Over time, Pro Tools gained MIDI functionality and, ultimately, MIDI sequencing software and audio workstations converged into the modern DAWs we recognise today. Much of the negativity some people attach to the MIDI side of Pro Tools is based on received wisdom about MIDI as it was in Pro Tools years ago. When I started using Pro Tools 5 MIDI was, to put it politely, basic; but that was a long time ago, and things have changed a great deal. While some MIDI features are still missing from Pro Tools, one of the biggest gaps was addressed in Pro Tools 2024.3 with the addition of MIDI plug‑ins, along with an overhaul of MIDI routing to accommodate them.

Much of the negativity some people attach to the MIDI side of Pro Tools is based on received wisdom about MIDI as it was in Pro Tools years ago.

Plug‑in Power

There are now six MIDI plug‑ins included in Pro Tools. These plug‑ins share the same AAX architecture as audio plug‑ins in Pro Tools, and are accessed from the insert slots on Instrument tracks. They cannot be instantiated on MIDI tracks because MIDI tracks lack the insert slots in which to instantiate them.

The fact that the MIDI plug‑ins co‑exist with AAX plug‑ins and virtual instruments might seem counterintuitive: MIDI and audio I/O are kept distinct from each other in Pro Tools. But this is a distinction which isn’t made quite so rigorously in other DAWs. For example, in Reaper a track is just a track, with no need to designate it as audio or MIDI. I like having MIDI plug‑ins in the insert slots, but it’s important to note that a MIDI plug‑in following an instrument plug‑in will interrupt the signal flow and result in silence — plug‑in order is important.

Three of the newcomers are ‘in house’ MIDI plug‑ins, and these are included with all tiers of Pro Tools, including Intro. These Avid plug‑ins are intended to perform utility processing, and at present comprise Note Stack, Pitch Control and Velocity Control. At first sight it might seem that these plug‑ins are duplicating...