User Manual

Chapter 23: Record Setup 511
Recording to the System Volume
Although Pro Tools lets you record to your system
volume, this is generally not recommended. Per-
formance for audio recording and playback on sys-
tem drives is not as good as on non-system hard
drives.
Record to system drives only when absolutely nec-
essary, such as if your computer system has only
one hard drive, or if your other hard drives are
completely full.
By default, the system volume is not included in
Round Robin Allocation (regardless of volume
designation in the Workspace browser). To include
the System Volume in Round Robin Allocations,
see “Allocating Audio Drives in Your System” on
page 509.
Disk Allocation and Unavailable
Volumes
Pro Tools remembers disk allocation settings for
tracks and does not automatically reassign them if
a volume becomes unavailable.
If a volume for a session becomes unavailable (be-
cause it went offline or its volume designation
changed), Pro Tools cannot record to tracks allo-
cated to that volume.
To enable recording, bring the volume online,
change its volume designation to R (Play and Re-
cord), or change the allocation of the affected
tracks to a valid record volume.
Selecting a Record Input
Monitoring Mode
Pro Tools offers two modes of input monitoring:
Auto Input and Input Only. These monitoring
modes determine how input signals are monitored
during playback, recording, or while the transport
is stopped.
Auto Input Monitoring
In Auto Input mode, when session playback is
stopped, Pro Tools monitors audio input. When
playback is started for a punch-in, Pro Tools mon-
itors existing track material up until the punch
point. While punched in, the input signal is moni-
tored. On punch-out, monitoring switches back to
the existing track material. This is similar to the
auto-switching logic found on digital and analog
multitrack tape machines.
Input Only Monitoring
In Input Only mode, when a track is record-en-
abled, Pro Tools monitors audio input only, re-
gardless of any punch-in/out selection or state.
For Pro Tools, the Input Monitor Enabled Status
indicator (in the Transport window) lights green
when Input Only mode is enabled.
If you have a Pro Tools system with multiple
drives, and you intend to record multiple
tracks simultaneously, you may want to
designate the System drive as a Playback only
or Transfer only drive for optimal
performance.
When in Auto Input mode, the switch back to
monitoring track material on punch-out is
not instantaneous.
Tracks are in Auto Input mode by default,
and a monitoring control (TrackInput but-
ton) is provided for each track. See “Se-
lecting Record Monitor Modes with Track-
Input Monitoring” on page 512.