User guide

Chapter 6: Configuring Your Pro Tools System 63
Output Busses
Pro Tools audio outputs—from tracks and
sends—are routed to output busses, which in turn
are mapped to Pro Tools output paths. Pro Tools
output paths are then routed to physical outputs
on your Pro Tools audio interfaces. Output bus-
ses are in addition to the 128 available internal
mix busses.
The advantage of output busses is that when you
take a session from one system to another, track
and send output assignments are maintained
within the session and automatically re-map to
the available Pro Tools Output channels on the
new system where possible.
Pro Tools checks the following criteria in order
to automatically re-map the output busses when
opening a session from another Pro Tools sys-
tem:
•System ID
• Path name and format
• Path format only
Configuring Output Busses
Before creating custom output busses, be sure to
configure the Output page with the desired
number of output paths with the correct chan-
nel widths for your needs.
To create a new output bus and map it to an output
path:
1 If necessary, on the Output page of the
I/O Setup, create an output path of the corre-
sponding channel width for the output bus you
want to create.
2 On the Bus page of the I/O Setup, click New
Path.
3 In the New Path dialog, specify the number of
new paths you want to create, the channel
width for each path, and the path name.
4 Click Create to create the new paths.
5 If necessary, enable Mapping To Output for the
Output path.
6 If necessary, select the output path from the
Mapping To Output selector.
To map all output busses of the same format to an
output path:
 Option-click (Mac) or Alt-click (Windows) any
Mapping To Output selector and select an Out-
put Path (mono or stereo).
All mapped output busses of the same format
(such as stereo) are all assigned to the same Out-
put Path. For example, you can assign all stereo
output busses to output path A 1–2.
You can click the Default button to create
automatically assigned output busses for
each defined output path.
New Paths dialog
Unmapped “MAIN” output bus
Mapping the “MAIN” output bus to output path “A 1–2”