Starting Up or Shutting Down Your System

To ensure that the components of your Pro Tools system communicate properly with each other, you need to start them in a particular order.

Start up your Pro Tools system in this order:

1 Make sure all your equipment (including your computer) is off.

2 Lower the volume of all output devices in your system.

3 For systems with an expansion chassis, turn on the chassis.

4 Turn on any external hard drives. Wait approximately ten seconds for them to spin up to speed.

5 Turn on any worksurfaces (such as D‑Command) or control surfaces (such as Command|8).

6 Turn on any MIDI interfaces, MIDI devices, or synchronization peripherals.

7 Do one of the following, depending on your Pro Tools system:

For Avid HDX, Pro Tools|HD, and HD Native systems, with the volume of all output devices lowered, turn on your audio interfaces (such as HD OMNI or 192 I/O). Wait at least fifteen seconds for your system hardware to initialize.

– or – 

For Pro Tools systems that use hardware requiring external power (such as 003), with the volume of all output devices lowered, turn on the hardware.

8 Turn on your computer.

9 Launch Pro Tools or any third-party audio or MIDI applications.

Shut down your Pro Tools system in this order:

1 Quit Pro Tools and any other running applications.

To quit Pro Tools, choose File > Exit (Windows) or Pro Tools > Quit (Mac).

2 Turn off or lower the volume of all output devices in your system.

3 Turn off your computer.

4 Do one of the following depending on your Pro Tools system:

For Avid HDX, Pro Tools|HD, and HD Native systems, turn off your Pro Tools audio interfaces.

– or – 

For Pro Tools systems that use hardware requiring external power (such as 003), turn off the hardware.

5 For systems with an expansion chassis, turn off the chassis.

6 Turn off any MIDI interfaces, MIDI devices, or synchronization peripherals.

7 Turn off any worksurfaces (such as D‑Command) or control surfaces (such as Command|8).

8 Turn off any external hard drives.