Track Priority

While your Pro Tools hardware allows a fixed number of voices, Pro Tools software allows for additional audio tracks beyond that fixed number of voices. While all of these tracks can be recorded to or imported, arranged, and cued for playback, not all of them can be played back simultaneously.

When the number of tracks exceeds the number of available voices, tracks with lower priority may not be heard. For these situations, Pro Tools assigns priorities to tracks that compete for the available voices. Because there can be more tracks than available voices, Pro Tools provides multiple ways of adjusting the playback priority of audio tracks. See Changing a Track’s Playback Priority and Freeing up Voices on a Track.

With Pro Tools|HD systems, you can assign specific voices to multiple tracks such that those voices are shared by more than one track. This feature is called voice borrowing. The combination of playback/record tracks and shared voiced tracks comprises the total number of voiceable tracks available on a Pro Tools|HD system.

To set multiple tracks to the same voice, see Setting Voice Assignment. For additional information on voice borrowing, seeVoice Borrowing).

Changing a Track’s Playback Priority

Tracks with higher positions (leftmost in the Mix window or topmost in the Edit window) have priority over tracks in lower positions in a session.

To increase a track’s priority, do any of the following:

In the Mix window, drag the Track Name button to the left of other tracks in the session. Tracks at the left of the Mix window have higher priority than those on the right.

In the Edit window, drag the Track Name button above other tracks in the session. Tracks at the top of the Edit window have higher priority than those below.

In the Track List, drag the Track Name to a higher position in the list. Tracks at the top of this list have higher priority than those below.

Freeing up Voices on a Track

You can also adjust the relative priority of tracks by freeing up the voices of individual tracks, making them available to other tracks in the session.

To free up the voice of a track, do one of the following:

Click the Voice selector of the track and set it to Off. See Setting Voice Assignment.

Deactivate the track by Control-Start-clicking (Windows) or Command-Control-clicking (Mac) its track type icon in the Mix window.

Make sure the track does not have an Output Path or Send assignment.

With Pro Tools|HD systems, you can temporarily free a track’s voice during playback by muting it (see Mute Frees Assigned Voice).