had previously was that every time that you would have to do a render with the session, you would have to re-transcribe everything, reanalyze everything again, and that meta- data is now carried through,” Hagedorn said. “It’s really taking the Speech-to-Text tools, giving musicians more choices as far as how they’re using those and saving them time.” Beyond Speech-to-Text, Pro Tools 2026.4 introduces Track Pin, a new organizational tool designed to help users stay focused when navigating large-scale sessions. “In the case of an audio post session, or even large professional music sessions, you’re dealing with hundreds of tracks, sometimes thousands of tracks, and so much of the workflow really comes down to how quickly you can find things,” Hage- dorn said. “If you’re constantly having to scroll or reorder your tracks, that’s what the Track Pin gets rid of. With Track Pin, you can take one or more reference tracks, pin it at the top, and then as you’re navi- gating through the rest of the session, it’s always right there.” KEEPING CREATORS IN CONTROL Despite the rapid pace of AI innovation, many musicians remain cautious about adopting new AI features, particularly when they perceive a loss of creative control. For Avid, the challenge is not simply introducing new AI tools, but ensuring new features fit naturally into the work- flows musicians, engineers and producers already rely on every day. “There are generative products out there right now where if somebody says, ‘I have a song idea, I don’t know anything about making music, I just want to put in an idea and have it spit it out,’ obviously, that’s a disruptive change to the industry,” Hagedorn said. “Our approach is how to make existing workflows better, faster and [ensure] that users deliver on deadline.” Before AI became an industry buzzword, Avid built a robust plug-in developer eco- system around Pro Tools, creating oppor- tunities for third-party partners to extend the platform’s capabilities. “There are different ways for us to present AI within Pro Tools,” Hagedorn said. “Sometimes it’s as an AAX plug-in, sometimes a stem separation that can be done as a plug-in. But there are other ways, like Splice or SoundFlow. We’re constantly exposing new ways for our development partners to integrate their tools directly and as seamlessly as possible.”
Removing the barriers that slow cre- ators down, Avid’s ecosystem enables users to adopt new technologies at their own pace while maintaining the familiar production environment they depend on. That ecosystem extends well beyond the Pro Tools software itself. Avid’s broader portfolio spans recording, mixing, post- production, live sound and educational environments, creating a connected plat- form that serves everyone from first-time creators to major studios. “We’ve been talking about Pro Tools, but there’s the ecosystem all the way in the
largest studios of big mixing consoles, the DSP hardware, behind those really high- end workflows, the highest quality, most networkable audio interfaces that support every networking [need],” Hagedorn said. “All of those are guaranteed in our ecosys- tem to work together, so you’re not just selling Pro Tools, you’re selling this whole ecosystem of products, depending on how it fits in with the end user.” As AI continues reshaping nearly every corner of the MI industry, Avid is position- ing itself as an advocate for augmentation rather than automation. MI
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