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Developed by UC Berkeley Graduate, Peter Gotcher and his friend Evan Brooks, both double majors in electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley. The first incarnation of Pro Tools started life in 1984 as Sound Designer, while the pair were creating and selling drum sound chips under their Digidrums label. Sound Designer was originally designed to edit sounds for the E-MU Emulator sampling keyboard[1], Gotcher and Brooks discussed with E-MU Systems the possibility of integrating their renamed 'Sound Tools' software into the Emulator III keyboard released in 1987, however E-MU rejected this option and Gotcher and Brooks went on to start what is Digidesign as we know it today. [2]
Sound Tools[3] was debuted on January 20 1989 at NAMM (National Association of Music Merchandisers). At this stage Sound Tools was a simple computer based stereo audio editor. Although the software had the possibility to do far more it was limited by the hard drive technology, which was used to stream the audio and allow for the non-destructive editing that Sound Tools offered. [4]
The first version of Pro Tools was launched in 1991 offering 4 tracks and selling for $6000USD, Digidesign continued to improve Pro Tools, adding a sequencer and more tracks with the system offering recording at 16bit 44.1kHz. In 1997 Pro Tools had eventually reached 24bit, 48 track versions. It was at this point that the migration from more conventional studio technology to the Pro Tools platform took place within the industry.[5]
