The rumors that were buzzing about Digidesign Pro Tools 8 at the 125th AES convention turned out to be true. The DAW giants are previewing the new software at the convention, and it's sure to attract a lot of attention.

Pro Tools 8 has been tremendously revamped with a new user interface, more than 70 plugins and virtual instruments, integrated MIDI and score editors and numerous new editing features. David Lebolt, the senior vice president and chief technology officer at Digidesign put in his two cents about your two cents.

"Pro Tools 8 benefits from the valuable feedback we received from our dedicated Pro Tools creative community, along with Avid's passion for creating great audio and video tools that move technology forward. Our customers provide a comprehensive real-world knowledge base that we draw upon for inspiration and guidance. It's a synergy of size and scope unique to Pro Tools in the world of audio. We are very excited to deliver the latest results of this partnership back to our customers in the form of Pro Tools 8."

The user interface shines perhaps the brightest out of all the new features. Stylistically, a modernized color palette has been used, and more importantly, higher-contrast text and graphics make things easier to see -- great for legendary blues musicians! Perhaps even most importantly, the interface now supports the use of the enriched tool set you'll be using with enhancements like dockable editor windows and a configurable Edit window toolbar.

Pro Tools 8 also brings a lot to the table for composers and musicians and their creative neural-network processes. For starters, it gives you over 70 plugins and virtual instruments to work with, but it doesn't stop there. It keeps going with these sweet music creation features:

• Fully integrated, dockable MIDI and Score Editor windows for greatly enhanced MIDI editing functionality and professional score editing and printing
• A sizable collection of music creation and sound-processing plug-ins, including 20 all-new AIR effects and five new virtual instruments -- Mini Grand piano, Boom drum machine, DB-33 tonewheel organ, Vacuum tube-modeled synthesizer, and Xpand!^2(TM) sample player
• High-quality amplifiers simulation thanks to Digidesign's acclaimed new guitar amp emulator Eleven(TM) Free as well as Tech21 SansAmp amplifier emulator by Bomb Factory
• A large bundle of high-quality loops

New features in the production and post production realm will appeal to professionals. These include:

• Revolutionary new Elastic Pitch makes it easy to transpose music in real time right in the Edit window
• 10 inserts per channel
• Enhanced controller integration with Digidesign and M-Audio control surfaces
• ICON integration enhancements that dramatically increase speed and efficiency
• HD QuickTime support on Mac OS X for dramatically increased versatility

Pro Tools|HD 8 goes NASA with support for the new Satellite Link option that helps users control as many as five Pro Tools|HD systems in synchronization. The Video Satellite LE option even introduces QuickTime HD / SD or Avid SD video playback into your HD audio workflow without adversely affecting your track counts or processing power.

For the little guys out there, Pro Tools LE 8 and Pro Tools M-Powered 8 now support up to 48 simultaneous audio tracks. Not enough? Adding the Music Production Toolkit 2 or DV Toolkit 2 (the latter only for LE) will shoot that number up to 64 tracks. Serious Pro Tools LE users can even add the Complete Production Kit to double that 64 track capability to 128 with the added bonus of 7.1 surround mixing.

Digidesign expects that Pro Tools 8 will be ready and able by the end of the year, making it the perfect Christmas present to anonymously send to your favorite Gearwire writers.