Editing Pro Tools (section)

=== Pro Tools III: 48 tracks, DSP Farm cards and switch to PCI cards (1995–1997) ===
With a redesigned Disk I/O card, Pro Tools III was able to provide 16 tracks with a single NuBus card;{{sfn|Collins|2002|p=11}} the system could be expanded using TDM to up to three Disk I/O cards, achieving 48 tracks.<ref name=":25" /> DSP Farm cards were introduced to increase the processing power needed for a more extensive real-time audio processing; each card was equipped with three [[Motorola 56000|Motorola 56001]] chips running at 40&nbsp;MHz.<ref name="dspfarmnubus" /> Multiple DSP cards could be added for additional processing power; each card could handle the playback of 16 tracks.{{sfn|Manning|2013|p=389}} A dedicated SCSI card was still required to provide the required bandwidth to support multiple-card systems.{{sfn|Collins|2002|p=11}}

Along with Pro Tools III, Digidesign launched the 888 interface, with eight channels of analog and digital I/O, and the cheaper 882 interface.{{sfn|Collins|2002|p=11}} The Session 8 system included a control surface with eight faders.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://rapmag.com/a/281-94/mar94/1115-test-drive-the-digidesign-session-8|title=Test Drive: The Digidesign Session 8 – Radio and Production|last=Boss|first=Todd D.|date=March 1994|website=rapmag.com|access-date=2019-12-13}}</ref> A series of TDM plug-ins were bundled with the software, including [[Dynamic range compression|dynamics processing]], EQ, delay, modulation, and [[Reverberation|reverb]].<ref name=":25" />

In 1996, following Apple's decision to drop NuBus in favor of [[Conventional PCI|PCI bus]], Digidesign added PCI support with Pro Tools 3.21. The PCI version of the Disk I/O card incorporated a high-speed SCSI along with DSP chips,{{sfn|Collins|2002|p=11}} while the upgraded DSP Farm PCI card included four Motorola 56002 chips running at 66&nbsp;MHz.<ref name=":26" />

This change of architecture allowed the convergence of Macintosh computers with [[Intel]]-based PCs, for which PCI had become the standard internal communication bus.{{sfn|Manning|2013|p=389}} With the PCI version of Digidesign's Audiomedia card in 1997 (Audiomedia III),<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://archive.digidesign.com/support/propix/AM3.html|title=Audiomedia III|website=archive.digidesign.com|access-date=2019-12-13}}</ref> Sound Tools and Pro Tools could be run on Windows platforms for the first time.{{sfn|Manning|2013|p=389}}