In 1987, Gotcher and Brooks discussed with E-mu Systems the possibility of integrating their renamed 'Sound Tools' software into the Emulator III. One evening in 1986 at John Connolly's Beaverton, Oregon home, an alert was sent online from MacMusic requesting the system operator, and to Connolly's surprise it was Peter Gotcher, thanking him for providing such a revolutionary service and making Sound Designer a much more attractive program to buy, by leveraging both the universal file format and by developing the first online sample file download site in the world, many years before the World Wide Web use soared. Beaverton Digital Systems President John Connolly already had several conversations with Evan Brooks in 1985, as he was listed as a contact for technical support for the Assimilation MIDI toolkit, and the current Apple operating system in 1985 did not have native MIDI communications drivers. MacMusic allowed users worldwide to share sample libraries across different manufacturers platforms without copyright infringement.
Macintosh Editor/librarian software development pioneers and visionaries, Beaverton Digital Systems, provided a dial-up service called MacMusic starting in 1985 which used 2400-baud modems and 100 MB of disk, and used Red Ryder Host on a 1 MB Macintosh Plus, allowing users of Sound Designer to download and install the entire Emulator II sound library to other less expensive samplers. This universal file specification, along with the printed source code to a 68000 assembly language interrupt driven MIDI driver, were distributed through Macintosh MIDI interface manufacturer Assimilation, which manufactured the first MIDI interface for the Mac in 1985. The Pro Tools TDM mix engine, supported until 2011, employed 24-bitfixed-point arithmetic for plug-in processing and 48-bit for mixing current HDX hardware systems, HD Native and native systems use 32-bitfloating point resolution for plug-ins and 64-bit floating point summing. It features time code, tempo maps, elastic audio, automation and surround sound abilities. It has also incorporated video editing capabilities, so users can import and manipulate high definition video file formats such as XDCAM, MJPG-A, PhotoJPG, DV25, QuickTime, and more. Pro Tools handles WAV, AIFF, AIFC, mp3, and formerly SDII audio files. 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bitfloat audio bit depths at sample rates up to 192 kHz are supported.
Audio effects and virtual instruments can be added, adjusted and processed in real-time in a virtual mixer. Audio and MIDI tracks are graphically represented in a timeline here, both can be recorded, imported and edited in a non-linear, non-destructive fashion.