Who's using the oldest audio software?

(By the way, although this article starts off talking about Pro Tools, it is relevant to all audio software, as you will see...)

We received a question the other day concerning Pro Tools version 6.4.1; whether it could export .wav files, which are useful for transporting to other systems and for archiving.

Well we have here at Audio Masterclass Towers a Pro Tools MixPlus system that dates back to around 2001, so we ought to know.

Except that the system is dismantled in a cupboard so it would take a while to set it all up again and find out. We think it can export to .wav but our memories are a little dim on this point. If anyone can confirm or otherwise, please let us know in the discussion below.

But actually although we did upgrade to version 6.4.1, we found that we preferred the older version 5.1 running on Mac OS 9.

The reason for this was that we had a number of plug-ins that wouldn't run on OS X, which Pro Tools 6 required. OS 9 was in any case faster than the early OS X on older Macs.

So we continued to use the MixPlus system with PT 5.1 for quite some time, up to 2008 if I remember correctly.

Of course, just because we had one Pro Tools system that was frozen in time didn't mean we couldn't acquire more systems. We don't plan on upgrading our Windows system beyond version 7.4 but our other Mac systems are bang up to date.

So the question is...

What is the oldest software you still use?

I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear from people still using Pro Tools MixPlus systems.

I would be very surprised to hear from people using Pro Tools systems older than that, but you never know.

And is anyone still running Logic on Windows? I bet there is.

What about a MIDI-only version of Cubase on the Atari?

So come on, tell us all about that old software that you refuse to let go. And why do you hang onto it when surely modern software must be so much better? :-)

We would love to hear your experiences, and we may consider putting the best stories into a feature article of their own.

Discussion below...