Pro Tools 2025.6 Now Available—What’s New

The Pro Tools 2025.6 software update is now available and introduces new capabilities for both music and audio post customers, including Splice integration that makes it easy to find the perfect sound from world’s largest royalty-free sample library as well as AI-powered Speech-to-Text analysis to quickly search sessions for speech and lyric information. The release also offers support for industry-leading audio post solutions, including Non-Lethal Applications Cue Pro for tightly-integrated ADR workflows and The Cargo Cult Matchbox 2.0 support for faster and more reliable reconforming processes. To streamline vocal production without having to roundtrip audio, 2025.6 offers ARA support for Dreamtonics Synthesizer V and Waves Sync Vx plugins, plus MIDI Editor and Input Monitoring enhancements, a new in-app Dashboard, and more.

For a detailed technical overview of the new features, be sure to check out the “What’s New in Pro Tools 2025.6” guide and release notes here. To get a summary of all recent releases and more, please visit the What's New in Pro Tools page.

Watch this video on how to redeem all the plugins and other content in the Pro Tools 2025.6 release:

SPLICE IN PRO TOOLS PUTS MILLIONS OF SOUNDS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

Splice, the world’s largest sample library, is now integrated directly into Pro Tools—letting you discover, audition, and drop in high-quality sounds, without ever leaving the DAW. Whether you’re sketching out ideas, building out tracks, or applying final touches, Splice puts the world’s best catalog of royalty-free loops, one-shots, and FX right at your fingertips. Not only can you now access millions of Splice samples directly in Pro Tools, but you can also Search with Sound. Simply drag in any clip from the timeline and Splice AI will instantly find top compatible samples synced to your session’s beat, key, and tempo—no more app switching, no more guesswork. Pro Tools users can create a free Splice account to get over 2,500 free samples or subscribe for $12.99/month and get access to the full Splice library.

INTEGRATED ADR WITH NON-LETHAL APPLICATIONS CUE PRO

Non-Lethal Applications Cue Pro delivers tightly-integrated ADR, foreign language dubbing, and foley workflows with Pro Tools (Studio and Ultimate)—without the need for additional setup or separate project management. Cue Pro overlays directly over the Pro Tools (2025.6 and later) video output, providing instant visual feedback as you create and edit ADR cues. The Cue Pro Connect plugin seamlessly integrates and saves all Cue Pro project data directly inside the Pro Tools session to simplify handoffs to other engineers or departments.

RECONFORM FASTER AND MORE RELIABLY WITH THE CARGO CULT MATCHBOX 2.0

The Cargo Cult Matchbox 2.0 offers faster and more reliable reconforming processes between Pro Tools (Studio and Ultimate) and Media Composer and other NLE’s. New Smart-Conform automation executes the reconform on a per-clip basis, enabling Matchbox to carefully move clips and automation around and clean up all the little scraps of “conform shrapnel”—saving the editor hours of tedious cleanup work after every reconform. Matchbox 2.0 also provides a constant side by side comparison of the old and new pictures with changes highlighted in red, letting you easily jump between old and new cuts for reference, and even copy/paste an entire event in perfect sync with the new cut.

Dreamtonics Synthesizer V lets you generate and sculpt vocal tracks by sketching out melodies, writing lyrics, choosing from a collection of vocals recorded and licensed from real singers, and synthesize custom expressions utilizing AI technology. ARA support enables Synthesizer V to interact directly with the Pro Tools' timeline, eliminating the need for real-time playback when playing back vocal parts for a more fluid editing and playback process.

Waves Sync Vx lets you unclutter all your vocal tracks in seconds, automatically locking the time and pitch of multiple vocal tracks to your lead performance to save hours of manual editing to sync backing vocals or align re-recorded dialogue. With ARA support, you can now use Sync Vx to manage your entire vocal arrangement in Pro Tools without having to roundtrip audio.

SPEECH-TO-TEXT

Identifying specific words from the waveform of spoken dialogue or sung vocals is a rare skill few of us possess. So wouldn’t it be useful if you could see the words that correspond to a particular audio clip directly next to the waveform? Or make edit selections based on specific words or phrases? Or even search by text across all audio files in a session? With Pro Tools 2025.6 we have made all that possible, saving hours in editing dialogue or vocal parts, or finding that perfect alternate take.

Introducing the new Pro Tools Speech to Text Engine—a separately-installed, local AI/ML model available to all Pro Tools Studio and Ultimate customers—which makes it easy to transcribe any audio by simply right-clicking on a clip or track.

Transcribed files can be viewed and worked with in a number of ways. In the timeline, there is a new Transcription Lane that will appear directly below any tracks that contain clips with transcription. The text will follow the audio location as you zoom, scroll, and even edit clips. There is also a new track-specific Transcript view which overlays transcribed text on the clips themselves. In these views, you can double-click individual words, the space between words, or make selections of multiple words, which will directly select the underlying audio—making editing by text a breeze.

There’s also a new Transcript window which provides two views for working with transcribed audio in a session: Timeline and Files. Both views can be customized independently to only show the information you need, and there are a variety of filtering options to drill down to exactly which clips or files you want to display.

Timeline view displays all clips that reside on active tracks, from left-to-right, top-to-bottom, and directly mirrors your edit selection. Making a text selection in this view will select the corresponding clips in the Edit window, and vice versa. As you play back the session, the current word is illuminated to show current position, and you can also apply filters such as only showing clips within the current edit or track selection. A particularly powerful function is the Speech search, allowing you to directly find and navigate to specific words or phrases anywhere in the timeline.

Files view is more akin to the Workspace browser, and lists all files associated with the session - regardless of whether they are used in the timeline or not. In fact, you can also filter only by files present on the timeline, or not. From this view you can easily find and audition alternate takes, and then directly pull them into tracks in the timeline—either by dragging and dropping the whole file, using a copy and paste command, or by making a text-based selection and dragging out to a track while holding the Option (macOS) or ALT (Windows) modifier key.

When auditioning in Files view, we’ve added some helpful options including Loop Preview and Auto-Preview. These, in conjunction with some handy keyboard shortcuts, make it incredibly efficient to quickly preview alternate takes one after the other until the perfect one is identified. And you can also export transcriptions to a CSV file or copy transcribed text directly to the clipboard from either the Transcript window or from clips on the timeline or in the Clip List.

The Pro Tools Speech-to-Text Engine also supports transcription of multichannel audio. The Transcription Settings window provides a variety of analysis options depending on format - for example, you may only want to transcribe the center channel of a surround mix, or you may wish to sum all channels together. Or, if working with field recorder material, you might want to transcribe all of the channels individually. And if you find that the default settings are not giving you the best results, we’ve added a handy Re-Transcribe option for clips that have already been transcribed.

The settings window is also where you can specify which language to detect (out of more than 20 supported) which aids with the accuracy of transcriptions, and define how long a pause is, which helps to break up large blocks of text in the Transcript window.

Finally, as far as possible, all transcription data is saved directly within audio files themselves, so if using the same file across multiple sessions, the transcription will come right with it. And all transcription analysis is handled in the background, so even if you have hours of material to transcribe it won’t interfere with your day-to-day Pro Tools tasks.

MIDI IMPROVEMENTS

MIDI Operations

The existing Event Operations got a new name, a new home, and a new face! A new name because “MIDI” is a much more familiar term than “Event.” A new home because having the tools that manipulate MIDI next to... MIDI, makes sense! And a new face because MIDI Operations is part of the initiative to modernize the UI of Pro Tools (visually and technically).

In both MIDI Editors, next to the “TRACKS” tab you will now find a new “MIDI OPERATIONS” tab. From there you can edit and apply the MIDI Operations exactly like before and you can switch between the different operations via the dropdown menu. The state of the MIDI Operations is synchronized in real time between the docked and the Window MIDI Editor. The MIDI Operations floating window can be accessed from the application Menu.

Note Labels

This release also brings support for custom labels on the MIDI Editors keyboard for each Instrument or MIDI Track to help you keep track of how sounds are laid out when programming drums or working with non-traditional instruments. You can now easily rename your piano roll in the MIDI Editor to quickly see what sound is assigned to each note. Rename any key either directly from the key or from the right click “Note Labels” menu. Any labels you set will be stored with the track, so you can switch track views while preserving the labels. The labels are saved with the session, in presets and as part of Track properties. Alongside, a new “Note Labels” view is introduced so that you can filter out to see only the notes that have custom labels set.

MIDI Input Monitoring & Default Thru

When Input Monitoring for Instrument Tracks was introduced in last year’s release, the Default Thru functionality was removed. Well now it’s back and better! You can set any (and as many) MIDI/Instrument track(s) as a Default Thru track directly from the track. Once a track is set as a Default Thru track, the Input Monitoring button of that track will change to the Default Thru icon and the track will be monitored when no other MIDI/Instrument Track is monitored.

Furthermore, Input Monitoring is now available for MIDI tracks as well!

MIDI Live Mode

OK so this is a big one! You know how when you record MIDI and then also record the MIDI output to an audio track and then you expect the playback to sound exactly the same as when you were recording it? Not going to go through the history of it all, but we’ve worked through iterations and iterations to reach a state where what you see is what you hear.

A new global setting is now available under Options menu that allows you to switch between the legacy mode and the new MIDI Live Mode.

When MIDI Live Mode is ON all live instrument tracks are treated as live audio tracks. Audio within the same chain behaves similarly, and recorded data is shifted to align with the recorded MIDI. Basically, what you’ll hear in playback will be exactly what was recorded.

When MIDI Live Mode is OFF, Pro Tools operates in legacy mode. It stays in sync with the instrument track output mixer's inputs but does not remain in sync with the session. When MIDI Loopback, MIDI Hardware IO devices, IAC bus loopbacks or low HW buffer size are required, MIDI Live Mode OFF is recommended, otherwise MIDI will be late depending on the hardware buffer size setting. By default, MIDI Live Mode is OFF.

WORKFLOW IMPROVEMENTS

Playlist Improvements

A new option is added under Preferences, that allows you to define whether a new Playlists will be added at the top or the bottom of the Playlist stack. Plus, there is now a visual indication when selecting an alternate playlist.

Avid Video Engine Native Support for Apple Silicon

The Avid Video Engine with Pro Tools 2025.6 now runs natively on Apple silicon, bringing improved performance for playback, exporting files, and overall user experience with Apple's ARM-based processors on Mac computers. This version of AVE provides support for both ARM-based and Intel-based Macs and will switch to running via Rosetta emulation when enabled for Pro Tools.

Host-based Mixer Accuracy

With the HDX Hybrid Engine, Pro Tools takes advantage of the host-based mixing power of the CPU while utilizing DSP for the low-latency monitoring that Pro Tools HDX is known for. However, complex automation combined with this expanded host mixing power, requires real-time calculations to be done on the CPU instead of dedicated DSP. This makes its timing susceptible to latencies typically found in real-time CPU processing. The differences are not usually perceivable but can be seen when modifying existing volume automation through use of Trim mode or a VCA master. In these cases the existing automation’s playback timing may fluctuate, playing a little early or late, affecting the playback accuracy during critical or sudden moves while writing VCA or Trim automation.

In Pro Tools 2025.6 we’ve addressed this issue for host-based mixing by significantly improving the automation playback accuracy when using Trim mode or VCA controlled groups in real-time. This is true for not only Pro Tools | HDX when using the Hybrid Engine, but also for Pro Tools | Carbon and general Core Audio / ASIO interfaces. Once Trim or VCA automation starts writing, automation accuracy is on-par with (or in some cases better than) the classic Pro Tools | HDX engine.

Dolby Atmos® ADM Export Thinning

Often there are places in a session where clips exist on either end of the timeline, yet there’s nothing in between them. When exporting this as an ADM, Pro Tools writes many additional breakpoints into the ADM file because these breakpoints are required to properly play back the pan data, as it relates to audio, in downstream systems. Pro Tools has always thinned these breakpoints upon re-import of the ADM file, so you’d never actually see these breakpoints, but they increase the overall file size of the ADM.

Pro Tools 2025.6 can now significantly decrease the size of ADM files (by gigabytes) by removing unnecessary automation breakpoints between clips. Each channel is examined upon export, and the breakpoints are stripped from locations that do not contain any audio, before the file is written.

Example of Breakpoint Data Added to ADM Files (Pro Tools 2024.10.2 or earlier)

Same example with ADM exported with Pro Tools 2025.6

Mute Safe

Accidentally Option (mac) / Alt (win) clicking a mute button in the middle of a mix is the worst! You have to go back and manually restore each mute state (assuming you can remember what they are). We’ve now added an option to the right-click menu of the track mutes, as well as the global mute indicator, to prevent bulk muting and unmuting of channels.

New Dashboard

Pro Tools Dashboard is getting a sleek new redesign! As part of Avid’s broader effort to modernize the Pro Tools user interface, the updated Dashboard brings a new look and a few functional improvements.

Templates are now organized in a folder list view. Dashboard window can be resized, giving the ability to accommodate as many files in the view as necessary. We made the Dashboard window keyboard-accessible allowing quick navigation and set up.
Use a dedicated Sign In tab to sign in into your Avid account, use Cloud Collaboration features, and most importantly - receive personalized notifications in the Dashboard.

Open tab allows searching through the list of recently opened sessions, sketches or cloud projects.

A right-click context menu has been added for a recent document providing a few options:

AVAILABILITY

Pro Tools 2025.6 is now available for all Pro Tools customers on an active subscription or perpetual license with current Upgrade Plan, as well as all Pro Tools Intro users. You can update through Avid Link or find it in your Avid Account. If you need to upgrade your Pro Tools perpetual license to get the latest features, you can find options to do so here. And if you’re new to Pro Tools, you can try out the latest version with our free 30-day trial.

For more details about this release, please see the new documentation now available in your Avid Account.

Dolby Atmos is a registered trademark of Dolby Laboratories. Celemony, Melodyne, DNA Direct Note Access und ARA Audio Random Access are registered trademarks of Celemony Software GmbH.