It’s always wise to refer to the documentation first; Chapter 27 in the PT Reference Guide, and all of chapter 5 in the DigiRack Plug-ins Guide deal with RTAS plugins in detail. Most of what I say here will be directly from these two sources. I am also assuming that you are using the LE version of ProTools.

This is a picture of a mono track from the mix window in ProTools. The 5 buttons at the top left are the Insert Selector buttons. (they look like this: ). Don’t confuse them with the Send Selector buttons which appear in the section below them and look exactly the same.When you click on one of these selectors, a menu of your RTAS plugins, and your i/o (inputs/outputs) appears.* We can get into the i/o option later, but for this example, select the plugins menu. Depending on how your preferences are set, you will either see a list of plugin categories, or see a list of all of the RTAS plugins that are installed and available on your system for the kind of track that you are using. Keep this in mind; some plugins are stereo only and don’t appear on mono tracks. There are 5 different types of insert formats: Mono, Stereo, Mono In/Stereo Out, Multi-Mono, and Multichannel. If you don’t see the plugin you are looking for in the list, it may be that you are trying to use it on the wrong format track.When you select a plugin, such as the digirack compressor, a window will appear containing the plugin, and your track will be effected. You can change the effects parameters by adjusting them on the onscreen window. Pretty simple, huh? Remember, Inserts do not alter the original audio source files, but process audio in real time, during playback. You can permanently apply real-time effects to tracks by recording or bouncing the effect to disk, or by using the audiosuite equivalent of the plugin, if it has one, and processing the region(s). If the plugin has no audiosuite equivalent, you can either bus the output to another audio track, or solo the track, bounce it, and re-import it to a new (or even the same) audio track. More advanced topics for plugins: (future help pages like this one) Recording the plugin’s output Using a plugins as a shared resource in a send-and-return arrangement Automating the parameters of a plugin to alter it’s output in real time moving or copying a plugin to another track, or location Saving plugin settings in the session so that they come up everytime on every system *On TDM systems, TDM plugins also appear, but I’m assuming those looking at this page are just using LE or MP and it doesn’t apply.

It’s always wise to refer to the documentation first; Page 286 in the PT6.4 Reference Guide, and all of chapter 4 in the DigiRack Plug-ins Guide deal with audiosuite plugins in detail. Most of what I say here will be directly from these two sources.Audiosuite plugins actually process/modify an audio region or entire audio file of your session. Typically, they are used when you know that the effect will be a “keeper”, such as applying compression, EQ, or auto-tuning a vocal track. Some of the benefits of doing this, as opposed to using RTAS plugins, is that you will be saving processor power for other things that might need it, and you can import the processed regions elsewhere.

The following picture is what the audiosuite popup looks like without any plugin loaded. Use this picture as a reference.Click here for Audiosuite popup Snapshot

• Select the region that you want to process. It can be the entire track, or a selection of audio
• Select the plugin from the audiosuite menu. The audiosuite popup will appear with the plugin that you selected loaded into it
• You can preview the processing using the preview button at the bottom left
• when a plugin is loaded, you can “tweak” the settings of it to get the sound that you want
• When you are happy with the way it sounds, press the process button and your selection will be created as a new region, and applied within the session
• You can also direct where the new region will go, what regions exactly it will process, as well as many other advanced features, but I won’t cover those here, and defer you to the manual for their uses. Most times, you will stick with the default settings for these.

This question has a few different answers, and they depend on which type of plugin you are going to be using:

• Audiosuite(chapter 17 in the ref. guide)
  The AudioSuite plug-ins can be used to process and modify an audio region or entire audio file. You would use this method if you know that you will keep the processing on the region or file and never change it.
• RTAS(chapter 27 in the ref. guide)
  RTAS (real time audio suite) plugins are used when you want to effect the track in real time. This method is good if you wnat to “try out” several different settings, or even change the parameters of the effect while the session plays. They can be used on audio tracks, Auxiliary Inputs, and Master Faders.
• VST
  VST (Virtual Studio Technology) plugins are the audio plugin standard created by Steinberg to allow any third party developers to create VST plug-ins for use within VST host applications. They cannot be used natively within Pro Tools, but with the help of a converter created by FXPansion, can be used just like and RTAS plugin (see item above) directly in Pro Tools.
• DX plugins
  DX (Direct X) plugins are plugins developed for Windows Direct X technology. They cannot be used natively in Pro Tools, and there is no converter (like VST) that is available to convert them to a usable format. There are converters available to convert them to VST, and then you could use the FXPansion wrapper (see above) to convert them to RTAS format for use in Pro Tools, but personal experience with this process prompts me to recommend avoiding this.

The basics of using the click plugin in Pro Tools 7.3 are actually incredibly straightforward:

1. Select Track->Create Click Track

That was easy right? You can also do it the old fashioned way if you want (or have an older version of Pro Tools):

1. Create a mono aux track
2. make sure the volume fader is raised to somewhere between -6.0db and 0db (your personal preference here)
3. Insert the Click plugin on the aux track

Again, that was pretty easy, right?In 7.3, you can also configure all of your sessions to include the click track by default.

1. Select Setup > Preferences
2. Select the MIDI tab
3. Select the “Automatically Create Click Track In New Sessions” option