All
right...last month, we had some fun discussing inner-tubes and submerged
spectacles and pretty much skirting around the issue of actually educating
and/or informing ourselves about, well...recording.
Suffice it
to say that I've spent some extra time delving deep into the feature set
offered by SONY Creative Software's
(sonycreativesoftware.com) ACID Pro 7
($399.95 retail, $299.95 street),
which combines full multitrack recording and mixing, MIDI sequencing, and of
course, its highly regarded "pick and paint" looping abilities. I've always
been a fan of this software's ease of use and quickness in putting together
demos and remixes. With this latest version, ACID moves itself into the role of
a full-blown DAW (Digital Audio Workstation). Instead of bumping shoulders with
the likes of Apple's GarageBand, it's banging elbows with big boys, the likes
of Cubase, Logic, and ProTools.
Among the
application's many new functions and features are a dedicated mixing console
with input busses, enabling complex routing of tracks and effects and
facilitating the use of external effects processors for those yearning to work
outside of the "box".
ACID has
also heavily bolstered its MIDI features like real time processing and even
more precise control over events. Additionally, users can now "freeze" MIDI
tracks that are routed to multiple soft synths and render them as .wav files to
lighten the load on their CPUs.
Cadence
gets its makeover too, with the ability to not only combine multiple tempos and
time signatures within a project, but utilizing tempo curves allows you to
perform a gradual transition from one tempo to another. Also notable is the
ability to import multi-tempo remix files via the Beatmapper tool. A count-in feature
has been added (finally!) so there's no need for inserting an extra measure or
two at the start of your song.
With all of
this functionality, the workspace can quickly become cluttered, so things like
nested Folder Tracks are also a welcome element. These can hold all your drum
tracks or vocal takes for example, making them collapsible into one track
instead of say, 40. The user interface is also highly customizable, so you can
set up all of your "go-to" elements and create an extra efficient workflow,
without any of the fat from unused features getting in your way.
Covered in
Part 1's review of Sound Forge was Zplane's élastique
audio time stretching and pitch shifting, allowing dramatic time stretches and
pitch-shifts of Beatmapped tracks while retaining maximum sound quality. Again,
I cannot emphasize enough just how much this has improved the sound of one's
audio in ACID.
Another
great feature (which I hope more products adopt) are interactive online
tutorials that can be accessed from within the application. With concise titles
like "How to Record Audio," "How to Use an Audio Envelope," and "How to Use
Input Busses," it's quite conceivable that you may never need to crack open the
included manual or even use the "Help" file!
Eager to
put these things to the proverbial test, I installed the program (via SONY
Creative's ubiquitous challenge/response method) and opened up a recent file I
had created using version 5 of ACID. The wide array of windows seemed ALL come
up at once (which wasn't the case, but it was more than I'm used to seeing
anyway), making things seem more than a bit daunting. With monitor real estate
already at a premium, I was able to quickly tidy things up and could
concentrate on how to best utilize things like the Mixing Console. Again, there
are a lot of things that come up here, but there are some cool ways to toggle
them on or off. I especially liked that you could view all of the tracks here
with or without the faders, leaving only the track's meter visible.
I pulled up
a piece of video and began to score it. Toying with the excellent ACID FX
plugin (also known as the ACID Pro Effects Rack powered by iZotope,) was cool,
because it's kind of a one-stop shop of the features you use most often, like
EQ, Delay, Reverb and Distortion. I really appreciated being able to hang out
in one window and check out all of the possible FX combinations without all of
the flitting from window to window. Now if they can just make a customizable
"Rack" that would allow access to all of my third-party plugins in one window...
that would be on my personal wish list.
Otherwise,
all was just as advertised or better. Veteran users of ACID will feel right at
home, with the added features being very welcome and the program's rock-steady
performance remaining just as ironclad.
If all of
that isn't enough (and really, don't you think it should be?), ACID Pro 7
software includes over 3,000 loops and 1,000 MIDI files for music creation, as
well as the Garritan ARIA for ACID Pro player, the Native Instruments Guitar
Combos, and Submersible Music KitCore. The ARIA player alone is worth the price
of admission with excellent orchestral sounds place right at one's virtual
fingertips.
With ACID
Pro 7, SONY has taken an already solid performer and made it more capable, more
professional, and just more better. No, it's not as simple to use as
GarageBand, but that's because it has so very much more to offer. Download a
free trial version and see if you don't agree.
Sven-Erik Seaholm is
an award-winning independent record producer (kaspro.com), performer, and
recording artist (svensongs.com). Catch his live performances at Zel's Del Mar
September 4, with Allied Gardens on September 11, and at the La Jolla Open Air
Market September 26.