SONY ACID PRO BEATS SOFTWARE

Like Ableton Live and NI's Intakt in its Time Machine mode, Acid uses granular resynthesis for time-stretching. Loops can be stored in an ' Acid ised' format which contains information about the original recording tempo, length (in beats) and root-note pitch, and many commercial loop libraries are supplied ready- Acid ised. These can be manipulated together or independently - making it easy, for example, to alter the tempo of pre-recorded drum loops to match a project, or to pitch-shift a bass loop to fit the project key. Acid 's key function has always been the real-time pitch-shifting and time-stretching of audio loops.

Given that the previous SOS reviews of Acid are all available on-line, there is little point in spending too much time here on the long-established features of the software. And to top off the new features, Sony obviously have a good working relationship with Native Instruments, as Acid Pro 6 is supplied with a custom version of NI's Kompakt VST Instrument that includes a 2GB sample library. Among a large number of other improvements and additions, Acid Pro now also supports multiple media files on a single track - something that many users have been requesting for a long while. However, Sony have clearly been busy listening to the Acid user base, because the obvious highlights of the new version are the significant improvements to the audio/MIDI recording and editing capabilities. Of course, version 6 retains all the functionality of previous releases, including an interface that is extremely easy to use, a Video window for working to picture, and automatic, real-time pitch-shifting and tempo-matching of audio loops that is simply as good as it gets. That said, despite better tools for audio and MIDI recording, Acid 5 was still very much a tool for building musical arrangements out of audio loops, so the Rewire support was pretty much essential if more than just the occasional audio or MIDI recording was required within a project. The latter in particular was a real leap forward, making Acid much easier to integrate with most MIDI + Audio sequencers.

When I reviewed version 5 back in the April 2005 issue of SOSВ three new features really stood out: Groove Mapping, the Media Manager and Rewire client support.

SONY ACID PRO BEATS SOFTWARE

Having survived - and indeed prospered - since Sonic Foundry were taken over by Sony's Media Software division, Acid Pro has now reached version 6. Some may find it hard to believe that the original loop-based music production package, Acid, has now been with us for nearly a decade. The original loop-sequencing package has grown into a fully-fledged audio and MIDI recording program.

Sony acid pro beats