In Praise Of ACID (At Last)

[lawapa]

[/quote="munchkin]Vegas 6 - Great for multimedia but lacking in the old audio department.[/quote="munchkin]

The interface is different but the audio in Vegas while not as intuitive as Sonar can be as powerful if not more so. But ease of use and familiarity play a major role in how comfortable you get using any application. Vegas used in conjunction with SoundForge can be a major player. It now leans more toward video in it's functionality but remains a solid useful tool.

[Cabinfever]

"it leans more toward audio" ?! you mean its "all about video and audio users can go to hell". that's the short version of what you can read on the vegas audio forum. there was nothing in release 6 for audio users. i'm still using 5 and an happy. personally i recommend skipping v6 (which is reportedly extremely buggy) and wait for 7.

[lawapa]

Sony has changed the focus of Vegas. That's why I'm still a Sonar user. An while Video has it's place they might decide that abandoning the audio users was not in their best interest. You need a fully functional application to do either well. Sonar has moved in a direction that I can really use as Vegas has moved toward a more functional video app. So they compliment each other especially if you do both.

[stale bread]

[quote="munchkin
I own ACID 5, Sonar 4 Pro, Abletone Live 4, eXT, MaxMSP/Jitter and Vegas 6. I've tried most of the other hosts and TBH the one I come back to is ACID. Why? (Like you all want to know, right?)

Live 4 - great pattern management, gapless audio, clunky track based song construction, rudementary browser.

i dunno munchkin, i used acid up until version 3 pro and I know enough about 4 and 5 to say that most of what people find difficult in acid is beyond promising in ableton Live, why would you describe Lives track based construction clunky but acids not. it couldn't be the fact that acid 'paints' a track but in Lives arrangement view you drag a 'bracket' right? and you can put diff samples on the same track
in Live which you can't in Acid if i'm not mistaken, and Lives track recording I think is imensley easier than Acids suedo dialogue box approach. I know that its a to each his own type thing but I just wonder sometimes what acid users really find better than Live, if you could go more in depth regarding those points above i might be interested in giving acid another try cause its the tool that really matters to me.
I've always found acid and Live to be in the same vein of an application but whether its 'routing' of efex or track audio it seemed to me that Live was way more robust and flexible and that's not even bringing in the session view to the table, what say you?

[feyshay]

I liked acid before playing live but found that the acid was too difficult to handle in such a setting. Better to use acid in the studio.

[TVD]

............it's not an all round host like the big three a.........

Just out of interest.

What are the "big 3" in your opinion?

Cubase, Logic and Sonar have traditionally been described as the big three. As audio/sequencing tools they're extremely powerful but power doesn't always equal ease of use.

I own ACID 5, Sonar 4 Pro, Abletone Live 4, eXT, MaxMSP/Jitter and Vegas 6. I've tried most of the other hosts and TBH the one I come back to is ACID. Why? (Like you all want to know, right?)

Sonar4 - great all rounder but clunky loop management, too many windows to open, the term, 'gapless audio', means something different in Cakewalkland.

Live 4 - great pattern management, gapless audio, clunky track based song construction, rudementary browser.

eXT - very versatile in a modular way but not exactly intuitive. Requires some setting up.

MaxMSP - it can do everything and my first year of Sonic Arts is devoted to 'learning' how to use it (gulp!)

Vegas 6 - Great for multimedia but lacking in the old audio department.

There's also Tracktion and a few other less well represented hosts for PC/Mac that didn't do it for me.

The reason I started this thread is to let people know that ACID is at last working for me and might be worth giving another whirl if you've had problems with it before.

Munchkin, if you're happy making music with Acid Pro 5, then great!

BTW, I'm really sorry to hear that Live 4 isn't right for you.

If I had to pick my poison, I rather run back to Live 3 & use FL Studio or Orion for my MIDI sequencing needs.

Acid Pro still has a long way to go.

[munchkin]

[quote="munchkin
I own ACID 5, Sonar 4 Pro, Abletone Live 4, eXT, MaxMSP/Jitter and Vegas 6. I've tried most of the other hosts and TBH the one I come back to is ACID. Why? (Like you all want to know, right?)

Live 4 - great pattern management, gapless audio, clunky track based song construction, rudementary browser.

i dunno munchkin, i used acid up until version 3 pro and I know enough about 4 and 5 to say that most of what people find difficult in acid is beyond promising in ableton Live, why would you describe Lives track based construction clunky but acids not. it couldn't be the fact that acid 'paints' a track but in Lives arrangement view you drag a 'bracket' right? and you can put diff samples on the same track
in Live which you can't in Acid if i'm not mistaken, and Lives track recording I think is imensley easier than Acids suedo dialogue box approach. I know that its a to each his own type thing but I just wonder sometimes what acid users really find better than Live, if you could go more in depth regarding those points above i might be interested in giving acid another try cause its the tool that really matters to me.
I've always found acid and Live to be in the same vein of an application but whether its 'routing' of efex or track audio it seemed to me that Live was way more robust and flexible and that's not even bringing in the session view to the table, what say you?

I doubt whether I'm going to convince others about ACID. I just find it suits my style of song construction at the moment. It definitely isn't perfect but perhaps it leaves out features that I don't really need anyway.

As for ACID vs Live I prefer ACIDS track based song construction to Lives. Live has a much easier way of working with grooves in the session view but I think that suits jamming rather than studio use. Effects and synths work well for me in ACID now and the routing options are adequate. Perhaps I don't need Lives flexibility. ACID is very stable on my system now that the VST/VSTi problems I was having seem to have been ironed out.

Anyone who wants to do extensive midi work won't get the most out of ACID. Live jamming isn't ACIDS forte. But if loops are your thing then ACID is easy to use and very flexible IMO.

It's all just personal preference at the end of the day. I wanted to flag up that the latest release of ACID seems pretty stable and might be worth demoing.

[stale bread]

so how would you compare Acid 5 to Live4s arranger view mode?

[Rednroll]

I just don't why it's detractors don't just use the product of their choice and stop hating.

Well let me explain it to you. A lot of us that use Acid also use Vegas for our multitracking needs. Believe it or not, a lot of us that work with loops also do multitracking. I don't know call us stupid that we would ever want to do something silly like that huh? (see Sonar,Logic,Cubase,Live,Protools,Project 5,Samplitude) Well Sony has always told us that Acid is not a multitracker and that Vegas is their multitracker. Ok, so we like the workflow of Acid and Vegas has a similar workflow with multitrack feature capabilities. Makes since we would buy Vegas then right? No steep learning curve of having to work with another multitrack and becoming familiar with that app's UI.

Now the problems. How do we effeciently work with these 2 apps together? Well we need to have a good way to sync them together. Acid generates Midi Beat Clock, and Vegas generates Midi Beat clock. Neither will slave to Midi Beat clock. The only way to run Acid and Vegas together is by using Midi Time code (ie SMPTE), where one app would generate the MTC, and the other would then slave to the incoming MTC. To do that on the same PC you have to use a Midi Yoke inbetween the 2 apps, there's no direct link. So let's add a third layer on top of an already sloppy sink method. Have you ever done this? The sync is nowhere near being ideal, lots of drift and timing issues. The better solution is to use Midi Beat clock, which is a tighter sync solution.....but you can't, neither app slaves to Midi Beat clock as I mentioned. The modern technology solution is to Rewire the 2 apps together, where you get sample accurate sync. Acid has Rewire Host and Slave capabilities. Vegas has neither. Users asked for Rewire Host features in Vegas 6, so they could work with these 2 apps together. They got nothing, except an explaination saying that Rewire would be limited in Vegas because Vegas does not have "Tempo mapping". Well Vegas 5 finally got "Acid Loop support" and if you work hard enough you can actually get tempo mapping of imported Acid loops in Vegas. You basically have to keep changing the master project tempo in Vegas as you import an Acid loop. Then if you decide to change a tempo, you need to go back and change the tempo on each individual loop/event. So for tempo mapping to happen in Vegas, the only things that need to be implemented is a beat/measure timeline that corresponds to tempo map changes and to make tempo changes globally instead of individual event based as it is. So you would think the next logical progression version update to Vegas would be global tempo mapping support to go along with it's Acid loop support. So when you ask for tempo mapping features in Vegas, what you get in response is that tempo mapping would not work with it's Video supported features. So where do we turn? Answer: We ask for multitracking capabilities in Acid, then we get told Acid is not their multitracker, that Vegas is their multitracker. We're basically caught in an endless circle of frustration. Isn't it ironic that the company that invented Acid loops, was the last company to offer Acid loop support in their multitracker? To compound the frustration, we say well ok, give us an effecient way to get our Acid projects into Vegas and we can work with them seperately. But NO, there's no way to save an Acid project as a Vegas project, so we could just simply open it in their multitrack app when we need the multitrack features. 2 programs made by the same company and they can't even offer a simple solution of importing/exporting projects back and forth. Their solution is to render Acid tracks as individual wave file tracks and then having to seperately reassemble the project in Vegas. This makes since if I was using another multitrack app, but not one developed by the same company who has complete control over the master project properties on both apps.

So what are we left with? No viable solution and very little hope that Sony listens to it's users when these points are brought up. I along with a bunch of the Vegas audio users where having these discussions regarding the pita we where stuck in. We where told Vegas 6 has not abandoned it's audio users and would offer audio features that many would be happy with. You know what that audio feature was? VST FX's support.....no VSTi support, just VST FX. Oh dear, don't overwhelm us with a feature that only should have been implemented back in version 2.0 and on top of that it was developed in Acid 5 and Sound Forge 8.0 before the release of Vegas 6. So how much time do you really think was devoted to the audio side feature development in Vegas? As mentioned Sony has basically abandoned it's audio user. Acid features added are now just a stepping stone for features to be implented in their video app Vegas. I was banned from their forums for having these discussions with other Vegas/Acid users. I was one of the major supporters of the Sony/Sonic Foundry apps over the past 8 years. I was a beta tester for Sound Forge, Acid and Vegas and was booted off the beta teams for even discussing the disappointment of Vegas not getting Rewire support, so that I could effeciently work with Vegas and Acid together. Sony has now updated their forum regulations to keep users from discussing the downside's of their products, constructive or not. Previously users where able to have discussions with individual developers from Sony, which gave you a good feeling that you had a personal relationship and your voice was being heard. Now every post is answered with the name, "Forum_Admin" so that the Sony person on the other side remains anonymous and feature suggestion discussions go unanswered. You are now required to be a registered user to even partake in the forum discussions. They've basically raised up an iron curtain between themselves and their users and other potential customers that may have questions before purchasing one of their products. I registered one of my products that wasn't previously registered under my previous username, and created a new user name so that I could contribute in a discussion. One post and that username was immediately banned.

Here you can read that one post in the Acid forum. The sickening part is I was a user that recommended their products and was an avid user of their complete software line, while there where other users that came into their forums spouting posts in the manor of saying "Sony sucks, Acid sucks, Vegas sucks..etc." and being more disruptive than contructive, and those users are still there.

http://www.sonymediasoftware.com/forums ... Replies=31

Here's the nice Sony message I get now:

Your Account has been suspended. You will be unable to post new messages in the Sony Media Software forums until your suspension has ended.

If you feel that you have reached this page in error, or you wish to have more information on your suspension, please let us know.

Yep, I know when my suspension will end. It's when they finally get rid of the captain driving the boat, which keeps blantantly running into iceberg's in a pretty good attempt to sink the entire software suite of products, that being the "V.P. of technology", who's basically become the forum administrator. Hmmmmm? Vice-president? Forum Administrator? Well I guess if you can't handle the V.P. responsibilities in properly managing the direction of your products so that the majority of your users aren't upset, you best do something you can handle. That is if you can't make your users happy and they try to let you know about it, you just shut them up and keep them from saying anything, and pretend like everything's honkey dorie. Hopefully someone will take control and do something over there at Sony where they'll put the "Sonic" back into "Sonic Foundry".

[lawapa]

I do hope this company can get their act together at some point. These products could be better. And intergation between acid and vegas would seem simple enough. It might take a seperation of video and audio to accomplish. As it stands many companies go through these problems as the major players are bought out by the large corporations. And yet I'm optomistic things will work themselves out.

[Zacchino]

You forgot Zynewave Podium. Currently learning it, as a ACID freek since ver. 2.0

Podium is all in one window, except for the midi and audio editor which of course, can't be contained in a tab for complex editing.

I'm in the same point of view for the other DAWs, including Live. Too electronic music based sequencer.

Go take a ride on it : http://www.zynewave.com.

[TVD]

I do hope this company can get their act together at some point. These products could be better. And intergation between acid and vegas would seem simple enough. It might take a seperation of video and audio to accomplish. As it stands many companies go through these problems as the major players are bought out by the large corporations. And yet I'm optomistic things will work themselves out.

...until Live 5 destorys Acid Pro & Project5!!!

[anti-banausic]

Word up TVD?!?!

[coolout]

I do hope this company can get their act together at some point. These products could be better. And intergation between acid and vegas would seem simple enough. It might take a seperation of video and audio to accomplish. As it stands many companies go through these problems as the major players are bought out by the large corporations. And yet I'm optomistic things will work themselves out.

...until Live 5 destorys Acid Pro & Project5!!!

live is a totally different app than both acid pro & P5 they overlap in a few areas but no app is perfect...that's what rewire is for.

i've tried every version of live since 1.0 and i'm always underwhelmed. i'm amazed live is just starting to support mp3 and automatic tempo calculation (at version 5 no less)something that acid has done for 5 years or so. now if ableton would just change that GUI i'd actually buy it.

[lawapa]

I would agree. But TVD is gona destroy em anyway. And to be sure that's ok fine with me

Live functions well for what it is.