acid 6 = daw?

[rachmiel]

thanks, sonic. i also love acid's ease of use. :-)

[sgx]

Acid's bussing setup needs work. You can't aux send from one bus to another. You can do it from an audio track, but not a bus. All vsti's go straight to a bus, so no sending to an aux bus from vsti's unless maybe you bounce them to an audio track. You can route from one bus to another, but you can't send . This wasn't so noticeable when midi was horrible and no one was using instruments in it, but now it's a huge oversight in my opinion. I love pretty much everything else about pro 6 though, from using the demo. The workflow is awesome.

[billybk1]

All vsti's go straight to a bus, so no sending to an aux bus from vsti's unless maybe you bounce them to an audio track. You can route from one bus to another, but you can't send.

Has anybody tried this free Senderalla plugin thingy, in ACID Pro 6 yet? I have not actually tried it yet, but was wondering if it would be a valid workaround.


Cheers,

Billy Buck

[databass]

Acid 6 has made steps from giant

yes i think now is a fully functional DAW
(maybe the most friendly about usability/layout/workflow)

timestreatch work fawlessy to me, even if compared with the live one

I must add that installed on my system,
after several days of works from its initial release
it seems surprisingly stable

[John Vulich]

They really, REALLY need to implement FX sends for VSTiS... LIKE EVERY OTHER f**king DAW ON THE PLANET!!! It's just absurd that they haven't changed this yet. Their mixer routing really leaves much to be desired and needs to have a lot more flexibilty.

Other than that, v6 is actually quite an improvement over 5.

[riley4reason]

I'm waiting for Pro 7.

[christianmusicmaker]

acid users, i'm writing a review of acid pro 6 for a magazine and i'd love your opinions on something. sony media would like to position acid pro 6 as a full-fledged daw to compete against the big boys: live 5, sonar 5, fl studio, even cubase and pro tools.

Hmmmm the name is very familiar...you wouldn't be writing for CM would you now...?

1. do you think it's up to the task?

Just about any sequencer on earth can manipulate audio and midi. Your queston is slightly generic as there are a myriad of tasks that sequencers perform. ACID is quite capable of producing a professional result.

As you have asked for a comparison with the big boys...

Stability: While I have not used ACID outside it's demo status it's stability is not quite as good as Sonar's in my opinon. Of course with different PC set ups e.t.c you will always get different views, so this is not a statement for everyone else, just my opinion. I tried the latest Version of ACID 5 (c) and I found it glitchy and not entirely happy with real time usage, for instance inserting FX and instruments in real time.

V.6? Well I have tried that as well and found the VSTi support to be slightly lacking. I could only get a buzzing noise out of LiveSlice (great VSTi) for instance and found my midi input /soundcard settings randomly disabled. I hope Sony will look to fix any bugs that slipped through to 6.0 with a patch. Again folks this is just my experience.

Cost: Priced well. It seems Sony are reaching beyond Live and Project 5. As neither of them support , video, dualcore set ups, surround or CD burning. Those features appear in what I call the super hosts Sonar, Cubase, Logic and Samplitude, (but not every one has CD burning e.t.c).

Look and feel: Very fresh look but nothing revolutionary. It does focus on the essentials as someone else said earlier in this thread and that is more than enough for most people. While I cannot see it replacing Sonar for me...I can see a use for it rewired.

It's possible that Sony are trying to tap into a buyer that wants all the key features of the big boys but less of the greater detail that they offer. I prefer the detail the superhosts offer, but clearly not everyone wants or needs that. ACID seems to provide a reduced feature set in comparison to Sonar5 Producer for instance, but price wise it's very close to Sonar5 Studio which arguably is more feature packed.

2. how do you think its timestretching and beatmatching compare to live 5's (which seems to be the best out there)?

Depends on the user. It's fine for most things I would use it for, but I would probably use Live for extreme audio manipulation rewired to Sonar5.

3. if it's not making it as a mature daw, what's missing?

Rock solid VST and VSTi support...had problems getting anything but a buzzing noise out Live Slice. Also the term mature DAW means one thing to person A and another to person B. mature yes, but compared to Sonar5? Not as mature IMHO. Sonar 5 Studio (in the same price bracket maybe cheaper) has much more midi and audio features. A far better suite of FX (Sonitus)e.t.c and notation features.

But of course these are not important to everyone but as a Sonar user...ACID is not quite as mature a package ..to answer the 3rd question of the thread starter.

Needs differ at the end of the day. Some people will never use anything like ACID for music making and will prefer to use cheaper hosts like Podium, or even further down the price scale EXT or Cakewalks Music Creator instead.

[rachmiel]

> Hmmmm the name is very familiar...you wouldn't be writing for CM would you now

cm - car mechanics? no, i don't know a carburetor from a beatslicer.

[samcruise]

I'm a long time acid user and the one thing that is still not quite there for me are is vst effect support - you cant use external controllers to automate settings (it seems) and no-way of sending midi notes, etc. Also supaTrigga doesn't work at all and I'm sure there are more but can't think of them now.

Also, you still cant control more than one midi track at a time - what I love about live is the way you can rout anything to anything.

Apart from these gripes Acid is great for me - ease of use scores very highly in my book.

[rachmiel]

seems like simplicity is a crowd pleaser and vst support (routing, control) is a downer.

[John Vulich]

seems like simplicity is a crowd pleaser and vst support (routing, control) is a downer.

Like I said, they can't be bothered to implement send FX capabilities for VSTIs and they think that they are gonna position themselves as a serious DAW? Give me a break!

Maybe they can start to consider positioning themsleves as a serious DAW, around version 8 or 9, but not quite yet.

[arke]

In general, I think the mixer needs work. It takes up ALOT of horizontal room for little functionality, and the whole ABC thing is teh stupid anyway.

[Bigg John]

but sadly i was having small issues (tabs rearranging themselves, audio glitches when resizing windows amongst other small things) so i'm back to 5.0c until they sort that out at least.

Same resizing issues here

[funkychickendance]

I'm demoing Pro 6, and like it enough to buy it, in due course. Depending on what I'm doing, I flipflop between ACID and FL 6 Producer Edition.

Lots of loops = ACID
Lots of VSTi = FL

I'm sure there are little subtleties I am missing out on, but, for now, two platforms is e-nuff!

ACID has the potential to be the "one ring to bind them" but Sony have to get their act together (soon) on VST FX support, VSTi management in general, on initial load time and a few other issues mentioned here.

/funxi

[Bigg John]

If I can, let me make a point on acid's stretching capabilities. If a loop is edited well and the stretch markers are edited well, acid loops incredibly well. The problem is that many commercial loops are not edited well. Editing stretch markers takes a while, but it is worth the effort.

All of our loops feature optimized transient markers ( http://www.performanceloops.com/ )

sorry for shameless self-promotion