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ACID Pro



 
 
Sony ACID Pro is a professional digital audio workstation
Digital audio workstation

A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed to sound recording, sound editing and play back digital audio. A key feature of DAWs is the ability to freely manipulate recorded sounds....
 (DAW) software program, originally published by Sonic Foundry
Sonic Foundry

Sonic Foundry is the former developer of various media software suites, which were purchased by Sony in late 2003 for $19 million cash. Sonic Foundry's current product line consists of the webcasting, presentation software Mediasite....
, now developed and sold by Sony Creative Software
Sony Creative Software

Sony Creative Software is a subsidiary of Sony, focused primarily on their line of media production software. Additionally, they produce a series of Sampling , Sound effect and other media for use with their software....
. When it was first launched in 1998 as a loop
Music loop

In electronic music, a loop is a sampling which is repeated. Loops may be repeated through the use of tape loops, delay effects, cutting between two record players, sampling , a Sampler or with the aid of Computer Based Looping Software....
-based music sequencer
Music sequencer

A music sequencer is software or hardware designed to create and manage computer-generated music.Originally, music sequencers did not include the ability to record audio....
, Acid Pro was the first-ever automatic audio loop-based music software of its kind, where someone could simply drag-and-drop an Acid loop file (for example a Drum or Bass loop) onto a track in Acid, and that loop would automatically adjust itself to the tempo and key of the song, with virtually no sonic degradation.

Due to this breakthrough, ACID became very popular with composers, producers, and DJs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, interested in quickly creating beats, music textures, or even complete compositions and orchestrations, that would work with virtually any tempo or key signature, and these loops would adjust automatically.






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Sony ACID Pro is a professional digital audio workstation
Digital audio workstation

A digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed to sound recording, sound editing and play back digital audio. A key feature of DAWs is the ability to freely manipulate recorded sounds....
 (DAW) software program, originally published by Sonic Foundry
Sonic Foundry

Sonic Foundry is the former developer of various media software suites, which were purchased by Sony in late 2003 for $19 million cash. Sonic Foundry's current product line consists of the webcasting, presentation software Mediasite....
, now developed and sold by Sony Creative Software
Sony Creative Software

Sony Creative Software is a subsidiary of Sony, focused primarily on their line of media production software. Additionally, they produce a series of Sampling , Sound effect and other media for use with their software....
. When it was first launched in 1998 as a loop
Music loop

In electronic music, a loop is a sampling which is repeated. Loops may be repeated through the use of tape loops, delay effects, cutting between two record players, sampling , a Sampler or with the aid of Computer Based Looping Software....
-based music sequencer
Music sequencer

A music sequencer is software or hardware designed to create and manage computer-generated music.Originally, music sequencers did not include the ability to record audio....
, Acid Pro was the first-ever automatic audio loop-based music software of its kind, where someone could simply drag-and-drop an Acid loop file (for example a Drum or Bass loop) onto a track in Acid, and that loop would automatically adjust itself to the tempo and key of the song, with virtually no sonic degradation.

Due to this breakthrough, ACID became very popular with composers, producers, and DJs in the late 1990s and early 2000s, interested in quickly creating beats, music textures, or even complete compositions and orchestrations, that would work with virtually any tempo or key signature, and these loops would adjust automatically. To be able to do this, Sony's Acid Pro uses specially prepared or "Acidized" music wave
Wave

A wave is a disturbance that propagates through space and time, usually with transference of energy. While a mechanical wave exists in a medium , waves of electromagnetic radiation can travel through vacuum, that is, without a medium....
 files which can be prepared using an audio editing tool such as Sony Soundforge. (for more information on audio editing, see sound effect techniques
Sound effect

Sound effects or audio effects are artificially created or enhanced sounds, or sound processes used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media....
).

Since then, this looping technique has been adopted by the majority of other digital audio workstations on the market, which can also use these acidized loop files, though there are various compatibility problems between the Apple Mac platform, which uses AIFF files, and the PC platform which uses WAV files. To solve this problem, most publishers are now releasing special versions of "Acidized loops" that are customized for Acid Pro, and also for Apple Macs. Acid Pro runs on PCs with all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 2000
Windows 2000

Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on business desktops, Laptop, and Server . Released on 17 February, 2000, it was the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the final release of Microsoft Windows to display the "Windows NT" designation....
. It currently includes over 20 DirectX
DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms....
 audio effects, employs the new Media Manager technology, the Beatmapper tool, and the Chopper tool, as well the ability to mix in 5.1 channel surround.

With Acid Pro 6 (released in Q3-2006), Sony introduced a full digital audio workstation which also includes MIDI and multitrack audio recording with full support for ASIO
Asio

Asio is a genus of typical owls, or true owls, in family Strigidae. The genus Asio contains the eared owls, which are characterised by feather tufts on the head which have the appearance of ears....
, VST
Virtual Studio Technology

Steinberg's Virtual Studio Technology is an interface for integrating software Sound_recording_and_reproduction synthesizer and audio effect plugins with audio editors and hard-disk recording systems....
, and VSTI audio, plugins, and music synthesizer standards.

ACID Pro uses Acid Loops
Acid Loops

Acid Loops are specialized music clips. They were originally created for use with Acid, the loop-based, music-sequencing software, created by Sonic Foundry in 1998....
 (meaning they contain tempo and key information for proper pitch transposition) painted out across the screen to create music tracks. Acidized loop sample CDs are available from Sony, as well as third party companies.

As with most sophisticated software packages, ACID is not a single software product but defines a family of products spanning a significant range of features. In a related-marketing effort, Sony has continued to support ACIDplanet, a content web site originally launched by Sonic Foundry which is aimed at current ACID users, prospective ACID users and the general public. It describes itself as "the Internet's premier site for music, video and unique artists".

Sonic Foundry sold the Vegas, ACID, Sound Forge, CD Architect, Siren, VideoFactory, ScreenBlast, and Batch Converter product lines to Sony Pictures Digital in July 2003.

Other versions

  • ACID Xpress 7.0 is a free version of ACID Pro with a 10 track limit.


See also

  • SoundForge


External links