Subject:Acid5 or the OTHER one

Posted by: IanF

Date:7/12/2004 11:41:08 AM

Has anyone any inside knowledge on ACID 5 ,will it have some/all the following features

More than one loop per track
VST effects with tempo sync
Metronome and pre count before record
Direct monitoring of what your recording (thru any effects being used)
More loop mangling features in the chopper.

Im really tempted with Ableton esp while its cheap before ver 4 is released properly. However Im comfortable with Acid and quite like it, so Im in a quandry do I go for Ableton or hang about waiting (with fingers crossed) for Acid 5.

I dont want both as they would be used for similar purposes.

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: Spirit

Date:7/12/2004 2:06:03 PM

no, yes, yes, no, yes

Well, I'm guesing of course, I've no idea what's in V5. But I completely share your quandry. The window of opportunity for a good prioce on Ableton4 is closing - and I don't want to use (or want to pay for) two apps either.

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:7/12/2004 4:46:32 PM

> ...so Im in a quandry do I go for Ableton or hang about waiting (with fingers crossed) for Acid 5

I mean this with all due respect, but I’m really not groking all this, “I’m jumping ship for Ableton 4” stuff. I downloaded the Ableton Live 3 demo a while ago and played with it a bit and I found if very unintuitive and unappealing. I don’t know what its trying to emulate but it doesn’t look like hardware that I would recognize (which, BTW, was a nice paradigm for Cubase, Cakewalk, etc. because we all know what inserts on a mixing desk are and what happens when you push them), and it didn’t look like software. Or if it were trying to be software, it was having a bad hair day or perhaps it was trying to be Mac software with those colors. But it just struck me as a confusing mess. I realize this is a personal taste issue (because I understand that people actually buy Macs) ;-)

I just went to the Ableton web site because of your post and I read about all the new things in Ableton 4 and it looks like it finally has all the functionality of Cakewalk Project 5 (which has been out for a while now). So, why weren’t you jumping ship for Project 5? I also downloaded a demo of Project 5 and its kind of nice for MIDI but its not the looper that ACID is. I don’t know that I would buy it just for MIDI but I do wish ACID 5 would adopt some of the things Project 5 does. So I hear ya’ about needing a metronome and count-in etc. Those are at the top of my ACID 5 list too.

If your primary usage is to record MIDI, then why don’t you just get a MIDI sequencer like Project 5 or SONAR and ReWire it into ACID? If your primary usage is loops with occasional MIDI, then ACID 4 is still the killer app that no one has done better. Based on that, ACID 5 can only be better at what it does best. Yea it would be great of it had better MIDI capabilities, and I’m hoping for them right along with ya’, but nothing can touch ACID’s workflow and for that, I can never leave it. I guess I can’t see how people are willing to learn a whole new application and not know if they will be productive in it when they already have a very productive environment to work in with ACID. But that’s just me.

The early discount on Live is only $50 off list price. That’s not that big a deal or did I miss something? Last time I checked a tank of gas was $45 and I buy at least one of those every week! So my take is, it’s worth the wait to remain in an environment you are use to, you know is productive, and worse case, if you hate ACID 5, you can go buy Live and you can take the bus to work for a week to save the tank of gas and get your $50 back. ;-)

(you know I’m just trying to give you a different perspective and not really arguing)

~jr

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:7/12/2004 5:17:49 PM

I with him.

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: Spirit

Date:7/12/2004 5:40:53 PM

Project 5 ? You're kidding. That piece of awful code will hopefully die the quiet death it deserves. It can't even begin to be compared with Ableton. For a start it doesn't handle audio and it looks like a kids toy.

I had a review copy and gave it back to the supplier without review because I couldn't find anything nice to say about it and didn't just want to slag it off.

And while some of you are feeling tired of all this Ableton 4 talk, I'm equally tired of hearing about Rewire. It is not a miracle cure, I feel it's more like life-support for a sick app. Maybe that's a minority view, but I believe that many people do not want to run two host apps.

That's where Ableton4 is strong: it gives both advanced audio and midi functionality. That's what I want Acid5 to do. Or if not then I'd like some really advanced audio controls. The point is that as the market ebbs and flows there are "times to buy" and times to wait. Now appears to be a good time to buy.

On the pricing front, I'm finding that the deals are around at the moment on A3, maybe because dealers want to clear it out before A4 arrives. Afterwards maybe they won't be so generous.

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:7/12/2004 6:59:35 PM

> Project 5 ? You're kidding

Glad I didn’t buy it. ;-) I’ve only played with the demo and what impressed me was the way it does MIDI looping. You can play your MIDI part, then set the in and out points for the loop in the editor and then when you drag the loop on the track, only the part between the loop begin and end is included. This is simple yet brilliant. Just mark the loop and go. No erasing notes, no chopping to a new track. I wish ACID had this. Oh, and it also has a metronome and a count-in. Two fundamental “bread and butter” functions that no MIDI app should be without. Try asking a band to play a song without counting off first. Aint’s never going to happen on time.

> For a start it doesn't handle audio

And there lies the problem. I have Vegas for audio so that wasn’t part of my criteria. I don’t need a great audio app, I just need a good MIDI sequencer to round things out. So our criteria is probably very different. If I was looking for an all-in-one audio application I would agree with you.

> ...and it looks like a kids toy.

Funny, I thought that’s just what I said about Ableton Live. One man’s intuitive interface is another man’s blank screen. ;-) I hated the Project 5 interface too, BTW, because I couldn’t move the windows where I wanted them. It seems there was only a small fixed set of places they could go and none of them was where I wanted them.

> I'm equally tired of hearing about Rewire ...I believe that many people do not want to run two host apps.

I can see both sides of that. No one would buy hardware that does everything. You buy components for your studio and wire them together. At least that was the concept of ReWire. As applications grew and grew they were no longer “component” size. Now it’s like wiring two whole studios together which, I agree, many people don’t want to do this. I don’t have a problem with it. I have several copies of Vegas and ACID and Sound Forge open all the time. What’s one more app?

Don’t get me wrong, I would love to have everything in one application called ACID 5. It’s just that my “everything” and your “everything” might be a different feature set. So I see your point. I don’t think ACID is ever going to be a multi-tracker because Vegas handles that so I don’t know if ACID will ever be the all-in-one application. But I’m not looking for one that does everything. I just want good set of tools to work with and what I’m lacking right now is a good MIDI tool. Everyone is different and I respect where you’re coming from.

~jr

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: Spirit

Date:7/12/2004 10:55:40 PM

All of which means it's going to be really interesting to see what sort of a juggling act Sony comes up with in AP5.

Whatever happens there's sure to be tears somewhere ! ;-)

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: IanF

Date:7/13/2004 1:16:34 AM

So multi tracking, is that the ability to have more than one loop on a track?
The lack of this is a major drawback for me, having 6 or 7 seperate tracks for what is essentially one track never has made much sense to me. I lived with it until my eyes were opend by other apps. Bouncing down the tracks to one track is OK but I often want to change the way its arranged so I have to reload the seperate tracks re arrange bounce back down its a real chore.

The effects in Ableton are a lot better than those in Acid but whats more important for me is the ability to use VST effects (that are much better creative and imaginative than those in Acid or Ableton) that are tempo synced.

Direct Monitoring while recording. If you can hear what the effect are doing to the sound while your recording it will change the way you are singing/talking/playing to fit in with the effect you trying to achieve other wsie its all a bit hit and miss.

Metronome and count in before recording..well it obvious I dont know why it wasnt there before.

If Acid is going to be a major player loop base music production it needs more/ better tools to manipulate the loops. Id like to see the chopper become more like a cross between phatmatik pro and the beatslicer app.

Midi I can do without I use FL studio to creat loops , although I appreciate may people use it

You can pick up Ableton 3 in the UK for about £174 plus a £30 upgrade to ver 4, Abelton 4 on their site is priced at £332.(Everything is way overpriced in Europe) so buy now and save £130 whats that about $200


It must be a nightmare being a developer on the ACid5 project everybody has different priorities about what is needed

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: JohnnyRoy

Date:7/13/2004 6:32:41 AM

> So multi tracking, is that the ability to have more than one loop on a track?

That’s not what I meant by multi-tracking but I was put off by not being able to have more than one loop on a track too when I first started using ACID. Then I realize that if you allow multiple loops, you loose your ability to just paint tracks because it wouldn’t know which loop to paint, and thus loose the great workflow! At that point, it’s just like any other application cutting and pasting so now I like the fact that there’s only one loop per track. I just move all the tracks of one instrument close to each other and assign them the same color (because that makes the waves the same color too). This way you have a nice visual indication that they go together. I also place them on the same Bus so I can assign effects and control volume as a group. (BTW, I learned this workflow on Rudy Sarzo’s ACID For Non-Linear Editors training DVD. It really is an outstanding learning tool.)

By multi-tracking I was referring to the ability to record more than one track at a time, which many people have asked for and is really in the domain of Vegas audio. I don't need this because I compose solo.

> Id like to see the chopper become more like a cross between phatmatik pro and the beatslicer app

Or how about something like what Melodyne can do? Now we’re talking powerful slicing capabilities. Actually it would be great if the OPT feature could be extended to audio. The idea with OPT is that you could plug in your own tools. If you don’t like the ACID piano roll editor, just plug in the GenieSys OPT MIDI Editor V2.0 and you have an alternate. The problem, I believe, is that OPT didn’t really catch on but it was a great concept.

If we could have a plug-in architecture like that for audio tools, then someone could create a better chopper or beatslicer and plug in it. That would make ACID a very powerful platform. In fact, if there is anything to be learned by the open source community, its that building open platforms like this increase the value of the platform tremendously.

~jr

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: ecsmix

Date:7/13/2004 8:36:26 PM

what about automation by midi channel without using the vst instrument's automation, like a regular audio track.
Hey you guys have some problems when you trigger a sound from a Vst instrument and the when you hit play the vst changes the sound to another one.
It happens with all Native Instruments and some others,
Peace.

Subject:RE: Acid5 or the OTHER one

Reply by: koncept

Date:7/14/2004 1:56:01 AM

how about automation and panning for Bus, FX, and Rewire tracks?

and how about more envelopes for automation like Mute and Solo?

I'd like to see that in 5.0 since I use Reason with Acid a lot.

I'd also like it if Acid could be used as a Rewire slave like Reason and Ableton are used as well so that it can be slaved into programs like Pro Tools or Cubase.

Those are the only three BIG improvements that I could think of.

Other than that, I can't complain. Acid kicks ass. It sounds so awesome.

Not to be a turd, but to address some other responses on this thread. As far as editing is concerned, why not use Soundforge in conjuction with Acid?? I don't think Sony is going to make Acid as powerful an editor as Soundforge is. That's not a smart marketing move on their part. Soundforge is so powerful as an editing tool, but I would like it if I could use more plugins when editing files in soundforge.

peace,

koncept