Subject:AP7 opinions?

Posted by: jumbuk

Date:10/12/2008 7:49:57 PM

What is the consensus on AP7?

My take:

- A bit like the last release, more incremental than ground-breaking, with the package sweetened by third-party bundles

- My wishes that have been granted: a proper mixer, tempo curves (but see below), variable tempo beatmapper, better buss routing.

- Sony seems to have vacated the market in terms of plug-ins, preferring to bundle offers from 3rd parties like Isotope. I don't like Isotope's interface, but the Elastique Audio plug could be worth having.

The tempo curves look disappointing. If I read the blurb correctly, all that is happening is that you can fade from one tempo to the next using a selectable fade curve. I was hoping for a Cubase-style tempo track . . .
. . . but if the new Beatmapper works the way it should, maybe the new tempo options will be more flexible than seems at first sight.

It sounds like Sony has put a lot of work into the plugin manager. Hopefully this will fix the problems some users were having.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: jackn2mpu

Date:10/13/2008 4:25:34 AM

I see Acid has finally caught up to the rest of the daw world. I made the mistake of thinking I could use AP6 as an alternate daw to Sonar but that never occurred (too unstable for one thing, and Sonar does loop work, so that's a non-issue). And AP7 wants SP2 or later for Windoze - I still run SP1 as I have no need for what is the main offer of SP2 - security features for web surfing; my daw is NOT on the net. Sorry, but I'll not be doing this 'upgrade'. Sticking with AP5 for serious loop work and Sonar for recording.
Jack

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: kbruff

Date:10/13/2008 5:52:30 AM

If you are not a dedicated fan of ACID, then in all honesty this upgrade is not really that off the wall. I have been delivering projects in the Pro-Tools Session format.

This has forced me to look more closely at Pro-Tools and I must say, that the current version and the upcoming PT8 looks pretty comprehensive.

In comparison to the incremental updates offered by SAP-7 I think in many ways they could have done more for their customers.

However the ACID user base may have much simplistic work flow requirements.

Well just my opinion -
KB

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: drbam

Date:10/13/2008 6:46:18 AM

Opinions mean absolutely nothing at this point - other than perhaps to spend some idle time. Until you field test AP7 in a real world application, attempting to evaluate it is not even as useful as "armchair quarter-backing."

Cheers

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: Patrick@Denman

Date:10/13/2008 9:49:06 AM

I think jumbuk's comments seem pretty much aligned with my own.

For my own part, as a recovering AP6 user, I will try the demo version when it becomes available. But I'm not optimistic that it will be enough to make me upgrade. After all this time, I was really hoping for some incredibly dramatic changes to compensate for the long wait. But this doesn't seem dramatic at all. More of a case of trying to catch up with features that other DAW packages have.

Really, the only thing that would be significant for me is the track freeze function, which other tools already have.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: PeterWright

Date:10/13/2008 5:16:05 PM

Expressing disappointment BEFORE it's even arrived ...

Personally I found the end of the world a bit overrated, not at all what it was cracked up to be.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:10/13/2008 6:00:38 PM

Which end of the world was that? There have been 3 or 4 of them during my lifetime.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: ohmaya

Date:10/13/2008 6:42:52 PM

I like the idea of the new mixer , enhanced buss routing and the metronome count-in, which was truly lacking. It looks like the selling point is the third party stuff. It a nice addon package, especially the Elastique plugin.
What Im really dying to see is if I can FINALLY monitor send FX while recording like I can in Cusbase Studio 4. I believe right now you can only monitor an insert FX while recording to an audio track in AP6.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: txharp3

Date:10/13/2008 7:18:25 PM

In all honesty, all I ever wanted in AP6 was a metronome count-off and track freezing. Now that the said features and more are included in AP7, I am extremely happy.

When AP7 is release, I doubt that I will have a need for Cubase anymore and I plan to solely work from AP7.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: VerbaLee

Date:10/13/2008 8:48:00 PM

It looks pretty dope to me, i've been using Acid since Acid Pro 2 before i knew what midi even was moved onto Pro 3 then Pro 4 which was good Pro 5 which was better and Pro 6 has worked really well for what I need from a DAW, Pro 7 looks great to me its got the vertical view mixer console for audio midi and bus tracks which is the main feature I really was looking for as well as other goodies that it now has, im waiting to upgrade

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: pHuNzOnE

Date:10/14/2008 11:35:43 PM

One ... if everything works as advertised, I'll probably take the plunge ... but not until I let others find out if it's buggy or not. Yes, I've read the AP6 'failure to fix' issues the past two years on this forum.

Two ... things that could have made it fantastic (besides working as advertised) a) sidechaining b) ability to import a 'section' from one project to another, and, c) a 'comping' feature for audio loop recording like Cubendo.

So ... please tell me I didn't read the fine print and it can do all the things in 'Two.'

pHuN

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: DKeenum

Date:10/15/2008 7:59:22 AM

pHuN,

You're gonna have to check it out yourself. The PC world is complicated. For example, I have 0 issues with acid pro, but it took me 1 year and buying two Steinberg Key to get Halion to work. All because of problems between my motherboard and the Steinberg Key.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: RMS

Date:10/15/2008 8:35:33 AM

I, too, will wait for others to check it out.
I'm not into being an unpaid Beta tester, nor want to feel the same way I did buying AP6.
As for the upgrade pricing in another thread...
I too believe it should be free for AP6 users. Most of us got nothing in that upgrade except an non-working DAW.
Someone said we are unreasonably whining about this, comparing it to buying a lemon car. There's laws about lemon cars. No laws about buggy software.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:10/15/2008 3:58:32 PM

"Most of us got nothing in that upgrade except an non-working DAW."

I draw the line at that statement. What do you have to support it? The vast majority of Acid users don't participate in this forum. There are perhaps a half dozen who post continually about problems with AP6 (and I don't doubt that the problems exist). Equally, there are a number (like me) who found AP6 perfectly stable (in my case, more stable than Live or Sonar). Short of a controlled customer satisfaction survey, you can't make statements like that.

I'd accept it if you had said "Some of us got nothing in that upgrade except a non-working DAW."

For the earlier poster who mentioned side-chaining: There isn't enough info about AP7 yet, but I would expect (hope?) that the new bussing flexibility would enable this.

Subject:RE: AP7 opinions?

Reply by: fussylizard

Date:10/15/2008 4:06:43 PM

I'm excited about the new release and will probably upgrade, but AP has really been hurt by the lack of development over the years so like many other users I moved on to something that was more actively developed (FL Studio).

RE: AP6, lack of automation for mixer plugins was a major hole for me, so I hope that's been resolved. I've since added lots of hardware to my setup, so hopefully AP will handle my 2 Delta 1010 audio cards okay and support all the ins and outs. I also had weird timing problems when recording MIDI though in all fairness that may have been user error as I was pretty green at the time. Also, IIRC you could only have one plugin GUI open at a time in AP6 which was hugely irritating as well. Hopefully that's changed. I don't care about the new bundled stuff...I have plenty of plugs as it is. The new mixer is interesting, though I don't recall having problems with the AP6 one.

I still love AP for its ease of use. FL Studio is close (I gave up on the Project 5 and Sonar demos when it took me 30 minutes just to get a sound out of them), but the AP loop browser is fantastic, and not having to worry about tempo and keys is great. I sometimes throw together a project in AP just to take a break from FL Studio, but once I get going I recreate the entire project in FL Studio to continue it.

Overall AP is a great package for starting out. It really ignited my interest in making music, and helped prove to myself that I could actually do it. I've since moved on to other packages, but if AP improves in the above areas, it could well find its way back into my regular workflow.

Regards,
Chris