Subject:USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Posted by: larryo

Date:3/20/2001 5:09:10 PM

New to this forum, so forgive any redundancies. Just
picked up ACID as a pre-test to trying out Vegas. I want
to be able to multi-track with an analog stereo mixer into
my sound card(already using this set up for mastering into
sound forge). 2-tracks drum machine, bass, guitars,
vocals, etc. Nothing extraordinary, maybe up to 16 tracks
when employing stereo tracks. Here's where it get
complicated. I just upgrade my PC to 256 meg ram, 600mhz
intel celeron micro processor and a 30 gig HD (7200 rpm).
I havent actually transferred all my files and programs to
this new drive, so am currently employing an older samsung
4.1 gig HD thats probably not 7200 rpm. My sample tests so
far produce "glitchy/fluttery" playbacks. My levels are
fine, and oddly enough, when I review the track in audio
editor, it sounds fine. I have found that if I sample my
drum machine for instance, at half volume, then go to audio
editor and normalize it, kick volume up to about 95%, it
sounds ok. Am I doing something wrong, or is this inherant
to the program and I have too high expectations?? I
downloaded a trial version of vegas and had the same
experience. Could it simply be my drive??

Also, have any of you been able to "mix" a stereo 2-track
recording of a project in acid and save it in sound
forge/cd architect??

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: Shredmaster

Date:3/23/2001 8:33:47 AM

You can try but you'll probably only get 1-4 tracks not
including your loop tracks. See the SF Knowledge Base
article about this. They recommend you move up to Vegas
Audio for true multitrack support.

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: rewolf2107

Date:8/29/2001 9:00:25 AM

I don't think the drive was the problem - I'm still running on a 5400 30gig and it works ok. I have basically been using Acid as a multitracking surrogate for a while, with mixed results. The main problem is the lack of a real mixer - if you want to EQ something you have you use up a plugin, etc.... "Edit to new track" does not substitute for a mixdown on big projects - try "mixed wav," or I have even just played the file while recording "what u hear" on Soundforge. But yeah, Vegas is probably the way to go for m-t.

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: jonah303

Date:8/29/2001 11:50:08 AM

actually the recommendation is to STAY WITH ACID 2. because it works fine for multitracking. they just eliminated the feature of being able to load one shot sounds into RAM for acid 3. what a load of crap. i'm still using acid 2 even with its 1000's of glitches, because i'd rather make workarounds for all the annoying glitches than be limited to 3-4 one shot sounds simultaneously.
btw acid 3 doesn't even begin to fix most of the glitches in acid 2. there are literally hundreds if not 1000's of unfixed bugs, from annoying editing idiosyncrasies to volume discrepencies, clicks and pops during certain types of fades, and i know of at least 10 ways to automatically crash acid on any computer (not just on my 600mhz athlon but also at studios where i have worked, on 1.5 p4 and 1.4 athlon t-bird processors.)
so yeah if SF ever gets their shit together acid will be the best on the market, until then it's too bad it's just a toy.
-jonah

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: Maruuk

Date:8/29/2001 5:15:13 PM

The Celeron 600 is the equivalent of a Pentium II at 400. That alone can cause innumerable glitches. I know from experience. Acid 3 hates the Celeron. 'nuff said.

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: spesimen

Date:8/30/2001 11:44:27 AM

and, incidentally, take what all these guys are saying with a grain of salt...i've never had problems with acid 2 back when i had a celeron and coule easily do a LOT more than 4 audio tracks from disk. i think my record is around 16 or so, and that is in conjunction with lots of other loop tracks.

with the 1.4 athlon and acid 3 i have yet to hit a performance wall with the program unless i run a TON of effects...number of tracks is very high and everything. more than i've needed for any real songs anyway. i think a lot of these issues are due to glitches with the way these fella have their systems setup, like no dma usage or something..shrug..

Subject:RE: USING ACID FOR DISK BASED MULTITRACKING

Reply by: Maruuk

Date:8/30/2001 1:27:39 PM

Well all I know is I tweaked my Celeron 600 system to the 9's using all the audioforum tricks and it made no difference: dropouts, glitches, loss of sync, a train wreck. SF simply sneered at my wimpy little processor and said, "Expect minimal performance."

Switching to an Athlon 1G T-Bird system solved all problems. Sometimes life is not as complicated as it seems.