Ongoing Serious Problems With Acid Music Studio 7 -ACID Product Family

Subject:Ongoing Serious Problems With Acid Music Studio 7 Posted by: Cyurus Razor Date:2/25/2010 9:10:03 PM I tried to limit myself to a top ten list, but went over! ;) These are problems I run up against each and every time I go to use Acid Music Studio 7.0a, that really cripple productivity. Anything marked "diagnosis" I have referred to Sony, in the hope they look toward these things in future products/ etc. I was wondering if everyone had these same crash and functionality issues? I would love to see a 7.0b for Acid Music Studio that dealt with most of these issues... or at least the crash bugs! I am contemplating using software outside of Sony b/c of these issues. And learning VST programming lol! #1 Seriousness: Minor Date: Feb. 25, 2010 Description: I attempted to publish a 128kbs, 48kHz copy of “Search And Seizure”, a song I composed, and the “publish to web” option said “bitrate is too high”. And listed some terribly low bitrates, nothing over 58kbps sort of thing… This was my first time attempting to use this feature. I won’t use it again. Diagnosis: Repair to make as useful as logging on to Acid Planet on your own allows, or delete the option #2 Seriousness: Severe / System Critical / Soft Crash Date: Ongoing Description: Continuous crashes using a Korg R3 hardware synthesizer with a USB cable for MIDI on System 1 machine. Crashes are rare on my Athlon X2 5200+, but do happen occasionally, usually while shifting settings, or doing something in a way Acid hates. I was very annoyed that I had to buy another computer or a bunch of expensive MIDI hardware to get a hardware synth to work on a Pentium IV system. I almost gave up on Acid entirely over this one. Diagnosis: update settings to be current with this synthesizer… perhaps update the MIDI refresh rate for slower systems. #3 Seriousness: Major / Soft Crash Date: Ongoing Description: When an envelope is selected on the Acid player window problems occur. There are 2 major bugs, as I see it. 1) When a user selects any envelope (volume, panning, brightness, pitch, etc.) to change its position (modify how it plays back), while the “play bar” is going over that section of the envelope it will cause one or any combination of the following problems: 1) static and loss of accuracy in playback 2) the play bar to jump around on the computer 3) the program to lock up, and crash, usually quickly. 2) When an envelope is selected using the “envelope tool” at the top of the screen, and an area is selected in bold, the copy function does not work correctly. Selecting “copy” causes no problem, but when the target area is selected problems ensue. There are 2 bugs going on that I can tell. -- 1) If the first node in the “selection aread” to be copied, is selected at the point where the “selection area” in colour begins, then when the selection is pasted random, and very useless results occur. Doing glitched-out things such as putting 10 minutes of silence, and then having the envelope appear long after the song should be completed! Or just not working in general by copying random parts of the selection, and erasing details of the envelope for the rest of the track. And “undo” will not help, as redoing the same thing will cause the same problem. Also on the off-chance that this does work, the first node will often not copy. Fortunately it has not affected other tracks so far, and has not crashed the system, or at least not frequently enough that I’ve been able to tell. I imagine using this “feature” while playing something on MIDI, or otherwise “stressing” the system would also have unpredictable effects such as crashing. Temporary work around: moving the slection off the first node will alleviate the problem… should not have to do this, however. It appears to be an = bug: where the value somewhere in the innards of the computing works unless it is the same. -- 2) The selected area may not copy correctly. Numerous times the envelope has copied into strange locations… because you can’t easily determine where the first node will appear it is somewhat useless, and time wasting for the user. This problem may be compounding the first. VST/ VSTi support… where do I begin? #4 Seriousness: Major / Minor Date: Ongoing Description: The VST / VSTis appear to load correctly in the software. However when I restart the machine, it has to reload every setting, and usually this takes 5 minutes or so to load correctly. I believe I had reported something similar earlier. I like having a lot of software toys available to me at once… so this is ongoing. #5 Seriousness: Somewhat Major / Very Major Date: Ongoing: All the time Description: The REFX Vanguard plugin which I purchased the full version of from the manufacturer, has a tendency to lose settings at random. Also like many other VSTis the VSTi for the previous MIDI song channel automatically loads when a VSTi is selected for the first time in the VSTi selection window. This causes me to have to shut down the window, and restart another window every time I wish to add a new VSTi – which is completely abhorrent to me. I don’t know how this got past the beta testers! My workaround is always saving settings: but this has its limits in usefulness. #6 Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue Date: Ongoing: All the time Description: Two parts, based on audio clips on tracks: 1) Copying an audio clip between tracks creates a “media offline” error, almost every time. In this state the media sample will not play, although all the tracks are designed to be multi-sample. The workaround is saving the .acd file, and reloading completely… which causes things to load correctly. And it can be time-consuming if you have to save and load a 400MB .acd-zip! 2) Duplicating an audio clip to a new track, will often cause exactly the same “media offline” problem as above. #7 Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue Date: Ongoing: All the time Description: Selecting multiple MIDI sections with different labels at once, causes odd, and unpredictable effects in copying. #8 Seriousness: Minor / Major product efficiency issue Date: Ongoing but infrequent Description: Also saving MIDI tracks sometimes causes problems, as I have noticed, cut segments have moved around at odd times, causing tunes to glitch up the next time they are loaded. This happened to me with my song “Blumenkraft – Skinny Bitch [Depilation Remix”. There seems to be a lot of “undocumented features” when it comes to moving/slicing MIDI segments around a lot. #9 Seriousness: Minor / Minor product efficiency issue, more an annoyance Date: Ongoing Description: Joining / cutting tracks has some problems. When a number of similarly labeled tracks are joined in the manner that they start out “Clip 1” followed by “Clip 2” alternating, for let’s say twenty beats with “Clip 3” at the end… will not be “joinable” into one loop at all easily. The result will be something like “Clip4” which looks like Clip 1 followed by Clip 2 once then a large gap without notes, and possibly Clip 3 on the end”… which is not that functional in my opinion. I think this can be easily fixed in future versions, so that separate clips can be added together. I do like the functionality of having the ability to modify multiple clips in many situations. #10 Seriousness: Minor / Minor product efficiency issue Date: Ongoing / somewhat rare occurance for me (not sure about all users) Description: Ongoing / erratic Copying “duplicate” tracks has some problems. When a number of similarly labeled tracks are copied together in the manner that they start out “Clip 1” followed by “Clip 2” alternating, for let’s say twenty beats with “Clip 3” at the end… will occasionally and intermittently cause problems, particularly if there is any spacing between the clips. #11 Seriousness: Repetitive minor annoyance Date: Ongoing but rare occurance Description: It is difficult to rename MIDI tracks imported from another source. I do not believe you can change the MIDI segment names the way you normally can. This could be problematic for some people who want to make all of their work look 100% original when they have had ghost writers, or some such. #12 Seriousness: Major Date: Ongoing Description: Bitrate is inconsistent with certain products. Certain VSTis record out, such MDA Delay differently than they play in live audio. I can have something resembling full audio spectrum efficiency when I play live, during editing… the moment I go to record I lose a lot of quality, particularly on certain VSTis, such as the REFX Vanguard. I don’t know why the bitrate is so crippled on this product. I may switch to another product over this issue eventually, as MP3s are tending to become better-than-CD-quality. #13 Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue Date: Ongoing Description: Program settings get lost in Acid. Acid is prone to forget the default template for new songs. It also forgets to record MP3s in maximum quality, automatically switching down… which is annoying. It also forgets sometimes if you are saving a .acd file to copy the loops with it! Which can all be very annoying, since Acid seems to loose all of these settings every time you shut down, or crash. #14 Seriousness: Extreme! Date: Ongoing, always Description: If a loop is of particularly short length, such as a drum, Acid will not quantize the sample together as it should, and instead you end up with a stuttering –style efect, that is usually very unpleasant to listen to. Also taking a drum loop that has a varying tempo into another song and modifying the tempo can cause a lot of issues. I generally find Beatmapper sorts this out, but not always. Diagnosis: the software should be able to differentiate between blips of noise and open space when it fits itself into another tempo. I take it this was why the BPM rate was limited in Acid Music Studio. Problematic work around: Sometimes it is just easier to beat slice the drums even if they are at the wrong temp, and force them to conform to the song. But they do not sound 100% perfect in many situations.
Subject:RE: Ongoing Serious Problems With Acid Music Studio 7 Reply by: Bremen Cole Date:3/4/2010 4:42:16 PM Your #5 is related to the main reason I quit using AP7. I use just a few VSTi, about 6 really. But half of them will not keep their settings. I save, come back the next day and have to try to figure out what patch I had playing on which track. Needless to say, a few times of that and .... forget it..... I was so excited when I saw the 7d update, I thought surely they fixed it this time..... not so much, same old thing......... Sony says it's something the VSTi's are doing.... Maybe so, but FL Studio, Cubase, Reaper, Orion and Project 5 do not have a problem with them.... only Acid. I actually only use Project5 now (gave up on everything and went back to it) but keep Acid for the instruments and effects (I like the Acid track effects....etc)... Anyway, nice list... but I hope you are not holding your breath...... By the way, I really like Acid (actually my fav) and it would be my only host.... but it is just too buggy.....

I tried to limit myself to a top ten list, but went over! ;) These are problems I run up against each and every time I go to use Acid Music Studio 7.0a, that really cripple productivity. Anything marked "diagnosis" I have referred to Sony, in the hope they look toward these things in future products/ etc.

I was wondering if everyone had these same crash and functionality issues? I would love to see a 7.0b for Acid Music Studio that dealt with most of these issues... or at least the crash bugs!

I am contemplating using software outside of Sony b/c of these issues. And learning VST programming lol!

#1
Seriousness: Minor
Date: Feb. 25, 2010
Description: I attempted to publish a 128kbs, 48kHz copy of “Search And Seizure”, a song I composed, and the “publish to web” option said “bitrate is too high”. And listed some terribly low bitrates, nothing over 58kbps sort of thing… This was my first time attempting to use this feature. I won’t use it again.
Diagnosis: Repair to make as useful as logging on to Acid Planet on your own allows, or delete the option

#2
Seriousness: Severe / System Critical / Soft Crash
Date: Ongoing
Description: Continuous crashes using a Korg R3 hardware synthesizer with a USB cable for MIDI on System 1 machine. Crashes are rare on my Athlon X2 5200+, but do happen occasionally, usually while shifting settings, or doing something in a way Acid hates. I was very annoyed that I had to buy another computer or a bunch of expensive MIDI hardware to get a hardware synth to work on a Pentium IV system. I almost gave up on Acid entirely over this one.
Diagnosis: update settings to be current with this synthesizer… perhaps update the MIDI refresh rate for slower systems.

#3
Seriousness: Major / Soft Crash
Date: Ongoing
Description: When an envelope is selected on the Acid player window problems occur. There are 2 major bugs, as I see it.

1) When a user selects any envelope (volume, panning, brightness, pitch, etc.) to change its position (modify how it plays back), while the “play bar” is going over that section of the envelope it will cause one or any combination of the following problems: 1) static and loss of accuracy in playback 2) the play bar to jump around on the computer 3) the program to lock up, and crash, usually quickly.

2) When an envelope is selected using the “envelope tool” at the top of the screen, and an area is selected in bold, the copy function does not work correctly. Selecting “copy” causes no problem, but when the target area is selected problems ensue. There are 2 bugs going on that I can tell.

-- 1) If the first node in the “selection aread” to be copied, is selected at the point where the “selection area” in colour begins, then when the selection is pasted random, and very useless results occur. Doing glitched-out things such as putting 10 minutes of silence, and then having the envelope appear long after the song should be completed! Or just not working in general by copying random parts of the selection, and erasing details of the envelope for the rest of the track. And “undo” will not help, as redoing the same thing will cause the same problem. Also on the off-chance that this does work, the first node will often not copy. Fortunately it has not affected other tracks so far, and has not crashed the system, or at least not frequently enough that I’ve been able to tell. I imagine using this “feature” while playing something on MIDI, or otherwise “stressing” the system would also have unpredictable effects such as crashing.
Temporary work around: moving the slection off the first node will alleviate the problem… should not have to do this, however. It appears to be an = bug: where the value somewhere in the innards of the computing works unless it is the same.

-- 2) The selected area may not copy correctly. Numerous times the envelope has copied into strange locations… because you can’t easily determine where the first node will appear it is somewhat useless, and time wasting for the user. This problem may be compounding the first.

VST/ VSTi support… where do I begin?

#4
Seriousness: Major / Minor
Date: Ongoing
Description: The VST / VSTis appear to load correctly in the software. However when I restart the machine, it has to reload every setting, and usually this takes 5 minutes or so to load correctly. I believe I had reported something similar earlier. I like having a lot of software toys available to me at once… so this is ongoing.

#5
Seriousness: Somewhat Major / Very Major
Date: Ongoing: All the time
Description: The REFX Vanguard plugin which I purchased the full version of from the manufacturer, has a tendency to lose settings at random. Also like many other VSTis the VSTi for the previous MIDI song channel automatically loads when a VSTi is selected for the first time in the VSTi selection window. This causes me to have to shut down the window, and restart another window every time I wish to add a new VSTi – which is completely abhorrent to me. I don’t know how this got past the beta testers!
My workaround is always saving settings: but this has its limits in usefulness.

#6
Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue
Date: Ongoing: All the time
Description: Two parts, based on audio clips on tracks:
1) Copying an audio clip between tracks creates a “media offline” error, almost every time. In this state the media sample will not play, although all the tracks are designed to be multi-sample. The workaround is saving the .acd file, and reloading completely… which causes things to load correctly. And it can be time-consuming if you have to save and load a 400MB .acd-zip!
2) Duplicating an audio clip to a new track, will often cause exactly the same “media offline” problem as above.

#7
Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue
Date: Ongoing: All the time
Description: Selecting multiple MIDI sections with different labels at once, causes odd, and unpredictable effects in copying.

#8
Seriousness: Minor / Major product efficiency issue
Date: Ongoing but infrequent
Description: Also saving MIDI tracks sometimes causes problems, as I have noticed, cut segments have moved around at odd times, causing tunes to glitch up the next time they are loaded. This happened to me with my song “Blumenkraft – Skinny Bitch [Depilation Remix”. There seems to be a lot of “undocumented features” when it comes to moving/slicing MIDI segments around a lot.

#9
Seriousness: Minor / Minor product efficiency issue, more an annoyance
Date: Ongoing
Description: Joining / cutting tracks has some problems. When a number of similarly labeled tracks are joined in the manner that they start out “Clip 1” followed by “Clip 2” alternating, for let’s say twenty beats with “Clip 3” at the end… will not be “joinable” into one loop at all easily. The result will be something like “Clip4” which looks like Clip 1 followed by Clip 2 once then a large gap without notes, and possibly Clip 3 on the end”… which is not that functional in my opinion. I think this can be easily fixed in future versions, so that separate clips can be added together. I do like the functionality of having the ability to modify multiple clips in many situations.

#10
Seriousness: Minor / Minor product efficiency issue
Date: Ongoing / somewhat rare occurance for me (not sure about all users)
Description: Ongoing / erratic
Copying “duplicate” tracks has some problems. When a number of similarly labeled tracks are copied together in the manner that they start out “Clip 1” followed by “Clip 2” alternating, for let’s say twenty beats with “Clip 3” at the end… will occasionally and intermittently cause problems, particularly if there is any spacing between the clips.

#11
Seriousness: Repetitive minor annoyance
Date: Ongoing but rare occurance
Description: It is difficult to rename MIDI tracks imported from another source. I do not believe you can change the MIDI segment names the way you normally can. This could be problematic for some people who want to make all of their work look 100% original when they have had ghost writers, or some such.

#12
Seriousness: Major
Date: Ongoing
Description: Bitrate is inconsistent with certain products. Certain VSTis record out, such MDA Delay differently than they play in live audio. I can have something resembling full audio spectrum efficiency when I play live, during editing… the moment I go to record I lose a lot of quality, particularly on certain VSTis, such as the REFX Vanguard. I don’t know why the bitrate is so crippled on this product. I may switch to another product over this issue eventually, as MP3s are tending to become better-than-CD-quality.

#13
Seriousness: Medium / Major product efficiency issue
Date: Ongoing
Description: Program settings get lost in Acid. Acid is prone to forget the default template for new songs. It also forgets to record MP3s in maximum quality, automatically switching down… which is annoying. It also forgets sometimes if you are saving a .acd file to copy the loops with it! Which can all be very annoying, since Acid seems to loose all of these settings every time you shut down, or crash.

#14
Seriousness: Extreme!
Date: Ongoing, always
Description: If a loop is of particularly short length, such as a drum, Acid will not quantize the sample together as it should, and instead you end up with a stuttering –style efect, that is usually very unpleasant to listen to. Also taking a drum loop that has a varying tempo into another song and modifying the tempo can cause a lot of issues. I generally find Beatmapper sorts this out, but not always.
Diagnosis: the software should be able to differentiate between blips of noise and open space when it fits itself into another tempo. I take it this was why the BPM rate was limited in Acid Music Studio.
Problematic work around: Sometimes it is just easier to beat slice the drums even if they are at the wrong temp, and force them to conform to the song. But they do not sound 100% perfect in many situations.