Likelihood to Recommend ACID Pro is great for electronic music, hip hop, and any loop-based music production such as for videogame soundtracks. It is great for audio-forward production, rather than MIDI-forward. If I were running a lot of hardware synthesizers, or even softsynths using MIDI, I would prefer another DAW since they often have better features, for instance in the shuffle department where
Ableton Live has hundreds of shuffles to choose from for MIDI instruments. However, I still prefer time-stretching sound quality in ACID Pro, as well as the lack of audio artifacts in looping. To this day,
Ableton Live has still not entirely figured out how to prevent clicks and pops at the beginning and end of loops, especially lower frequencies like basslines, without shaving an arbitrary amount of time off each side (.5 ms by default), resulting in lessened attack and audio artifacts during cuts. I feel that ACID Pro has a better audio engine for looping, although for many purposes this is not noticeable. Still, I prefer ACID Pro for wave-based (rather than MIDI-based) music that makes extensive use of loops.
Read full review Pro Tools is great for recording multiple different tracks of audio at the same time with live inserts that you can later remove/edit if they do not suit the track. It always makes a backup of any file you copy in which is essential when working with original copies of files for clients, and you can rest easy knowing that any changes made can be reverted without having to start over or having any work be lost. You can compile many different tracks for larger-scale projects and group or bus them together with ease. The software is very user-friendly for beginners and is a great tool overall for anyone looking to edit audio. The only instance it is less suited it would be if you're only making small audio edits with any adobe video software. Also if your business is not heavy on audio editing or recording it may be a costly investment.
Read full review Pros Audio sequencing: It's great for those who like to work primarily with waveforms, rather than MIDI. Loop-based sequencing: It's perfect for loop-based music. Envelopes: It's quite easy to do things like volume fades, crossfades, and other envelope-based audio manipulation of the waveform. Time-stretch: ACID Pro has nice time-stretch filters. Multitrack nondestructive sequencing: I like the UI for multitrack, and how easy it is to get back to a previous state through undo history, even copying something from a future state and then undoing a number of steps before pasting in the later content. Read full review Highly-customizable, application and UI (performance, function and appearance). Wide audio format compatibility; Ease of integrating audio of different formats, sample rates; equal ease of exporting. Broadest hardware compatibility. The ability to tweak performance parameters extends hardware's useful life. Read full review Cons MIDI: I don't think it is great for MIDI sequencing. There are much better piano rolls and software step sequencers out there. Built-in effects: ACID Pro has not kept up with competitors like Ableton Live, who licensed Cytomic's Glue Compression for version 9 of their software, an incredible-sounding plugin that would otherwise cost a pretty penny but is now included for free in Live. That being said, I haven't used it but I see they are making strides in this area, with new versions of ACID Pro including third-party licensed effects like Zynpatic STEM MAKER 2 out of the box for free. Live performance: ACID Pro still doesn't hold a candle to Ableton Live in this department. Improvising with loops: Despite recently added features like the ACID Morph Pads, the Chopper, and the revised Beatmapper, which allow MIDI triggering of parts of samples as well as creating new sounds using raw audio as an input, I feel that ACID Pro has a ways to go before they harness the improvisatory power you get with something like Stutter Edit, or the performance features of Ableton Live. Read full review Loop-Based Production - Pro Tools is still in the old world of audio recording where you're expected to record a track from live sources. It has less features aimed at production of loop-based music like electronic music and hiphop. Sample-Based Production - While you can sequence samples, you are expected to use MIDI to trigger the samples, for the most part. Of course, you can sequence them out without using MIDI to trigger a sampler plugin, but that's not the use case Pro Tools was designed for. Creative Ideation - Pro Tools expects you to figure out what you want to record first, and does not have tools for helping you produce or create the music. Read full review Usability This is a hard question - I'd give it a 10 for having so many options but a 5 for being user friendly - as it has so many options.
Read full review Support Rating ACID Pro was the first loop-based DAW I ever used, and I fell in love with it. I was an avid ACID Pro believer for many years, before making the switch to
Ableton Live as my primary DAW. Even still, I prefer the sound quality of ACID Pro in many cases.
Ableton Live just "sounds" like Ableton, and there are audio artifacts that annoy me. I have been able to work around many of them, but I still have a special place in my arsenal for ACID Pro and use it whenever the chance arises, typically for loop-based wave-heavy music that doesn't need to be performed live and doesn't have a strong reliance on MIDI sequencing.
Read full review The times I've had problems with Avid, they've responded within about 48 hours, and most of the time with a reasonable solution. More often than not, however, I've had to resort to forums to get answers, because when I'm having a problem with the software, I can't afford to wait 48 hours for a solution
Read full review Alternatives Considered Due to my history as an audio engineer and having worked at many studios over the years, I've been exposed to a wide range of DAWs from
Pro Tools , Cakewalk, and Nuendo to Reaper, Max/MSP/Jitter, and Processing. (These latter two are not really DAWs, per se, but rather systems that can be used for programming audio production — Reaper has features like this as well.) I point this out simply to say that I have experience with a wide range of DAWs and am fairly agnostic about them. I certainly have preferences. If I'm working with an indie rock band or a singer-songwriter, I like
Pro Tools , since it is an industry-standard. For hip hop or electronic music, I prefer
Ableton Live or ACID Pro, since they make working with loops so much easier, and I believe the sound fidelity is better. I choose ACID Pro specifically for loop-based music which almost entirely comes from waveforms rather than MIDI instruments (real or virtual). I find ACID Pro's MIDI functionality lacking, but the ease of sequencing and working with loops more than makes up for it.
Read full review As discussed above, these other products are likely better suited for home audio production, especially based on their integration of software instruments and their surface-level interface and tools. Pro Tools excels as a tool for professionals, who need to move audio along efficiently towards a polished form, especially in the context of vocal production
Read full review Return on Investment Positive: Easy to use. Up and running in minutes. Virtually no learning curve, just drag, and drop. Negative: Limited in its improvisatory and live performance. This has not made a negative impact on the business per se, but can be a creative block when you are trying to come up with a music bed or interstitial and want to experiment with mixing and matching different loops. There's no easy way to do this on the fly in ACID Pro, as there is with Ableton Live. Positive: ACID Pro now includes more effects than ever, ameliorating the need to purchase plugins. Read full review I actually finish projects, because once I set up templates it's basically plug-and-play. My customers enjoy my videos more now that the audio is better. I might spend too much money on plug-ins, haha. Read full review ScreenShots