Hip Hop and Electronic Producers Rejoice, ACID Pro is Back and Better Than Ever
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.
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.
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.
Alternatives Considered
Ableton Live, Cubase and Avid Pro Tools
Other Software Used
Ableton Live, Cubase, Avid Pro Tools, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro