Acid Loops & Cakewalk
- Thread starter Fishmed
- Start date
AlChuck
Well-known member
Fishmed,
Hmmm... I never actually tried it, but I presume that the Acid loops are useable elsewhere. I think they are just WAV files with some tempo mapping stuff that ACID uses stored in the file header (they call this "acidizing" the file), and other applications would ignore... but I'm not sure.
As far as the advantages of using ACID Pro rather than Cakewalk to construct loop-based music -- well, there's no comparison. It's almost like building furniture with a small set of fundamental general tools -- hammer, saw, drill, file -- as compared to having a shop like Norm's on "New Yankee Workshop." Linking and layering loops in Cakewalk can certainly done but it's tedious trying to get tempos to match between one loop that was recorded at 110 BPM and another at 120 BPM... In ACID, all the tedious and hard stuff is done automatically, and you can get a set of loops working smoothly together in no time.
Of course, ACID Pro costs a fair bit of money, but considering it comes bundled with Sound Forge XP 4.5 and one of the Sound Forge FX plug-in sets (FX1, I think) makes it a better deal... then there's the "lite" version, ACID Music, which might do all you need, and is less than $75, I believe.
-AlChuck
Hmmm... I never actually tried it, but I presume that the Acid loops are useable elsewhere. I think they are just WAV files with some tempo mapping stuff that ACID uses stored in the file header (they call this "acidizing" the file), and other applications would ignore... but I'm not sure.
As far as the advantages of using ACID Pro rather than Cakewalk to construct loop-based music -- well, there's no comparison. It's almost like building furniture with a small set of fundamental general tools -- hammer, saw, drill, file -- as compared to having a shop like Norm's on "New Yankee Workshop." Linking and layering loops in Cakewalk can certainly done but it's tedious trying to get tempos to match between one loop that was recorded at 110 BPM and another at 120 BPM... In ACID, all the tedious and hard stuff is done automatically, and you can get a set of loops working smoothly together in no time.
Of course, ACID Pro costs a fair bit of money, but considering it comes bundled with Sound Forge XP 4.5 and one of the Sound Forge FX plug-in sets (FX1, I think) makes it a better deal... then there's the "lite" version, ACID Music, which might do all you need, and is less than $75, I believe.
-AlChuck
AlChuck
Well-known member
Fishmed,
You asked:
(1) Can you sequence MIDI with Acid Pro? I think so -- haven't tried it yet.
(2) Can you use wav files with different tempos? (How does it handle tempos?)
I believe what's going on is, it stretches them -- applies a transform to change the absolute length of the loop without changing (too much, anyway) the pitch or sound quality of the loop. Same thing you would have to do by hand in Cakewalk or whatever. Probably doesn't work too well if the loop is significantly faster or slower than the tempo it's working with...
-AlChuck
You asked:
(1) Can you sequence MIDI with Acid Pro? I think so -- haven't tried it yet.
(2) Can you use wav files with different tempos? (How does it handle tempos?)
I believe what's going on is, it stretches them -- applies a transform to change the absolute length of the loop without changing (too much, anyway) the pitch or sound quality of the loop. Same thing you would have to do by hand in Cakewalk or whatever. Probably doesn't work too well if the loop is significantly faster or slower than the tempo it's working with...
-AlChuck
AlChuck
Well-known member
Fishmed,
Follow-ups now that I've had a chance to look...
Acid Pro will generate MIDI sync, and can also be controller from other applications (like Cakewalk) via MIDI with their Virtual MIDI router utility.
Cakewalk does indeed open Acid loop WAVs, no problem.
I spent a terrific evening working on a project with ACID (I've only had it for a month or so). I'd laid down the basic parts a few days ago, and today I recorded some guitar parts, chopped them up into small loop-bits, used some of the bits and also some straight start-to-finish recording, cleaned up the audio I recorded, added some volume envelopes to fade the ending, moved some stuff around in stereo with pan envelopes... what a blast!
-AlChuck
Follow-ups now that I've had a chance to look...
Acid Pro will generate MIDI sync, and can also be controller from other applications (like Cakewalk) via MIDI with their Virtual MIDI router utility.
Cakewalk does indeed open Acid loop WAVs, no problem.
I spent a terrific evening working on a project with ACID (I've only had it for a month or so). I'd laid down the basic parts a few days ago, and today I recorded some guitar parts, chopped them up into small loop-bits, used some of the bits and also some straight start-to-finish recording, cleaned up the audio I recorded, added some volume envelopes to fade the ending, moved some stuff around in stereo with pan envelopes... what a blast!
-AlChuck