Time out for Newbie Acid question.

[BobHaymond]

When starting something as complex as home recording one is bound to make stupid moves. I need yawl to explain one of mine to me. I have set up a DAW, 2 mics, good preamp, a 1010, and Sonar XL. The learning curve so far has been steep just getting the physical stuff. Now learning Sonar looks formidable.

NOW, one late night on some post, somebody said something that convinced me that I absolutely needed Acid-=-I found what I thought was a reasonable buy and got Acid Pro 3.0. I don't have the foggiest notion as to what one can do wit it!! If sombody out there can get to this level I'd like to know two things: i) what will Acid accomplish ii) given that I am just starting Sonar how far down the pike would I begin to integrate Acid?

Thanx for any help.

Bob Haymond
Clemson, SC

[AlChuck]

Well, ACID 3 is a great application, but much of what it does you can do in SONAR, too. I have both, too, but because I'd used ACID 2.0 back when Cakewalk Pro Audio did not have looping tools, and the upgrade prices made it attractive enough to upgrade even though SONAR now gives me those features as well. If I was just buying them from the ground up, I'd probably have been pretty happy with just SONAR.

But the ACID interface is great, it's very easy to use, so since you already bought it, use it! You might love it.

[BobHaymond]

AC: If you have more time for evangelism, How short can you tell me what a "loop" is?? Of course the word is all over the place but NOBODY says what it (one) is! BH

[AlChuck]

A loop is simply a digital audio sample that is used repetitively by playing it over and over. For example, a four-bar drum pattern. Or anything used this way.

The tricky thing is getting many of them to work together in a tempo-based piece, because the tempos from their sources are almost never identically the same. ACID (and SONAR) work by intelligently adjusting the length of the various samples until they all begin and end together. Previously you had to do it by yourself by examining the waveforms and strethcing or shrinking their durations manually -- very tedious.

[Evangelion]

Yo! I started out with acid and jumped straight into Vegas pro. Acid is nice but you can do all of the same things in Vegas and vegas is much more versitile (sp).

Anyway, for me! Vegas is phat, know doubt about it. It probably is one of the best multitrack softwares around. Where Acid ends, Vegas begins. That's my experience with it!!!