Fooling Acid Pro 3 . . .

[FilthyK]

Hello! I am new to this board, so be gentle please.

I started my newbie, DAW-user life back in May with copies of Acid Pro 3, Sound Forge 5 and Fruity Loops 3. Since I am completely new to DAW, and not much of a techie either, I started out slow and recorded a bunch of loops and one-shots into SF to get the hang of top-n-tailing, compressing, levelling, etc. SF 5 is a great app, completely stable (after 1 minor registry fix from the SoFo crew) and I have no desire to upgrade or use anything else for sampling and mastering.

I moved on to FLoops to hone my skills at making noise, and I have chosen it to be my designated note-sequencer and virtual instrument player.

So far, so good, but now I step back and look at Acid Pro 3 for loop-arranging. It has a couple of "deficiencies" AFAIK . . .

1) No real-time fx monitoring of external input. I can get around this with Xlutop Chainer, a $60 VST(i) engine. I haven't actually run it and recorded in Acid at the same time, but I think it will work okay.

2) No odd time sig handling. This is my real hanging point for what is considered to be possibly the best and most stable loop-arranger to date. My line of reasoning says you can "trick" Acid 3 by making a drum riff that is in, say, 5/4, and then matching all the rest of your tracks to it. IOW, if a riff is 3.7 seconds long, then Acid can be set at 3.7 seconds per bar, right? The only problem I could foresee would be in time-stretching, since it would only stretch in 4/4. Not a problem for someone making all their own loops, right?

It would be a shame to have to buy Sonar 2, because it is running around $200 for the upgrade offer. Also, when I have messed with the Sonar demo and the free Plasma XP I got from the CM cover CD, I get sound engine failures, crashes, and other strangeness from both of them. Having to spend time relearning a new app is not appealing to me, either. And personally, I would rather spend my money on some more high-quality, Sonic Implants, soundfonts . . . and some VSTi's, too.

I have considered the Acid Pro 4 upgrade, but it seems to be a somewhat incomplete, half-bastardized piece of 'ware that is still in beta-testing. I find it odd that it runs DX fx, VST instruments, and has ASIO drivers. I would think they'd have gone towards DX instruments and WDM drivers.

So, can anyone enlighten me on the 2 item above?

Thanks . . .