BIOS: Technology Means Business

Sony Media Software has announced ACID Pro 6 software, a significant upgrade to its professional music creation and production application.

This new release includes several major development enhancements to the recording and MIDI capabilities of the program, transforming it into a full-featured professional digital audio and MIDI workstation. ACID Pro 6 software is expected to be available in March at an MSRP of $499 (£299).

ACID Pro 6 software continues to provide the powerful loop-based music creation tools that it’s been well known for since 1998, but now provides you with a multitrack recording and MIDI sequencing environment that should appeal to creative professionals and audio engineers looking to record, produce and mix in ACID software’s platform.

‘Since its launch nearly 10 years ago, ACID software has redefined the way music is produced by allowing users to arrange loop-based segments that matched in tempo and pitch. Our newly enhanced digital music workstation technology introduces the optimal creative platform for music composition, recording and mixing by combining our multitrack audio technologies with comprehensive inline MIDI editing and sequencing,’ said Dave Chaimson, vice president of marketing, Sony Media Software.

Starting with a new high-performance multi-threaded audio engine, Sony reengineered ACID Pro 6 software to perform faster and more efficiently not only on dual-core and multiprocessor systems, but also on single-CPU machines providing more efficient track buffering for higher performance at lower latencies.

No longer simply a loop-based production tool, this application moves into the category of full-featured DAW’s by combining our highly-decorated ACID music creation technologies, superior 24-bit/192kHz audio support, with new MIDI editing and workflow capabilities that promise to change the way in which engineers, producers, and musicians will create, produce and mix audio.

Some new key features include the ability to simultaneously record multiple tracks of audio and MIDI into the ACID timeline through a variety of methods, including step recording, punch in/out, continuous looping and more. You can also layout multiple media files per track, including one-shots, Beatmapped events, loops and disk-based files with new automatic crossfade capabilities.

MIDI data can be manipulated directly on the ACID timeline, using either a piano roll or a drum grid interface. You can edit all note position, velocity, pitch bend, and controller information using a visual approach in the main multitrack interface. ACID Pro 6 also provides processing of MIDI data directly on the timeline, including quantisation, swing, editing of velocity values, event duration changes, and more.

Using automation envelopes, ACID Pro 6 provides increased mixing flexibility for VST instrument parameters, and the Drum Map Editor provides an intuitive way to create custom Drum Map templates, to make working in the Drum Grid even easier. The software now provides for the creation of project sections that lets you more efficiently rearrange time-based segments of audio and MIDI events located across multiple tracks.

Finally, ACID Pro 6 software allows for hands-on mixing using external hardware control surfaces - control record, transport, envelopes, faders, mutes, solos, pans, and effects automation. It also includes native support for the Mackie Control Universal, however the generic control interface option allows user-customisable mapping of up to five generic control surfaces. The new multitrack workflow also provides you with the ability to monitor audio signals with real-time track effect DSP during recording sessions.

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