At the time of writing, Humble Bundle is hosting a cracking deal for a bunch of really cool audio and music production software — it's on for three and a bit more days as I type this.
The highlight of this package is, for me, ACID Pro 7, the not-quite latest version of a piece of software I used to absolutely love using. Originally published by Sonic Foundry, who was later absorbed into the Sony empire, the software is now published under the Magix brand alongside a number of other former Sony creative packages including the well-regarded Vegas video editor.
ACID, in its various incarnations, is what is known as a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. That's a fancy term for a software package that facilitates the production of music using MIDI, recorded audio or a combination of both. A typical DAW incorporates the ability to both record and arrange MIDI and audio sequences, then output the resulting mix to a final file that can then be burnt to CD if you're stuck in the '90s like I am, or turned into a standalone audio file if you're a normal person.
ACID's strength has always been in its audio handling; the earlier versions of the software, if I remember correctly, didn't do anything with MIDI at all, meaning they were primarily useful if you were interested in sequencing samples. If you ever had a play with the eJay software that first appeared in the late '90s, the earliest versions of ACID provided a step up from that, with a much fuller suite of features for manipulating samples in various ways, including pitch-shifting, time-stretching, adding real-time effects and all manner of other exciting things.
Despite its added complexity over more "casual" solutions such as eJay, another real strength of ACID has always been its accessibility and flexibility. There is a lot that the software can do if you know your way around a DAW, but at the same time it's not so daunting that a beginner can't put something together remarkably quickly. At its heart, ACID is a drag-and-drop program — drag a sample from the bin at the bottom into the timeline, and voila, you're on your way to producing the next floor-filler at Kaos. Maybe not. (I'm not sure Kaos is even still there.)
Today, I acquired a new SSD for my computer intended primarily for media projects, so my video editing stuff will be on there rather than cluttering my main system SSD from now on. I picked up the ACID bundle from Humble, and have also found a good 30+ CD-ROMs filled with samples that I had from the early '00s, mostly published under the eJay branding, as it happens.
I haven't sat down for a fiddle with ACID Pro 7 as yet, but having copied most of those CDs (the ones that have survived, anyway — a few of them have become unreadable) to my current system, I'm looking forward to bashing out some new silliness. Making ridiculous tracks with ACID helped keep me sane in 2003 while I was training to be a teacher, and even earlier than that was a highlight of some time I spent with my school friends.
I'm looking forward to rekindling those feelings of creativity and joy that this software used to bring me — and to the fact that these sample CDs I have are now so old that they probably now qualify as being "cool" again. Sweet.
Will I share any of my creations? Hmm. We'll see! 🙂
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