Acid Pro (often stylized ACID) is a professional digital audio workstation (DAW) software program currently developed by Magix Software. It was originally called Acid pH1 and published by Sonic Foundry, later by Sony Creative Software as Acid Pro, and since spring 2018 by Magix as both Acid Pro and a simplified version, Acid Music Studio. Acid Pro 8 (the current version ) supports 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, and has MIDI, ASIO,

VST VST may refer to: * Vancouver School of Theology, a theological graduate school in British Columbia, Canada * VST, Stockholm Västerås Airport in Sweden (IATA airport code) * Vehicle safety technology * Virtual Studio Technology, Steinberg's stand ...

, VST3,

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

Audio, and

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support.

History

Acid was first launched in 1998, as Acid pH1, by Sonic Foundry in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a

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-based

music sequencer A music sequencer (or audio sequencer or simply sequencer) is a device or application software that can record, edit, or play back music, by handling note and performance information in several forms, typically CV/Gate, MIDI, or Open Sound Cont ...

, in which Acid Loop files could be simply drag-and-dropped then automatically adjust to the tempo and key of a song with virtually no sonic degradation. A website for budding musicians using Acid technology was set up, named AcidPlanet.com. The software became very popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s among composers, producers, and DJs interested in quickly creating beats, music textures, or complete compositions and orchestrations, that would work with virtually any tempo or key signature. Sonic Foundry sold its Acid, Vegas, Sound Forge, CD Architect, Siren, VideoFactory, ScreenBlast, and Batch Converter product lines to Sony Pictures Digital in July 2003; the merger resulted in the new Sony Creative Software division. Sony's Acid Pro 6 (released in the third quarter of 2006) introduced a full-digital audio workstation that also included MIDI and multitrack audio recording with full support for ASIO computer-audio and

synthesizer-plugin standards. On May 20, 2016, German company Magix Software GmbH announced they had acquired the majority of the products in the Sony Creative Software portfolio. These include Acid Pro, Vegas Pro, Movie Studio, and Sound Forge Pro. Acid Pro 8, the first version since Magix's acquisition, was announced on January 21, 2018 and released in spring 2018. The update came with new modern features including an enhanced interface, support for 64-bit, additional samples,

VST3 Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional rec ...

support, over 20

audio effects, the ability to mix in

, and new features named Media Manager, BeatMapper, and Chopper. In one version or another, Acid Pro runs on PCs with all versions of Microsoft Windows since Windows 2000; Acid Pro 8 requires

Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...

or later. Versions do not exist for macOS or Linux.

Acid Loops

''Acid Loop'' (trademark), also ''Acidized'' or ''Acidified loop'' (generic terms), refers to a sound clip which can be repeated and transposed to form a song with minimal manual adjustment. Acidized loops contain tempo and key information, so that Acid can properly time-stretch and pitch-shift the clip to fit into an existing track structure. An Acidized loop is a specially prepared

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

audio file, which can be created using an audio-editing tool such as Sound Forge. The technology was created in 1998 for Sonic Foundry's original Acid pH1 software. Sony and Magix later sold series of Acidized loop sample CDs to be used with Acid Pro, as have various third-party companies. Since then, this looping technique has been adopted by the majority of other digital audio workstations on the market, sometimes with competing brand names for the feature, such as

Cakewalk Sonar Sonar was a digital audio workstation created by the former Boston, Massachusetts-based music production software company Cakewalk (company), Cakewalk. It was acquired by Singaporean music company BandLab Technologies and renamed Cakewalk by B ...

(calling it Groove Clips), and Cubase (calling it Audio Warp). Many DAWs can also directly support Acidized loops intended for use in Acid Pro.

Notable users

* Halley Labs

Other versions

* Acid Music Studio is a simplified, lower-cost version of Acid Pro. The latest version is Acid Music Studio 11.

References

External links