Acid Pro (often stylized ACID) is a professional

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integr ...

(DAW) software program currently developed by Magix Software. It was originally called Acid pH1 and published by

Sonic Foundry Sonic Foundry (NASDAQ:SOFO) produces software for distance learning and corporate communications. Sonic Foundry, Inc. was founded in 1991 and is headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin, and is known for originally developing Vegas Pro and Sound Forge ...

, later by

Sony Creative Software Sony Creative Software is an American software company that develops various media software suites. Sony Creative Software was created in a 2003 deal with Madison-based media company Sonic Foundry in which it acquired its desktop product line, ...

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 MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

ASIO ''Asio'' is a genus of typical owls, or true owls, in the family Strigidae. This group has representatives over most of the planet, and the short-eared owl is one of the most widespread of all bird species, breeding in Europe, Asia, North and ...

, VST, 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

5.1 surround sound 5.1 surround sound ("five-point one") is the common name for surround sound audio systems. 5.1 is the most commonly used layout in home theatres. It uses five full bandwidth channels and one low-frequency effects channel (the "point one"). Dolb ...

support.

History

Acid was first launched in 1998, as Acid pH1, by

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th ...

. It was a

loop Loop or LOOP may refer to: Brands and enterprises * Loop (mobile), a Bulgarian virtual network operator and co-founder of Loop Live * Loop, clothing, a company founded by Carlos Vasquez in the 1990s and worn by Digable Planets * Loop Mobile, an ...

-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 Co ...

, 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 Sony Pictures Digital (previously known as Columbia TriStar Interactive, Sony Pictures Interactive Network, and Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment) is a subsidiary of Sony Group Corporation. Operating under the trade name Sony Pictures Digital ...

in July 2003; the merger resulted in the new

division. Sony's Acid Pro 6 (released in the third quarter of 2006) introduced a full-digital audio workstation that also included

and multitrack audio recording with full support for

computer-audio and VST 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 re ...

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 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...

; 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 macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

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 audio file, which can be created using an audio-editing tool such as

Sound Forge Sound Forge (formerly known as Sonic Foundry Sound Forge, and later as Sony Sound Forge) is a digital audio editing suite by Magix Software GmbH, which is aimed at the professional and semi-professional markets. There are two versions of Sound F ...

. The technology was created in 1998 for

'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. It was acquired by Singaporean music company BandLab Technologies and renamed Cakewalk by BandLab. Notable fe ...

(calling it Groove Clips), and

Cubase Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-dow ...

(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