ACID Pro

ACID Pro is one of the most powerful digital audio workstations available on the market today. It provides a professional and complex post-production environment that enhances creativity and workflow.

In simple words, it is a well-rounded audio editor which allows you to create, record, mix, and organize audio files. One special feature that’s proprietary to ACID Pro is the Acid Loops technology. ACID Pro currently offers over 3.000 such loops that are characterized by amazing time-stretching and pitch-shifting metadata in order to produce works of art.

ACID Pro is aimed at musicians and generally speaking, professional users and as such, its requirements are not of ordinary nature, neither is its usage. The user interface is populated with all sorts of buttons and panels that only an experimented and trained eyes would immediately recognize and associate with their adjacent functions.

Nonetheless, you should know that, especially for beginners, the application features a collection of interactive tutorials that can teach you how to accomplish certain tasks.

It is possible to record and edit multiple tracks (like a certain type of musical instrument on each track), so that you achieve results that will be perceived as extraordinary by the spectator. In addition to that, you can record your own vocals with the help of a microphone, and save them with any audio file extension.

The import capabilities are quite impressive, as the utility supports a pretty long list of formats, including AIFF, MP4, SWF, ASF, WMA, WMV, AAC, 3GP, MP2, FLAC, MPG and OGG, while export is possible using fewer file types, such as AA3, AIF, FLAC, MP3, MP4, OGG, PCA and WMA.

ACID Pro also features an impressive multimedia manager which allows you to organize and tag audio files, thus making searches more efficient. It is possible to view the waveform of any audio track in the main window, zoom in and out so that you can work on details or the bigger picture.

You can add points, apply multiple types of fades, show or hide a time ruler, add markers and change key, tempo (BMP), transition type and time signature. A metronome is available for use, while you can also generate a MIDI time code or clock, take advantage of a map editor, reset all MIDI ports and remove all the unused clips.

Last but not least, results can be rendered to a new track with custom properties (e.g. format, sample rate, bit depth, channels etc.) while you can also burn songs directly to an audio CD with just a click of the button and user-defined speed.

In conclusion, ACID Pro is one of the most straightforward audio processing applications that facilitates song composition and recording, while providing a professional and comprehensive working environment.

It might put a strain on your computer’s performance, especially during the rendering process, yet this is to be expected from such a powerful application. The response time is good and there are sufficient options to keep you glued to your PC for quite a while. We did not come across any freezes, errors or bugs.