Sony Acid Music Studio 9 review

Music production is an inherently complex business. You might be able to take a great photo just by following your instincts, but music is besieged with rules and conventions across the composition, recording and mixing processes.

This poses some tough challenges for consumer music-production software developers. How do you design software that helps casual users get good results quickly, but still gives them enough free rein to experiment and express themselves? Most manage one or the other. The eJay series adopts a paint-by-numbers approach, while Cubase Elements provides its users with a blank canvas and leaves them to get on with it.

Sony Acid Music straddles the divide better than most. It’s delightfully easy to throw a track together simply by selecting a few sample loops and painting them onto the screen. There are 3,000 loops included, and they’re automatically stretched and tuned to match the project’s tempo and key. However, it also allows for some intricate editing, chopping samples into small fragments and rearranging and retuning them to add a bit of personal expression.

If you want to add a vocal or acoustic instrument, just plug in a microphone, set the level and hit record. Even after recording, it’s still possible to experiment with different tempos and keys, with the samples and live performances following any changes.

Sony Acid Music Studio 9’s MIDI editing facilities still lag behind rivals’ implementation

This sample montage approach was groundbreaking when Acid first appeared in the late 1990s, but modern music production software must also have a good selection of virtual instruments. Sadly, Acid’s handling of virtual instruments is relatively crude, with just a small selection of bundled sounds and clumsy MIDI editing facilities.

Acid Music 9 also supports 24-bit recording, which should provide extra headroom so that audio doesn’t accumulate rounding errors each time it’s processed. This was something previously reserved for the pricier Acid Pro.

Sadly, users may struggle to capitalise on this improvement, if they ever realise it’s there. While 24-bit, 192kHz support is listed in the online help, there’s no mention of how to change these settings, or why you’d want to do so. We eventually found them hidden behind a tab in the Project Properties dialog box, not among the Audio Device settings, where we’d expect to find them. The software was set to 16-bit by default; for most people, that’s where it’s likely to stay.

Acid Music’s sound quality is also hampered by a crude time-stretching and pitch-shifting algorithm that’s used whenever a sample is stretched or tuned to fit the project. As a result, gurgling artefacts appear when loops are stretched or retuned by anything more than a small amount. The software also includes a much higher quality algorithm but it’s only available for longer audio recordings rather than short samples. The software can be forced to treat a sample as if it were a live performance, but it’s a clumsy workaround.

AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

Another important update in this release is automation for VST effects and virtual instruments. This allows effect and instrument parameters to vary over time, which can breathe life into a performance or mix and is a crucial feature for any music-production software that wants to be taken seriously.

Effect automation is created by drawing envelopes onto the audio clips, but only after delving into the right-click menu and locating the parameters that you want to automate from a long list. Accessing automation envelopes for virtual instruments is even more convoluted. Even after parameters have been enabled in another obscurely located list, they don’t appear on the MIDI track that’s associated with the instrument, but instead, in among the bus tracks that are hidden by default.

Effect and instrument parameters can now be varied over time, but drawing envelopes isn’t as intuitive as recording knob and fader movements

The difficulty in finding these features is perhaps a surmountable setback, but as with the 24-bit support, they’re likely to be permanently hidden for a lot of people. Regardless, creating automation data by drawing curves isn’t nearly as quick or as intuitive as performing the changes in real time, as most other recording software allows. It’s also unfortunate that most of the bundled effects and instruments can’t be automated because they’re not VST format. You’ll need to locate some third-party effects and instruments to make the most of the automation features. Parameters that have been automated can still be adjusted using the normal plug-in controls, but any changes are instantly disregarded as soon as the mouse is released.

Other new features include Folder Tracks and Sections, both of which organise a project into chunks for easier management. Folder Tracks create a collapsible tree structure for tracks, and are useful for keeping on top of very large projects. Sections are blocks of time that can be moved and copied en masse, making it easy to repeat a chorus or try out new arrangement ideas. It’s also possible to monitor an incoming audio signal, complete with effects – a crucial feature for recording electric guitars with a virtual amp plug-in.

Acid’s key strength has always been its immediacy, but poor attention to detail is seeing that immediacy slowly diminishing. Meanwhile, its specialism for creating collages of samples doesn’t have the allure it once did. Acid Music has failed to move with the times with its basic handling of MIDI, virtual instruments and effects. Steinberg Sequel 3 is a better option, with a friendly interface and lots of off-the-shelf samples, but also a strong selection of virtual instrument sounds, superior audio fidelity and better mixing facilities.