Digital Home Thoughts: Sony's Acid Pro 5

The Laughter and Tears Behind Loop Management
In an attempt to help you make better use of your entire loop library, Sony included a new Media Manager in this most recent release (Figure 4). Running Microsoft SQL, the Media Manager (after some configuration) keeps track of your existing loops and can even help you find loops from Sony's purchasable library online.


Figure 4: The new Media Manager interface.

Type in your search criteria, and the Media Manager finds those loops with the text, tag, or details you're looking for (Figure 5). You can also create your own set of custom tags to make searching even easier. The only problem is, it doesn't run properly on one of my PCs, and when it does run correctly on my laptop, it bogs the system down immensely.


Figure 5: Enter your search criteria and easily find results.

You can disable the Media Manager (found under Options, Preferences, and at the bottom of the General tab) to speed things up a bit, but a restart is required to take effect. Personally, I would rather see this as a separate module that you could run as needed. I like the functionality, but not the constant speed loss.

Still Tracking?
Track color customization isn't the only thing new on the track side of Acid Pro 5. There's also a new metronome (Figure 6), real-time loop reversal (Figure 7), and track folders (Figure 8).


Figure 6: The metronome runs in real-time and can be used with loop and MIDI tracks.


Figure 7: The quick and easy real-time reverse functionality can give loops new life.


Figure 8: Create a folder and start dropping in tracks, thus clearing up track clutter.