Digital Home Thoughts: Sony's Acid Pro 5

Groovy
Another interesting feature of Acid Pro 5 is the Groove Tool (Figure 9). It acts essentially like a quantizing algorithm on loops, once again giving you the ability to extract the most potential out of your library.


Figure 9: The Groove Tool in action.

For example, in Figure 9, we've applied a Hard Swing groove to a drum loop. I've applied it to the entire track, but you can paint the groove however you like. Here is the original loop ta_drumloop_normal.mp3 (Size: 246.2 KB) versus the same track using the Hard Swing groove ta_drumloop_swing.mp3 (Size: 246.2 KB). While the change is a little on the sloppy side, the difference is quite noticeable.

Want to customize your Groove? Using the Groove Pool (Figure 10, you can do just that. Or you can use the Groove Pool just to see how the Groove Tool is going to affect your loop.


Figure 9: The Groove Pool allows you customize your grooves and view the inner workings of the Groove Tool.

Conclusions
While these are only a few of the new features found in Acid Pro 5, personally, I think even just these make the upgrade quite valuable. It would still be nice if you could open multiple projects in one session of Acid Pro, and expanded keyboard shortcuts could make Acid Pro 5 a great live mixing tool. All in all (even with the speed loss, which is manageable), I found Acid Pro 5 to be a great step forward in the Acid Pro line, and can't wait to see what comes next.