• Custom labels for ASIO devices and ports let you customize ASIO driver ports with labels to match your configuration, rather than relying on the default driver name.
• Enhanced plug-in management will allow you to sort plug-ins into the various categories as well as renaming them. The process that scans your plug-ins has also been optimized so that they can be scanned faster.
• Cross-track event drag and drop now lets you simply cut, copy, or paste events across multiple tracks for even faster editing.
• New track, clip, and event switches including normalize, invert phase, and lock now include Normalize, Invert Phase, Mute and Lock. You can use switches to quickly normalize events and perform other processes from within the ACID Pro workspace.
• Additional software for professional music production and editing, including ACID Pro Effects Rack, powered by iZotope, Garritan Aria for ACID Pro Player, Submersible Music KitCore, and Native Instruments Guitar Combos. This is estimated at $500 dollars of additional bundled software that you can use in your productions.
While from a technical improvement standpoint, version 6 may have had an edge, ACID Pro 7 makes its mark from a foundation aspect on the end user experience and overall satisfaction. It feels like a full fledged professional DAW. That doesn't mean there were not technical enhancements to version 7 — everything in this version feels more responsive and optimized. This is especially true on a well built multi-core system.
Obviously, one of my favorite features of ACID Pro 7 is addition of the mixer. Sure prior versions had a simplistic mixer, but now you have a much more complete integrated view of all tracks and buses that let you control routing, inserts, and control mixdown. The input buses are also a treat giving you the ability to monitor input from external devices and more.
Then when you add the élastique Audio Timestretching, the enhanced Beatmapping, real-time rendering, track/clip/event switches, as well as all the add-on products, ACID Pro 7 a really must have upgrade. If you have never worked with a version of ACID Pro, then I think that you will be in for a treat. It is incredibly fun to work with, really easy to use, and continues to improve dramatically. I very highly recommend ACID Pro 7.
Article comments
1 - really?
I respect your review, and this isn't a personal attack, but I'm going to have to politely disagree, and this is why: I used Acid Pro for years, and stood by it from way back in the Sonic Foundry days. But once I started looking around at what the competition was bringing to the table, I regretted ever giving Sony a dime of my money. Acid Pro becomes incredibly unstable once you have a decent number of tracks (anything that would warrant the purchase of a "Pro" version of software). The routing is terrible, it is impossible to set up any kind of sidechaining anything to anything. This review should read "Sony finally figured out Acid Pro didn't have a mixer, and now add one like it's a feature, rather than a requirement of a DAW." lol. The "Acid FX" bundle are the same effects that were on the Acid Pro 5 disk, with an INTERFACE designed by Izotope... not a feature. The NI Guitar Combos are basically a demo version of Guitar Rig, who's full demo version (which includes the combos and more) can be downloaded for free from NI's website... not a feature. KitCore is pretty much in the same boat, but for DrumCore... Not a feature. The ARIA player is essentially a sampler that you can't load samples in unless you pay for them (can't even load your own drums into it, it must be out of a paid-library from ARIA); other DAWs incorporate samplers directly into the software with features like "slice audio to new midi track" which cuts the audio up and maps it directly into the sampler and then extracts the groove onto a midi track so that the sampler plays the midi track EXACTLY how the audio was played, enabling incredible editing options. Good luck using a vocoder or any kind of pitch correction, because MIDI cannot be routed to a VST. And the beatmapper is terrible, never ONCE in 5 YEARS of using it has it ever given me a whole number (78, 97), but instead it just ignores groove or humanization, and gives outrageous tempos (78.032, 96.743), which isn't even close to useful. I won't be a jerk and reference the names of any other products, but I will say that a consumer's money is much better spent on one of the leading DAWs: On MusicRadar.com's Top 10 DAWs, Acid Pro isn't even mentioned, with some "Music Studio" equivalents of other DAWs making the list instead of Acid PRO! Acid's got its uses, and it is INCREDIBLY easy to use, but they dug a hole for themselves when they put the "PRO" title on it: If you're going to do that, it needs to be capable of professional results, or at least capable of more than the competition's stripped down versions! For a beginner, Acid Pro is awesome. But what beginner is going to spend $300 on a product that a little research will tell them is inferior? Once Sony took over, it was all downhill from there. So like I said, I have to politely disagree. Much respect tho.