Subject:Recording help.

Posted by: richedie

Date:12/21/2002 5:12:11 PM

Hello all!

I just got Acid Pro 4.0 and Sound Forge 6.0 but it seems difficult at first glance. I am in the process of setting up my Johnson J-Station and M-Audio card for recording. Does anyone know if there are speacial settings I will need to configure to enable my card to work with the software and to be able to record with SPDIF?

Can I edir in Acid? Or do I have to use Sound Forge for that? I would mostly be recoring multi track projects with guitar, bass and drums....also maybe some synth.

Does the Acid pro software come with any drums tracks or samples? I can't seem to either find them or enable them.

Thanks so much,
Rich

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:12/21/2002 6:03:27 PM

You can do some minor editing in ACID, and it's quite powerful for mixing. I do have a question for you though: are you planning on working with loops and midi or are you primarily only recording voices/instruments? If you're looking primarily for a multitrack recording program, you should consider Vegas instead of ACID. Vegas is a very powerful and capable multitrack audio editor, whereas ACID is intended for creating music by building up loops. Vegas lets you record multiple tracks simultaneously; ACID is limited to single track at a time recording. Vegas handles long files much better than ACID does; ACID is optimized for short loops.

If ACID was a very recent purchase for you, you might be able to exchange it for Vegas instead.

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: richedie

Date:12/21/2002 7:02:43 PM

Thanks, I am not sure who makes Vegas. Is it also a sonicfoundry product?

I would be most interested in recording guitar, bass, drums, and maybe keyboards. I am not positive what is meant by loops. :( If that tells you anything.

I also would love something that comes with drums samples, etc or has the ability for free plugins.

Thanks for the help.

Rich

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: richedie

Date:12/21/2002 7:05:17 PM

I read up on Vegas on the site but it says it is Video editing software??

I am noe thinking of maybe another companies software.

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: Rednroll

Date:12/21/2002 7:42:23 PM

Read farther, Vegas is a video editing piece of software, but was first and far most a multi-track recording and editing piece of software. I use it for audio only.

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:12/21/2002 8:41:53 PM

Hi Rich,

Will you want to record guitar, bass, drums, etc. all at the same time? You'll need multitracking software like Vegas to do that. (Vegas, though it's coined as a video editor, it's also a full-blown multitracker for audio; you don't have to touch video if you don't want to.)

When recording via S/PDIF on the J-Station, be sure that the M-Audio soundcard you're using slaves itself to the J-Station at the appropriate sample rate. If you have one of the Delta series cards, this is done under the "Hardware Settings" tab of the Delta Control Panel. I'm pretty sure the J-Station outputs at 44.1 kHz, so use that sample rate.

Loops are (usually) short snippets of audio designed to play over and over again during the course of a project. There are different track types in ACID as well, like Beatmapped, which are disk-based and playback from your hard drive, and One-shots, which are designed to play only once in any given event and will playback from RAM or your hard drive based upon the length of the audio.

You can basically layer tracks one by one in ACID, but note that ACID was not designed to play a lot of disk-based tracks; its forte is looping. You'll probably get away with 4-5 tracks, more depending on the speed and configuration of your system. For that reason, I believe ACID is great for those that use the "phrase" approach to composing projects. (e.g., a track that contains the guitar work for a verse in a project, another track that contains the guitar work for a chorus, etc.)

You can use Sound Forge 6.0 to create tracks for use with ACID from scratch, or edit audio externally in Sound Forge from ACID. (I do the latter a lot for custom loops just to tweak the audio.) It's all up to you.

Both ACID and Sound Forge come with a lot of creative effects to use. (They basically use the same effects.) One free DirectX plug-in I can think of that you can pick up is Frohmage. Pick it up at Ohm Force. (Registration is required to actually pick up Frohmage, but it's free.)

One more thing: You can use ACID 4.0 to program a drum sequence just by bringing in One-shots and painting them across the timeline. I can email you a sample project if you'd like to see this in action. Email me here.

HTH,
Iacobus

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: richedie

Date:12/22/2002 10:39:18 AM

Thanks so much,

So would I also need sound forge to edit? Or could I do everything in Vegas and does it include drum sequences, etc? I'll read up on it!

A friend of mine mentioned he uses Acid Pro but can only record 1 track at a time, but many of his songs are up to 30-40 tracks. This is confusing.

I guess with Acid I would have to lay down the guitar tracks and then try to find drums to fit it and add that track. ??

Programing a drum sequesnce with one shots? Is that a Vegas and Acid feature?

Thanks,
Rich

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: richedie

Date:12/22/2002 10:56:51 AM

Thanks so much,

So would I also need sound forge to edit? Or could I do everything in Vegas and does it include drum sequences, etc? I'll read up on it! It seems like Vegas is more for editing, not recording?

A friend of mine mentioned he uses Acid Pro but can only record 1 track at a time, but many of his songs are up to 30-40 tracks. This is confusing.

I guess with Acid I would have to lay down the guitar tracks and then try to find drums to fit it and add that track. ??

Programing a drum sequesnce with one shots? Is that a Vegas and Acid feature?

I guess I am just a little confused on what I would need by sonicfoundry to get the job done. I see there is also Acid music 3.0, plus I see a lot of plugins or one shots? Acid music loops and beats? Man, this is confusing.

Subject:RE: Recording help.

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:12/23/2002 2:07:43 PM

Programming a drum sequence is an ACID feature. (But it's not touted as such.)

Plug-ins are effects-based, which means you can apply them to your tracks in either ACID or Vegas. You basically can add the plug-in effect at the track level, or use a track envelope to apply the effect over time.

Loops, One-shots and Beatmapped tracks all fall under the general category of loops where ACID is concerned.

(I answered the rest of your questions via email. :) )

HTH,
Iacobus