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Since the arrival of GarageBand on the Mac, the PC’s established eJay and Magix Music Studio franchises have begun to look increasingly stale. Thankfully, Acoustica has a little something up its sleeve in the shape of Mixcraft 4, an audio/ MIDI sequencer that bears more than a passing resemblance to Apple’s easy-to-use music production software.

Mixcraft 4 has clearly been influenced by GarageBand in terms of both visual appearance and functionality. Everything in the program is displayed in a single screen, the majority of which is taken up with the Sound Workspace.

This is where the software’s audio and virtual instrument/MIDI tracks are located, which work pretty much as you’d expect. Plug-ins in VST and DirectX formats are supported.

MIDI and virtual instrument support is the single biggest new feature in Mixcraft 4. You can record and play back MIDI data, and there’s an all-new piano roll editor. It’s got the standard features – quantise, snap-to-grid, MIDI CC lanes – and it’s a doddle to use.

One drawback, however, is that it you can’t control VST parameters directly from it, so this would be a nice addition for an update.

Plug-ins

Virtual instrument tracks can be routed to play VSTi format plug-ins, a selection of which is provided with the software. These include MinimogueVA and Impulse (two freeware virtual analogue synths), VB3 Organ (a cutdown version of the commercial VB3 instrument from MrRay creators Soundfonts.it), a full complement of General MIDI sounds, and a couple of big sampled grand pianos.

As MinimogueVA and Impulse can be downloaded for free from the net, their presence doesn’t add any monetary value to the package as such, although having them ready and waiting when you load the program up is nice, and the relatively advanced preset sound system means you can load up multi-layered, key-zoned instrument patches complete with VST effects in a manner similar to Cubase’s track presets. Very clever!

VB3 Organ is exclusive to Mixcraft 4, but it’s hardly going to set the world alight with its middling B3 emulation. The General MIDI sounds (aka Acoustica Instruments), however, are surprisingly good. These kinds of sounds are always useful, especially for those who are more interested in making more ‘traditional’ music, as opposed to synth-centric electronic pieces.

As well as the smattering of instruments, you also get a selection of bundled VST effects, which includes the freeware Kjaerhus Classic series, a couple of Voxengo’s freeware plug-ins (a rebadged Boogex amp sim and SPAN spectral analyser), and a selection of Acoustica’s own effects, such as Chorus, Compressor and Distortion.

Again, those who are already au fait with the world of free software might not see the value in these effects, but they’re utilised well in some of the preset instrument effect chains, and are eminently usable in their own right.

Indeed, these particular devices are permanent fixtures in the plug-ins folders of many musicians, and we can’t knock Acoustica for their approach, as presumably this has enabled them to invest more development resources in the core application that is Mixcraft.