MusicRadar

Acid's new mixer gives you a good project overview.

View in gallery

Sony has announced details of Acid Pro 7, the latest version of the company's well-established DAW. There seems to be plenty of substance to this update, which brings compatibility with Windows Vista.

Heading the new features list is the Audio and MIDI mixing console, a mixer-style window that lets you view and control all of your tracks and busses. This can be customised to suit your requirements.

Also on the menu is MIDI Track Freeze, a function that many of Acid's rivals have had for a while now. This enables you to render soft synth parts to audio to free up CPU power.

Real-time rendering, meanwhile, lets you incorporate live inputs from external sources, while input busses give you more control over input routing. There's also enhanced timestretching and pitchshifting – both Acid specialities – via the elastique algorithm from Zplane.

In related news, the enhanced Beatmapping facility can handle songs with varying tempi and time signatures, and you can also implement tempo changes into any project.

Finally, there's expanded audio format support: you can now import and export FLAC, AAC, AC-3 Studio and MPEG-2 content.

Acid Pro 7 ships with an extensive bonus software bundle, 3000 music loops and 1000 MIDI files. It'll be available in November for $400.

You'll find full spec details on the Sony website.