Acid Music Studio 8: Audio & MIDI Power

Sony's new Acid Music Studio 8 comes with an impressive amount of power for such an inexpensive audio application. A new piano instrument and a tube guitar amp simulator have been added, as well as movie import mix-to-picture capabilities. In this post I'll give you an idea of what's possible with this software, and show you a list of features now included in Acid Music Studio 8 that were previously only available in Acid Pro.

Considering its ultra-low $65 price tag, Sony's Acid Music Studio 8 gives you a lot of music-making muscle for Windows computers running XP, Vista and Windows 7 (Mac OS X is not supported). Just plug a microphone into the mic input on your computer (or use an audio interface to use multiple professional mics) and you can be multitracking and composing music right away.

Acid Music Studio 8 comes with a complete set of audio effects (reverb, delay, chorus, distortion, etc.). New to version 8 is the TruePianos Amber Lite soft synth. This is a full-blown acoustic piano instrument that enables you to tweak the sound to your liking. With the addition of a USB controller keyboard, you can play and perform with it just like a real piano. Guitar players will love the included Studio Devil British Valve Custom guitar amp simulation. It instantly turns your computer into a classic sounding guitar amplifier.

If video is your thing, you can use Acid Music Studio 8 to create soundtracks for your projects. It's compatible with movie files made in Vegas Movie Studio HD, and many other video formats (QuickTime, WMV, etc.). You can utilize all of the audio, MIDI and editing tools that Acid Music Studio 8 has to offer, and tap into the world of DirectX plug-ins and VSTi instruments. When your mix is finished, you can easily export your video files and share them with the world.

Sharing your work is super easy with Acid Music Studio 8. It's prepared to export files for use on iPhones, the PSP PlayStation, any MP3 player and of course, high-resolution WAV and AIFF files. You can also create and burn custom CDs all within the software.

Don't be intimidated if you've never used audio software on a computer before. Sony has gone to great lengths to make the learning curve as painless as possible. Throughout the program you can access their exclusive Show Me How tutorials, which will instruct you step-by-step on how to accomplish different tasks in the software. Best of all, the Show Me How tutorials activate within the project you're currently working on, so you can learn about new areas of the program while continuing to work on your own project.

You'll be impressed by how much recording, mixing and built-in training you get with such a minimal investment. If you own Acid Music Studio 7 and you're curious about what features have been added to the new version, check out the following list.

Improvements from version 7 to Acid Music Studio 8:

Mixing and Editing

Added audio and MIDI mixing console

Added audio, MIDI, and bus track meters

Added tempo curves

Added cross-track event drag-and-drop

Added enhanced beatmapping for tracks with tempo changes

Added enhanced timestretch and pitch shifting with Elastique Pro

Added metronome count off

Effects & MIDI

Added enhanced plug-in management

Added optimized plug-in scanning via the Plug-In Manager

Includes Studio Devil British Valve Custom guitar amp simulation

Includes TruePianos Amber Lite soft synth

Added program map editor

CD and Export

Added FLAC and AAC format support

Thanks for reading this B&H InDepth post. If you have any questions or comments about Acid Music Studio 8 (or any computer recording related questions) we'd love to hear about them in the comments section.