ACID files Among vendor-created file formats, the “big dog” is the ACID Loop format. Created by Sonic Foundry (and now developed and sold by Sony), the ACID application crashed through barriers in establishing loop production, and became enormously successful as a result. The ACID file format has became the most popular vendor-developed standard for loop content, with Sony’s enormous ACID Loops catalog leading the way. An “Acidized” file is a standard .WAV file (the most common PC audio format), but it takes advantage of an audio-file feature that allows non-audio data to be embedded into a file’s header. This extra information provides ACID with a loop’s length (in beats and bars), time signature, slice points and the base transposition key. ACID files are normally edited using Sony’s ACID program itself. There is a track properties window (shown at left) used to set transient points and to select the loop duration, meter and key info. The slices match transients in the file, or can be set to musical time intervals. As an example, it is common (for some types of material) to set up an ACID File with slices on 16th notes, regardless of where the transients fall. Of all the formats, this is the fastest and easiest editing system to use. Slices of sustained sounds can match musically useful boundaries, allowing for better stretching of these types of loops. Furthermore, ACID tends to have forgiving time-stretch algorithms, which produces tempo shifts that sound more natural than those of most other software. The ACID file format received a shot in the arm with Cakewalk’s release of SONAR. This package combined DAW production with support for ACID loops, allowing for much more complex production. In addition to using ACID files, SONAR has a Loop Construction window that is a full-fledged slice editor, and is capable of saving files in ACID-compatible format. SONAR’s Loop Construction tool is becoming a preferred ACID file editor by loop developers, and provides exceptional support for the format. There are a few limitations to the ACID file format. It is the least well-documented format, so developers have difficulty supporting it in their editing and sample playback software. There are currently no free editing utilities (although most ACID file fanatics are using either ACID or SONAR, so they have a built-in editor), and the ACID-specific data is unsupported in many software packages. Nevertheless, the popularity of ACID and SONAR, and the availability of ACID loops of almost any stylistic genre, has spurred many producers into using dedicated PCs solely for ACID file production.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:13:22 +0000
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