Sonic Foundry ACID Family (Pro/Music/Style/XPress)

Release Notes

August 2001

Copyright © 2001 Sonic Foundry, Inc. All rights reserved.

Sonic Foundry, Inc. may have patents, patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. Except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from S 15515x2321p onic Foundry, Inc., the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.

Contents

This document contains information on the following topics:

Welcome

2.0 What's New in Version 3.0b

3.0 Known Issues

4.0 System Requirements

5.0 Installation

6.0 ACID User Manual

7.0 Demos

8.0 Contacting Sonic Foundry, Inc.

Applicable to boxed products only. If you've purchased a downloadable product, Adobe Acrobat (PDF) versions of product documentation and product demos are available at www.sonicfoundry.com/download/.

1.0 Welcome

Thank you for trying Sonic Foundry ACID 3.0b. This document contains information about installing and using ACID on your computer.

2.0 What's New in Version 3.0b

New Features in ACID 3.0

A Beatmapper that will add tempo information to song-length audio files (ACID Pro and Music only)

A Chopper that allows you to easily cut up loops and patterns to add more variety to your tracks (ACID Pro only)

Support for playing back and recording MIDI tracks using external MIDI gear (ACID Pro only) or the Microsoft DLS-based soft synth.

A video track you can use to score videos with ACID (ACID Pro and Music only).

Extracting audio from CD (ACID Pro and Music only)

Support for opening multiple media types.

Master and sub busses for more flexible routing (ACID Pro only)

New effects routing options: track, pre- and post-fader assignable, master, and bus effects (ACID Pro only)

Track envelopes that can lock to events.

Higher fidelity pitch shift and time stretch algorithms.

The Zoom tool has been moved to the lower-right corner of the Track View.

Notable Fixes/Changes in Version 3.0b

The method of scanning for plug-ins has been optimized to allow ACID to better manage third-party plug-ins.

A Zoom command has been added to the View menu. You can now choose a command from this submenu to change your project magnification to Normal (F9), Edit (Shift+F9), or Overview (Ctrl+F9).

A bug that caused some ACID projects to produce an "Unable to mix audio" error during rendering and playback has been fixed.

MIDI clock now follows tempo changes.

A bug that sometimes caused MIDI to lose sync during looped playback has been fixed.

When you trigger playback with MIDI timcode, playback will now be begin at the correct spot even when you apply an offset to the time ruler.

A bug that caused MIDI tracks to be mixed together when you rendered each track to a separate file has been fixed. Each MIDI track that is routed to the internal SoftSynth is now rendered to a separate file.

MIDI tracks that are routed to external devices will not be rendered when you render each track to a separate file. In ACID 3.0 and 3.0a, these tracks were rendered as silence. To render MIDI tracks, you must route them to the internal SoftSynth.

The downbeat marker position in the Track Properties dialog will now be updated when you edit the numeric Downbeat offset value for a Beatmapped track.

A bug that caused ExpressFX to be removed from other Sonic Foundry applications has been fixed.

A bug that caused some systems to crash when rendering Windows Media files has been fixed.

The Explorer will now correctly display the names of mapped network drives.

A bug that caused ACID to hang when recording very short takes has been fixed.

A bug that caused some files to play back incorrectly when their sample rate did not match the project sample rate has been fixed.

The Artist field will now be filled correctly when encoding Windows Media files.

The state of the Copy all media with project check box in the Save As dialog will now persist until you close the current project.

3.0 Known Issues

If you save an ACID 1.0 or 2.0 project in ACID 3.0, it will be unusable in earlier versions of ACID. Simply save the project with a new name after editing it in ACID 3.0.

If you save an ACID project with a file name that exceeds 240 characters, you will be unable to reopen the project in ACID. Simply rename the project using the Windows Explorer.

Do not use time-altering effects (such as Time Stretch, Gapper/Snipper, and Pitch-Shift without preserving duration) with an ACID project. Time-altering effects will cause a track to play out of synchronization with the waveform display in the Track View and with other tracks. These effects can also consume excessive amounts of RAM and may fail.

The ACID Explorer can lag when exploring folders with many files. You can, however, drag files into ACID from the Windows Explorer.

When you preview video files using the ACID Explorer, only the audio stream is played.

Changes to Track Properties for MIDI tracks are not saved to the MIDI file and will be discarded if the file is edited in another application and reloaded.

If you attempt to open a MIDI file from your project using Cakewalk or SONAR, the file will not open if the target application is already running.

ACID information (Root note and DLS path) cannot be saved to .rmi files.

Projects that include many MIDI tracks may exhibit decreased drawing performance in the Track View. This will not affect rendering.

Multiple sequential changes to a MIDI track can be erased by a single undo operation. If you make a non-MIDI change to your project, a separate undo will be created.

QuickTime files do not support Beatmapper information.

When using plug-in chains as assignable FX or bus FX, preset names sometimes do not update correctly when you adjust parameters or add plug-ins to the chain.

When you render a project that contains reverb, the reverb tails are truncated at the end of the event. Add a silent or muted event that covers the length of the tail to preserve it.

Errors can occur when you render to the QuickTime format using a custom encoding template.

Projects that contain many MP3 tracks may exhibit decreased performance. Compressed files cannot seek as well as WAV files, but using variable bitrate (VBR) MP3s can improve performance.

Recording audio with the AudioMedia III card may crash.

Saving ACID projects with embedded media (.acd-zip) takes longer than saving ACID 2.0 projects with embedded audio.

If you uninstall older Sonic Foundry applications after installing ACID, you may lose the ability to load and save some file formats. Reinstall ACID 3.0 to repair.

If you have older Sonic Foundry applications that include the Perfect Clarity Audio codec, you may have two versions of the plug-in after installing ACID 3.0. You can use either plug-in.

The Registration dialog may freeze if the registration server is unavailable.

4.0 System Requirements

The following lists the minimum system requirements for using Sonic Foundry ACID:

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows Me, or Windows 2000 *

300 MHz processor *

Windows-compatible sound card

CD-ROM drive

Supported CD-Recordable drive (for CD burning only)

64MB RAM

60 MB hard-disk space for program installation

Microsoft DirectX 8.0 is required. If you haven't already installed this module, the installer will prompt you to install prior to installing ACID. (Included on the ACID CD-ROM)

Internet Explorer 5.0 or later (version 5.0 included on the ACID CD-ROM)

400 MHz processor and Windows 98SE, Me, or 2000 required for video scoring.

5.0 Installation

The install utility, SETUP.EXE, located on the setup CD-ROM, creates any necessary folders and copies all files required by ACID to your computer. If you're installing ACID with Windows 2000, your user account needs to be a member of the Administrators group to install ACID, and you need to be a member of the Power Users group (or higher) to register ACID.

To install ACID, follow these steps:

Place the ACID CD-ROM in the drive. AutoPlay displays an installation menu.

Note: If you have disabled the CD-ROM AutoPlay feature, click the Start button and choose Run. Type D:\setup.exe, where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive, and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation.

Click Install, and follow the on-screen prompts to install the appropriate version of ACID for your computer.

The installation process may prompt you to restart your computer. If installation does not continue after your computer restarts, please run setup.exe again and installation will resume.

6.0 ACID User Manual

Included on the ACID CD is a complete ACID User Manual in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format. The Acrobat format allows easy printing of the text, should you need a hard copy. The manual is located in the \Manual\ folder on the CD.

Installing Adobe Acrobat Reader

In order to view the manual, you will need to install the Adobe Acrobat Reader. It has been included on the CD in the \Extras\ folder for your convenience. To install Acrobat Reader, follow these steps:

Place the ACID CD in the drive. AutoPlay launches an installation menu.

Note: If you have disabled the CD-ROM AutoPlay feature, click the Start button and choose Run. Type D:\Extras\Acrobat Reader 4.0\English\ar40eng.exe, where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive, and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation.

Choose Browse, and then browse to the D:\Extras\Acrobat Reader 4.0\English\ folder.

Double-click the ar40eng.exe icon and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation.

7.0 Demos

The Sonic Foundry ACID CD-ROM includes demo versions of other select products available from Sonic Foundry. To install a demo, run the main setup program on the root of the CD and choose Product Information from the Install screen. Follow the links for the demo you want to install.

If you would like any more information or demos of other products from Sonic Foundry, please visit our Web site (www.sonicfoundry.com). You will always find the latest technical information, demos, and product announcements from Sonic Foundry there.

Commercial distribution of the Sonic Foundry demos requires written permission from Sonic Foundry.

8.0 Contacting Sonic Foundry, Inc.

Sonic Foundry can be contacted in the following ways:

Sonic Foundry, Inc.

1617 Sherman Ave.

Madison, Wisconsin 53704

USA

Customer Service/Sales:

For a detailed list of Customer Service options, we encourage you to visit www.sonicfoundry.com.

Telephone support during normal office hours:

1-800-577-6642 (toll-free) in US, Canada, and Virgin Islands.

+800-000-76642 (toll-free) in Australia, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, UK, Netherlands, and Japan.

+608-204-7702 for all other countries.

E-mail: customerservice@sonicfoundry.com.

Fax: 1-608-250-1745.

Technical Support:

For a detailed list of Technical Support options, we encourage you to visit www.sonicfoundry.com.

To listen to your support options please call 608-256-5555.

ACID Pro includes 60 days of complimentary phone support. To obtain support, please call 608-204-7704. Your complimentary support begins the day you register your product (registration is required).

Fax: 608-250-1745.