Has it been worth the two-year wait? First TripĪs mentioned above, Acid 's basic function - as an environment for arranging loops with real-time pitch-shifting and time-stretching - remains very much the same. Sony's first update does, however, include an extensive list of new features, and three 'headlines' dominate this list: Groove Mapping, the Media Manager and improved Rewire support. So now that Acid Pro 5 is here at last, what does it have to differentiate it from its competitors and imitators? All the original functionality is, of course, retained, and the basics of the user interface remain the same. Almost all the major sequencers now have built-in tools for time-stretching and/or pitch-shifting loops, and applications such as Ableton Live, Glaresoft's Phatmatik Pro and NI's Intakt all provide sophisticated loop-manipulation tools. and on - and while Acid has stood still, the competition has not. However, the wait for a new version of Acid Pro has gone on. For both Sound Forge and Vegas (for my money, the best desktop video editing environment available for the PC), happily, those fears were quickly put to rest as Sony soon released new versions of both. Such a development always leaves users a little concerned about possible changes in design philosophy or development of the products concerned. However, like Emagic and Steinberg, Sonic Foundry's audio and video software assets were the subject of some corporate manoeuvrings, in this case a sale to Sony's Media Software division. At that stage Acid, Sound Forge and Vegas Video were all still under their original Sonic Foundry ownership. It is now over two years since Acid Pro 4 was released. Does it keep pace with other manufacturers' loop-sequencing packages? Version 5 of Acid Pro is the first major upgrade under the Sony Media Software badge, and has taken two years to arrive.

The Acid user interface remains the same, albeit with the inclusion of Folder Tracks, Groove Tools and the Media Manager.

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