• 1.0 Welcome
• 2.0 What’s New in Version 5.0
• 3.0 Known Issues
• 4.0 System Requirements
• 5.0 Installation
• 6.0 ACID User Manual
• 7.0 Demos
• 8.0 Contacting Sony Pictures Digital Inc.

Applicable to boxed products only. If you've purchased a downloadable product, an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) version of the product documentation is available from our Web site.

Notable Changes/Fixes in Version 5.0c

• A bug has been fixed that prevented the input channel number from being recorded when recording MIDI.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause the Media Manager to crash when performing some editing operations if the Save media-usage relationships in active media library check box on the General page of the Preferences dialog was selected.
• The Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (SONY_MEDIAMGR) setup has been revised to improve security.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented you from creating a media library in any folder that contained a ' character in its path.

Notable Changes/Fixes in Version 5.0b

• You can now view thumbnails for video and image files in the Media Manager window.
• You can now view and edit media properties in the Properties pane of the Media Manager window. Right-click a file and choose Show Properties Pane to show or hide the window.
• A new button has been added to the Search Pane of the Media Manager window. Select the View Items Not Matching Search Criteria button if you want to invert your search terms. For example, if you'd searched on the "Bongo" tag, selecting this button will display all media that does not contain the "Bongo" tag.
• You can now add media to a media library by dropping files and folders on the Media Manager window.
• When you set the stretching method in the Track Properties window to Fixed segments, green beat markers represent the points where silence will be inserted to accomplish stretching. Stretch-only markers (normally displayed in orange) are not used in this mode and are now displayed in gray.
• The Soft Synth Properties and Audio Plug-Ins windows are no longer disabled when busses and tracks are muted. A Muted indicator is displayed in the windows, and the contents of the windows are dimmed.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause playback to jump when changing the loop region.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented events from being copied or moved when right-dragging them in the timeline.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause playback to hang when using UAD-1 DirectX plug-ins on the master bus.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause ACID software to crash on some machines when scrolling during playback when third-party effects were applied to tracks.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause silence to be burned to disc if you pressed Alt+Tab to switch away from the ACID window while burning a Disc-at-Once CD.
• A new preference has been added to the General tab. Select the Use compatible method to read disc capacity check box to use a compatible mode to check the capacity of the media when you insert a disc. Selecting the check box can prevent a hang that can occur with some external drives.
• A bug has been fixed that could prevent you from drawing loops after right-clicking a track header and choosing Use Original Tempo from the shortcut menu.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented rendering when your project included busses that were routed to two separate sound cards.
• Effect automation envelopes on bus tracks are no longer bypassed when in ReWire device mode.
• Support for E-MU audio hardware has been improved.
• A change has been made to accommodate certain ASIO audio cards that caused problems at sample rates higher than 96 kHz.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented channel number changes from being saved when saving to an external MIDI file.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause changes to external MIDI device preferences to modify MIDI track routing.
• Several changes have been made to improve audio and MIDI recording.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause certain MP3 files to be truncated at three seconds when adding them to a project.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause some VST effects to revert to their default settings when playback is started.

• A bug has been fixed that could cause ACID Pro software to scan for plug-ins every time the application started.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause the application to crash when changing the sample rate to 192 kHz (via the ACID Project Properties dialog or the driver applet) when using a MOTU 869HD.
• A bug has been fixed that caused summary information to be removed from files when saving ACID information.
• The Downmix Output button in the Mixer window now works correctly.
• A bug has been fixed that caused an "Unsupported Media Type" error message to be displayed when rendering to a sample rate that is not supported for playback.
• The Media Manager Options dialog now allows you to delete media-usage relationship information from the current database.
• A bug has been fixed that caused some ACID 4.0 projects that use custom DLS sound sets on soft synth busses to revert to the default General MIDI sound set when opening the project in ACID 5.0 software.
• A bug has been fixed that could maximize processor usage when applying a groove to a long loop.
• Multiple ReWire bugs have been fixed.
• HDV™ project and rendering templates (AVI, MPEG-2, and Windows Media Video) have been added.
  
  To open or render HDV video, you'll need the CineForm ConnectHD tool, which you can download from our Web site. For CineForm support, click here.
  
  *HDV and HDV logo are trademarks of Sony Corporation and Victor Company of Japan, Limited (JVC).
• ACID playback now follows host time signature when used as a ReWire device.
• A bug has been fixed that caused playback to restart from the beginning of the loop bar when dragging the loop bar.
• A bug has been fixed that prevented ACID from synchronizing properly when generating MIDI clock and using large buffer sizes.
• A bug has been fixed that reversed the behavior of the up and down arrow keys when holding Ctrl+Alt+Shift to zoom.
• A bug has been fixed that could cause a crash when expanding a folder track while playing from the Track Properties window.
• PAL, half-PAL, and half-NTSV frame rates have been added to the Video tab in the Custom Settings dialog for the Windows Media Video 9 plug-in.
• A bug has been fixed that caused the Export Loops command to export only the first track in your project.
• Regions and markers that occur at the end of rendered file are now adjusted so they occur on the last audio sample of the rendered file. If you're rendering the loop region only, any region that extends beyond the loop region is adjust so the region end occurs on the last audio sample. This adjustment prevents warning messages when the rendered files are opened in Sound Forge software.

• Groove Mapping™ quantization with Groove Cloning™. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Media Manager. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)

  NOTE:

  The Sony® Sound Series™ Loops & Samples reference library is not installed by default, but you can install it from the ACID CD or download it here. After installing the library, use the Media Manager Options dialog to choose the reference library.

• Folder tracks for intelligent track grouping and multiple-event editing. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• VST effect support. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Multiport VSTi soft synth support. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Bypass All Audio FX command.
• ReWire device support. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• MIDI editing workflow advancements.
• Snap-to-scale filtering in the piano roll.
• Tempo-based DirectX effects: Amplitude Modulation, Flange/Wah-Wah, Chorus, and Simple Delay. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Event reverse.
• Enhanced audio time stretching and beat detection. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Disc-at-once CD burning.
• Metronome for playback and recording.
• Customizable keyboard mappings. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Bus-to-bus routing. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Downmix monitoring. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Multiple docking windows. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Insert Event at Play Cursor and Paste at Play Cursor commands to help you create rhythms with one-shots. (Available only in ACID Pro software.)
• Chopper window. (New to ACID Music Studio software.)
• Macromedia Flash (.swf) format importing. (ActionScript, motion video, and audio are not supported.)
• Audio event envelope changes are applied to all selected events.
• Ability to save a project path in a rendered file and edit a rendered file's source project.
• You can use the Display tab in the Preferences dialog to adjust the default track colors, icon color saturation, and icon tinting.
• Customizable project media folders.

• Close all applications before you begin installing ACID software.
• If you purchased the AC-3 plug-in with ACID 4.0 software, please contact Customer Service for a new activation code that will allow you to use the plug-in with ACID 5.0 software.
• ACID may crash after closing the Purchase AC-3 or MPEG dialog when the Media Manager is turned off.
• If you install ACID Music 5.0 software (build 128) after installing ACID Pro 5.0 software, your ACID Pro help files will be overwritten by the ACID Music versions. Choose Start > Settings > Control Panel, and use the Add or Remove Programs dialog to uninstall and reinstall your ACID Pro 5.0 installation. The ACID Pro 5.0 help files contain the most up-to-date information for ACID Music 5.0 and ACID Pro 5.0 software.
• When installing Native Instruments Xpress Keyboards, use the default installation folders.
• If you have a USB SmartMedia reader device installed on your PC, you may experience problems when you attempt to access your CD drive from ACID software for extracting audio or burning CDs. This is due to an error in the SmartMedia reader driver. Using the Unplug or Eject Hardware Wizard to remove the reader should allow the software to function normally.
• If you save an ACID 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, or ACID Music 5.0 project in ACID Pro 5.0, it will be unusable in earlier versions of ACID software. Use the Save As dialog to save the project with a new name after editing it in ACID Pro 5.0.
• If you open an ACID 3.0 project that includes MIDI tracks that have track effects applied, the effects will be discarded.
• If you open an ACID 3.0 project that includes MIDI tracks that have DLS voice sets applied via Track Properties, the DLS association will be lost. Please create a soft synth control in the Mixer window and apply the appropriate DLS set to the soft synth control. You can then route your track to the soft synth.
• If you use Chop to New to create a new track from a MIDI track, blank space may be added to the end of the new file if your Chopper selection does not begin and end on measure boundaries.
• In some cases, MIDI data that is added or edited during playback will not be played until you stop and restart playback.
• In order to use the Media Manager tool, your Windows user account must be a member of the Administrators, Power Users, or Users group.
• When using the Media Manager tool, using multiple media libraries can improve performance if you have a very large collection of media.
• If you experience playback performance problems when in ReWire device mode with Ableton Live 4 as a ReWire mixer, you can improve ACID performance by decreasing the buffer priority: choose Options>Preferences>Audio>Advanced, and then choose Above Normal from the Priority drop-down list.
• Preview of MIDI files in the Explorer view may not work correctly under some circumstances.
• Timeline offsets are not sent correctly when generating MIDI timecode. Synchronize your projects so measure one starts at 00:00:00.000.
• Any effects chain that includes non-in-place plug-ins will be automatically bypassed when in ReWire device mode to prevent synchronization problems with the ReWire mixer application. Apply the plug-ins within the ReWire mixer application.
• When in ReWire device mode, one-shot events are displayed in fixed musical time: for example, if a one-shot event occupies three beats on the ACID timeline, that event will be played as three beats at the tempo requested by the ReWire mixer application. If the tempo increases, the waveform can be truncated by the end of the event.
• When in ReWire device mode, ACID software works best with RAM-based media (loops). You can use disk-based media (one-shots and Beatmapped tracks), but performance may be degraded.
• When in ReWire device mode, you can improve performance by turning off the Media Manager (clear the Enable Media Manager check box on the General tab of the Preferences dialog).
• Previewing MIDI tracks from the Explorer window does not follow project tempo when previewing long MIDI files or when in ReWire device mode.
• 24-bit Windows Media Audio files will always be read as 16-bit files in Windows 2000 (multichannel files are read as 16-bit stereo). This is a limitation of the operating system. You can render 24-bit WMA files, but if you want to read these files as 24-bit audio, copy them to a Windows XP machine.
• The first time you run ACID 5.0a, the Media Manager will update your existing media libraries. After the update, your libraries will be unreadable by earlier versions of the Media Manager. We recommend that you back up your libraries before installing ACID 5.0a software.
• When using Classic Wave Drivers or the MS Mapper for playback while generating MIDI clock, you may experience timing problems at the default settings. To correct this, change the Buffers setting in the Advanced Audio Preferences dialog to 2 or switch to ASIO drivers.
• If you update from the original ACID 5.0 release to the current version of ACID software, the software may not recognize your CD burner. Please uninstall and reinstall the current version.

• Microsoft® Windows® 2000 or XP
• 800 MHz processor (1 GHz if using video)
• 200 MB hard-disk space for program installation
• 600 MB hard-disk space for optional Sony Sound Series Loops & Samples reference library installation
• 256 MB RAM
• Windows-compatible sound card
• CD-ROM drive (for installation from a CD only)
• Supported CD-recordable drive (for CD burning only)
• Microsoft DirectX® 8.1 or later (version 8.1b included on CD-ROM) 
• Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 (included on CD-ROM)
• Internet Explorer 5.1 or later (included on CD-ROM) 

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

   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.

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

1. Download the install utility from our Web site.
2. Double-click the file, and then follow the on-screen prompts to install the appropriate version of ACID for your computer.

6.0 ACID User manual

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

   If you have disabled the CD-ROM AutoPlay feature, click the Start button and choose Run. Type D:\Extras\Adobe Reader 6.0\English\AdbeRdr60_enu_full.exe, where D is the drive letter of your CD-ROM drive, and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation.

2. Choose Browse CD, and then browse to the D:\Extras\Adobe Reader 6.0\English\ folder.
3. Double-click the AdbeRdr60_enu_full.exe icon and follow the on-screen prompts to complete the installation. 

• 1-800-577-6642 (toll-free) in US, Canada, and Virgin Islands.
• +608-204-7703 for all other countries.
• Fax: 1-608-250-1745.

• For a detailed list of Technical Support options, we encourage you to visit http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/support/default.asp.
• To listen to your support options please call 608-256-5555.
• Fax: 608-250-1745.

Sony Pictures Digital 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 Sony Pictures Digital Inc., the furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property.