Soundtrack

Apple have introduced a new package called Soundtrack. It's a music creation system like Sonic Foundry's Acid, which is what I've used to make what you'll find here.

Two things occurred to me when I found this product: First, how much does it cost; second, where am I going to get loops for it? (Loops are the little snippets of sound that you can assemble into music: A particular chord progression on an acoustic guitar; a two-second drumbeat sequence; a synth arpeggio.) Sonic Foundry have a lot of loops available. What will Apple provide?

As to the first question, at $499 it seemed a bit pricy... Until I realised that I'd come to Apple's Australian web site, so that was my dollars, not US dollars. US price is $299, which is pretty reasonable; ACID Pro 4.0 sells for US $399, though you can get the very capable Acid Music 3.0 for just US $79. (Currently US$1 = A$1.50.)

As for the loops, Soundtrack comes with a library of 4,000 loops. That's pretty impressive; they come on a DVD-ROM and will take up 5GB of your hard disk. Not satisfied with that, Apple also fully support Acid loops - so my existing loop library can be used in Soundtrack.

Since Acid is the only software - apart from games - that I had to run on Windows, this is a major breakthrough. I can now do all my work on Unix - MacOS X on the desktop, Linux on my servers. (The database system I use isn't available for MacOS X as yet.)

What a pity then that I don't have the $5,599 for that dual G5 Mac. Sigh.

Hey, Apple! Would you like someone to write a really in depth review of your latest systems? No, thought not.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 300 words, total size 2 kb.