Dropping Acid (it's not what you think)

Every Bella Dramatic song for the past 10 years has been recorded with Sonic Foundry Acid 2.0

This month we are setting up to use Acid for the very. last. time.

I'm in the middle of switching to Pro-Tools 8, a much more professional piece of software. Once it's up and running Pro-Tools should drastically improve the sound quality of future recordings. But first let me tell you a little story...

About a year ago decided it was time for an upgrade, after all, 10 years is a good run for any computer program. Are you still using the same operating system you used a decade ago? So I got permission from my loving wife to spend $250 on Pro-Tools. What an exciting day that was! I was installing it on the laptop before the UPS truck was out of the driveway.

The first snag was a memory issue. The program won't run on the laptop. No problem, $60 for a little RAM upgrade and we are back in business. I'll just double click this exe...CRASH! Unlike Acid, Pro-Tools will not record audio from the sound card. You need a dedicated USB interface to even start the thing. Oh boy, so much for that $250 upgrade. So I begin to shop online for a supported USB audio interface. The unit that I want goes for $500 on most websites. Ouch! But Julie catches a break and wins a brand new one on Ebay for $350.

Now Pro-Tools boots up for the first time, I even recorded a scratch track. Happy with that, I attempt the first overdub. CRASH. You bonehead! Laptop hard drives don't spin fast enough playback and record at the same time! "You've got to have power" It becomes clear that if I'm going to do this right I need a new computer. A desktop with lots of RAM and 2 hard drives: one for the OS and one for the audio. Once again Julie to the rescue. She goes to the Dell outlet and finds a great open box deal. Several weeks go by and the new compy hasn't arrived yet. When we call customer service they discover that one computer had been sold twice. Awesome.

Dell makes it right by sending a better computer for the same price! Sweet! 64 bit Windows Vista with 8 gigs of RAM and duel hard disks. Perfect. CRASH! There are no 64 bit drivers for the audio interface, I need a 32 bit OS. After several more customer service phone calls to India; Dell sends a 32 bit Vista disk over night. Now, finally, 4 months and $960 later, the switch is complete! "It's alive, ALIVE!"

I have started playing with Pro-Tools and made a few demos, but there's a lot to learn. This is a powerful new setup and I need some time to get comfortable. Am I upset about how much money we spent? Not really, I mean this did get out of hand - $250 can become $1000 pretty fast. But the previous set up lasted ten years, and I feel like this will too. One last song with the old gear and then we are finally dropping Acid. It was a good run.