Best way to Acidize WAV files?

Hi guys,

I have really gotten into using UVI Workstation for browsing through my drum loops in tempo to my projects since the MediaBay of Cubase sucks horribly for this despite it being its main function. UVI Workstation is brilliant in the respect minus one issue. It will only playback WAV files that are ACID WAV in format. If you try and play a regular WAV you will get no output from the browser in real time with your projects tempo.

Anyone know of a quick way to batch convert WAV files to ACID WAV? I have come across a program called Acidizer which seems perfect, but not at $25USD for a one time thing. As soon as I batch convert my folders they will be backed up this way for future use.

If anyone knows of a way to convert WAV files to ACID WAV please do share. The Silence UVI puts out really sucks when I'm trying to audition a WAV loop already on my drive.

Thanks.

Having used Acid for years, I dont think youd get a good batch converter... Acid is crap at detecting beats etc so always have to manually do the acid equivalent of hitpoints. prob gets at least 50% of them at double or half speed (amongst its other faults). dunno how much better than $25 one is... you can get a free cut down version of acid AFAIK .

I actually realized Chicken Systems Translator does this. I had no clue till I really dug around on the net this morning through some old threads at KVR from 2006. Lucky me, I had Translator kicking around which I used to convert my old EMU sample CD's when I went from my hardware sampler in favour of Halion. I will give it a good testing to see how it fares and will drop back in here to let you know.

BTW, does Acidizing a WAV alter its sound AT ALL? I understand it is just suppose to add additional information in the header for bars, tempo etc, but does it alter the sound, even if slightly? One thing I am worried about in the conversion is sound quality change and/or loss.

Lastly, through a quick browsing I see there are 3 different types you can choose from when Acidizing a WAV. One shot, loop and Disk based sample? I can understand the loop and one shot, but what exactly is Disk Based Sample? When and why would I like to choose that option over the others? I want to make sure I do it right the first time as I have literally hundreds up hundreds of files in various directories I would like converted for easy use, but only want to do this once and properly the first time. Would hate to go through the process just to find out it could have been better in some way if I just did something different from the get go.

My guess is Disk-Based reads directly off your drive instead of loading the file first to memory. This would be important for larger files, such as if you were to remix an entire song.

Cantankerous said:

Lastly, through a quick browsing I see there are 3 different types you can choose from when Acidizing a WAV. One shot, loop and Disk based sample? I can understand the loop and one shot, but what exactly is Disk Based Sample? When and why would I like to choose that option over the others? I want to make sure I do it right the first time as I have literally hundreds up hundreds of files in various directories I would like converted for easy use, but only want to do this once and properly the first time. Would hate to go through the process just to find out it could have been better in some way if I just did something different from the get go.

Click to expand...

Thats beatmapper, used for stretching whole tunes basically, or really long samples. A basic (and very early) version of abletons stretching. Prob dont need to worry about that. used acid since v1 fwiw...

Acid was revolutionary, but the bugs and lack of foresight ($ony :roll: ) meant it was never going to make it as a pro sequencer.

let alone it just wouldnt work with UAD plugs.... :evil: :roll:

Thanks Eric and Ben for the replies, much appreciated. I will just choose loops for my loops then and one shot for well, one shots. I will leave Disk Based alone.

I assume no quality loss or alteration of the wave file takes place in this conversion?

i guess it would depend on how well acid found the hitpoints. It fairly often (ie everytime ) got all the hitpoints wrong, so would weirdly timestretch transients and the like. Much better if manually done, and/or pitchshifted or sliced (recycle style) rather than TSed. In fact thinking back acid was pretty crap :lol:

bah, well I simply need it for previewing. I wouldn't need to worry about this at all if the damn Media Bay in cubase worked properly, but that doesn't work with RX2 at all. It plays everything in either double time or half time, It can never automatically detect the proper BPM so never syncs as should with the projects tempo.

UVI Workstation is absolutely flawless this way, only it will only preview WAV files if they are Acidized first. RX2 work right off the bat. I was hoping to get my WAV's to preview like my RX2 do without me having to manually convert each and every one to an RX2. If UVI can playback the Acidized WAV to the projects tempo just fine, I could always dump that into Recycle and manually slice and save as an RX2. I just hope it actually does that. I will have to give it a real work when I have more free time.

Cantankerous said:

bah, well I simply need it for previewing.

Click to expand...

In that case, just choose one-shot for everything in that case (unless you want to preview at tempo).

btw, what don't you like about Cubase's Media Bay?

Personally, I loved the simplicity of Acid 2 the best. Acid 3 was nice with a lot of needed features but things already started to get convoluted by that point. Acid 4 was a cluster F.

What I don't like about Mediabay is the fact that for whatever reason, it never lets me preview my samples to the projects tempo like it is suppose to. I constantly toggle the options on and off and it still plays too fast, too slow etc. Doing jungle, having breakbeats line up is really important, and I find it impossible to see what break will go well with one currently in use in my project when it plays like shoes are bouncing around in a dryer from not being in time. RX2 are even worse where Mediabay can never seem to really get the proper tempo from the loop and it results in it playing back in double time all pitched up. Extremely annoying. I find Mediabay extremely slow when it scans my drives etc. All in all, its a great concept, I just think it has some serious work ahead of it to get it up to par. After using UVI Workstation for previewing, you really feel how mediabay is lacking in the previewing to the tempo department and realize how Mediabay should be doing such tasks. Mind you, this is on Cubase 4.5.2, when I get 5 I will see how it fares. From reading on the Steinberg forums however, not much.

I will try your idea for assigning the waves as one shot. I figured this would be for single snare, kick, hats etc, but not full 8 bar loops etc. I chose loop for that and assigned the number of beats involved in such breaks. Would setting it to one shot really change anything?

Thanks for your reply Eric. Appreciated.

How's your project going?

You've given me a 'heads up' on UVI Workstation and Acidizer, both downloaded and ready to take for a spin. I'll be surprised if Acidizer does anything Sound Forge can't. The later has a menu for adjusting/ defining acid properties in a file.

Oh, I'm pretty sure a 'one shot' is simply Acid's way of tagging a file that it is not to be tempo or pitch stretched. It will also ask you if you want to set the project's tempo to that of the one shot. I'm not sure that would be of any help with UVI.

prado

Hi there. I refused to pay for Acidizer for the one time it would be used so I looked into alternatives. I realized Chicken Systems Translator does the same thing which I already happened to have lying around from the days when I used to work with E-MU sampler so I used that to batch convert my files as needed.

Thanks for the info on the 'one shot' description as well.

I hope you like UVI Workstation. For simply browsing loops to match the tempo of your track it is incredible. You can have multiple loops easily assigned at the same time to hear how they sound in tandem. If you like how they sound its a simple drag and drop into your open sampler interface for further editing and programming. For a free release, it is really damn good. Nice on the eyes and super easy to use too.

I'm a little puzzled about Translator. I got the idea that the loops you were talking about were wav files, presumably something 4 bars long from someone like Big Fish Audio, for example.

Are you saying the Translator was able to find and slice the transients to convert to Acidized?

The Acidizer d/l I found (but still haven't installed) was 'shareware.' So I thought I could at least take a look to see if it was worthwhile before buying it.

prado

Hi again. Yes, translator is shareware. Lets you do up to 25 files or something before it times out. That wasn't nearly enough as I had hundreds of files to deal with.

As for Translator, I am unsure exactly what it is doing, I just know if I right clicked on a folder there would be an option to convert. I chose to convert to Acid file and it then came up asking me if I wanted one shot etc. I did my thing and let it batch process the folder in the background. I then was able to load these files into UVI where I normally wouldn't be able to.