Comments

Chienworks wrote on 12/18/2001, 8:35 PM
Acid is for creating music. Vegas Audio is for editing. Some things you
can do with VA that you can't do with Acid include full multitrack recording
and multiple events in each track. I'm sure both programs run with the
same basic "engine", but the focus of the interface is quite different
between the two.

I'm an engineer, not a musician. (Well, to be precise that's not true. I'm
a scientist, not an engineer. At least that's what it says on my degree.
But anyway, i digress ...) The sorts of tasks i do, recording live
performances, cutting and pasting takes, mixing down, etc. are much
more easily facilitated with VA. I would find these tasks to be very
cumbersome in Acid. And i just can't record more than one track at a time
in Acid no matter what. This feature alone makes VA necessary.

My brother is a musician, and finds Acid much better for creating and
tweaking his music, using things like the beatmapper and pitch shifting
of loops. These tasks would be very difficult in VA.
Rednroll wrote on 12/18/2001, 10:40 PM
Why Vegas Audio?

Because I Said so, and I am an Engineer and that's what it says on my degree :-)~

Also try to record a drumset with 8 microphones and place each mic on a seperate Track. Then try recording a vocal part and when the vocalist screws up a part, let's see you do a pick up where they left off at.......Wait a minute..you can actually do that in Acid....Damn now that I think of it, there's not much more you can do with Vegas than you can do with Acid. Vegas is a little easier for editing though. If you really don't need those abilities you can probably get by with Acid.

I was expecting there would be a day when all of SF products would come full circle and eventually be put into one program (I actually forecasted this in a post over a year ago). Pretty much if you give Vegas a master tempo and key signature section (you can already do the drawing of loops function of Acid) and then give it the ability to reverse audio and setup a loop like in Sound Forge, then you pretty much have Vegas, Acid and Sound Forge wrapped up in one ball of wax.
Yojimbo wrote on 12/19/2001, 6:42 AM
...okay, then here's the tough question: How to choose between Vegas Audio and Vegas Video?

I've had a thread going elsewhere about choosing between Acid and Vegas Video. I'm mostly editing lengthy narration with several character voices, adding sound effects and background beds... with the occasional music jingle as an intro here and there, and I like to do some home video of the family (my background is in broadcast television, so I enjoy doing some video of my own too, but that's a hobby).

I find Acid's looping convenient, and the ability to change sample pitch up and down useful for mixing several versions of an effect and getting a denser sound, and it's cut and paste much faster than any audio editor I've tried. All good stuff. The biggest drawback I've found is juggling 2 dozen tracks in rleation to the main voice, with no way to "hide" some and just view what you want, it gets tedious navigating around the UI repeatedly.

I've been told some feature of Vegas (notably multiple audio events on a track) will go a long way toward making the edit easier to manage. I've downloaded the demo and I like it (the similarity to Acid helps too!).

Can you give me any idea about how Vegas Audio fits in this picture? Between Acid and Vegas, it appeared Vegas would work more efficiently for me, and and added video editing would be a bonus. Nows I'd like to know how Vegas Video and Vegas Audio compare for my needs, and for my interests. I can forego the video features of Vegas Video if there is another leap in functionality that would propel Vegas Audio into the forefront.

I'd appreciate your thoughts, if you've worked with these.

Thank you!

Jim

Chienworks wrote on 12/19/2001, 8:31 AM
Vegas Audio is a subset of Vegas Video. There isn't anything that VA
has that VV doesn't have. So if you can afford the extra bucks, go for
the Video version and you won't miss anything. The only reason to get
the Audio version would be to save money, but until December 24th,
the Video version is dirt cheap!
MixNut wrote on 12/19/2001, 1:36 PM
I am confused about the differences/similarities in these programs as well...It would seem to make more sense for Vegas AUDIO to be developed in tandem with Acid, instead of Vegas Video.

I don't understand why certain features that we're all waiting for in Vegas Audio [like a master fader] aren't but a simple code copy/paste from Acid [which already has this]? The programs seem all but identical structurally [though I may be wrong].

Overall, it seems like Sonic could move more quickly, efficiently and cheaply as a company if they were to combine several of these similar-but-slightly-different programs into one, comprehensive tool...Why not, Sound Forge?

MixNut
SHTUNOT wrote on 12/19/2001, 1:59 PM
I've posted this before when it comes to the integration of Acid and Vegas Audio. If you look at what Sonar has done it woudn't make any sense to not do them one better and bring over all the features+new ones. It would cut down on the work that I'm doing a bit+ looks great in front of clients! When it comes to acid give it the same benefits as Vegas Le...8 tracks of recorded audio,blah blah,add some new features. Have it be a "big brother" to "little brother" relationship between the two. Please don't wait untill cubase,logic,everybody else does it first THEN do it! Sonar is enough competition for me to say that this upgrade is needed. Later.
Rhythmystik wrote on 12/21/2001, 3:54 AM
Vegas has stronger track editing features than Acid. The ability to manipulate the individual events on a track is much more thoroughly implemented in Vegas. You can also place events from more than one file on the same track and you can't do this in Acid. This alone is worth it.

Vegas can stream files from disk with all of the real-time editing and fx on the disk based files. Acid used to require the files to be loaded in ram for the real-time effects but that apparently has changed with Acid 3.0 although I haven't really tried it much.

I primarily do remixes and long DJ mixes with Vegas and on thing that lead me to it instead of Acid was the ability to change the pitch in cents rather than just the semitones that Acid allows. With the fine tuning that the cents adjustments gives me, I can match the bpm of tunes in the mix just as I would with the pitch control on a turntable when I'm mixing live. Of course Acid can do the timestretching (in some ways much better than Vegas 2) but in my case, I often like to do some fairly large BPM shifts and the timestretch in Acid starts to introduce artifacts with larger bmp shifts. With Vegas I can go for the "change pitch and length" option and as long as I'm willing to put up with the pitch shift I can get large bpm changes that sound great.

fosko wrote on 12/21/2001, 12:13 PM
You know I'm STILL trying to understand why VEgas or Sound Forge. So far the major thing I can see inSound Forge is that it has ACOUSTIC Mirror (which makes me think . .why not just include AM with Vegas Audio and call it a day ?)

I understand (I think) Sound Forge is more of an Audio editor, but is there really anythinhg you can do there that you can't do in Vegas Audio ?

Rhythmystik wrote on 12/22/2001, 7:02 AM
Sound Forge has a few processing tools that Vegas does not have. I see Sound Forge's pupose as manipulating files and t's purpose is to process samples and tracks rather than arranging them. Vegas's primary puprose is to edit and arrange. Of course both products do overlap in many areas but Sound Forge is 2 track stereo/ 1 track mono and Vegas is multi-track.
Rednroll wrote on 12/22/2001, 11:58 AM
Alot of this is probably done for cost reductions to everyone and to simplify things for a normal user. For example, I use Adobe products also. Many of the features overlap in their products also, but I still need photoshop to do picture editing, Premiere to do video editing and Illustrator to do special text and border applications , dimension to do 3D texts and Adobe Acrobat to open an entire .PDF. Could adobe combine all these programs into one and have it have every tool I need. Probably YES, would I be able to work more effeciently with 10,000 menu items? Probably not. Would I be able to purchase this software and still make Adobe a profitable business, Probably NOT.

The same scenario goes for audio. If I have no need for multi-track recording and editing, then why would I want to add the confusion when I could simplify everything and work more efficiently with a simple 2 track editor? If you want to know, of the differences between the programs then goto the "Software" menu and Sonic Foundry has listed all the differences between Vegas Video and Vegas Audio...also Acid Pro, Acid LE, and Acid Music.

They could probably make one huge program, and charge you $1000 for it, but would you buy it? I own Sound Forge, Vegas Video, Acid Pro and CD architect and even Siren ($1000+). I find it very nice, that they're actually very well integrated together and seperate programs. I can right click on a wave form in Vegas and open it up in Sound Forge and the same in Acid.

You need to realize, that sometimes LESS is MORE, for some people. Alot of people don't need a wrecking ball, when a simple hammer will do the trick and don't want to pay the price of the wrecking ball either. Sonic Foundry has done you a huge favor by keeping the prices of individual pieces of software afordable, while allowing you to have an option to upgrade and integrate other software as you feel you need it. And as you add to your collection of their software, it all functions very nicely together. If you want an all in one program, that does a half ass job at everything, then go purchase Sonar and quit your crying. If you want professional tools, then buy individual pieces like Adobe and Sonic Foundry that work well together.

Peace,
Brian Franz