At the 2008 NAMM show I was browsing around almost walked right by the Acoustica booth. I probably would have missed it if had not been for some enterprising young fellow who shoved a demo disc of Mixcraft 4 into my hands.
I’ll admit that I haven’t had a chance to load this software up on my computer yet - but from the demo at NAMM and the product specs, it might be a solution that I’ve been looking for. I like both Sony Acid(tm) and Garage Band(tm) for their ease-of-use and abilty to quickly create songs using high quality loops.
I’ve often wished I could get Garage Band on the PC and also often wished I could use ACID loops in other programs. Well, I’ll keep you posted, but Mixcraft looks like the read deal. At a street price of only $65, that’s a real value considering that it has some pretty high end features.
Features:
- Clear, colorful, and intelligently designed interface to streamline your work.
- Custom loop library includes hundreds of royalty-free sounds in dozens of musical styles.
- Works with Acid(TM) and Apple Garage Band(TM) loops.
- Record multiple MIDI and audio tracks simultaneously.
- Piano roll to view and edit MIDI.
- Includes a General MIDI library, two sampled grand pianos, Hammond B-3(TM) emulator, MiniMoog(TM) emulator and a polyphonic synthesizer.
- Includes 18 high quality effects.
- Create mega presets that layer and split multiple virtual synthesizers and effects.
- Add unlimited VSTi(TM) instruments, VST(TM) and DirectX(TM) effects.
- Mix down to MP3, WAV and other audio file types.
- Burn CDs of your mix with just one click.
That is an impressive feature set for a $65 dollar program. Go to the website and grab the demo (same one that I have) and let me know what you think since it may be awhile before I get a review out since I have Riffworks and Mackie Tracktion 3 to review first…
Dan