Professional Sound Mixcraft Pro Studio Review
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Product tests Product tests Acoustica Mixcraft Pro Studio 7 By Paul Lau coustica’s motto says “software The program comes with a host of Considering the prominent genres should be easy to use,” and new virtual instruments and plug-ins, in pop music today, namely dubstep and their products have adhered to rounding out those that have been on other forms of EDM and hip-hop, or even that throughout the company’s offer in previous versions. One of my the popularity of mashups, Pro Studio A17 years in business. I’ve used previous favourites on the synth side is the Mem- 7’s audio warping and audio quantiza- editions of Mixcraft and found it to be a orymoon Vintage Analog Synthesizer, tion features allow for endless creative gem of a powerful DAW. which is based on the famous Memory options in creating and exploring any With Mixcraft Pro Studio 7, the latest Moog – a piece that I actually used to type of compositional endeavors, or on edition of this longstanding audio and own. This instrument allows you to a simpler level, correcting any minor or MIDI-based multitrack offering with sculpt your sound and get that analog major timing errors via the improved both 32- and 64-bit compatibility, the bass sounding nice and unique with a time-stretching and pitch-shifting first item I’d like to discuss and make sound quality that I found true to the technologies. note of is its visual layout and flow. original Moog. This new layout allows users to easily Something somewhat coincidental: I navigate to the most commonly used recently I played on a $600,000 Steinway features. The in- D piano, and to my surprise, I was quite the-box taken by the fidelity and sonic resonance recording of Mixcraft's Pianissimo Virtual Grand experi- Piano and its sample version of the Stein- ence way D. Put simply, it sounded awesome. can be There are so many new plug-ins daunting and digital effects to draw upon during at times, recording, mixing, and mastering. I was but with definitely impressed and pleased by the Mixcraft’s inclusion of iZotope mastering tools, unclut- as I’m rather fond of their plug-ins and tered use them quite frequently. The iZotope look and Mastering Essentials definitely add that function- professional sheen to your tracks. al naviga- I also enjoyed the number of vacuum tion, I tube-related plug-ins on offer that deliv- found the er that original warm and smooth sound Some other new features worth user experience to be very enjoy- of tubes. These include the Pentode mentioning are the Step Editor for beat able and my workflow rather speedy. Audio series, consisting of a compressor, pattern creation and the ability to record Suffice it to say, the design and layout warmer, passive EQ, and tube bass en- and edit an unlimited number of auto- gets aces from me. hancer – which gives that nice, fat sound mation parameters. As for some of the highlights in – just to mention a few. With all I have highlighted, I can’t terms of the program’s updated feature Some of the other cool things about get away from repeating how much fun set, I totally enjoyed and spent a lot of Pro Studio 7 include the TimeMachine I had working my way around Mixcraft time in the Performance Panel view with Bit Crusher, which can recreate various Pro Studio 7. It can be as simple as using my Novation Launchpad, which allowed bit rates and qualities to give unique it like a drum machine and just jamming me to trigger live audio samples and fidelities to your material. And the Fusion to it (which I just did the other night MIDI loops. Pro Studio 7 comes with Field’s convolution reverb technology with the goal of coming up with a new thousands of usable musical loops, allows you to create three-dimensional groove for a song) but is also a powerful including a library specifically for film sonic spaces. The Dubshox Multi-Band tool ready for composing and scoring or scoring. So if you want instant gratifica- Distortion, which has over 40 types of detailed audio recording. This is a great tion and a bunch of sounds to get your distortion and shapers, can be placed program, and I’ve really just scratched musical ideas flowing, start here. I found on any track , any mix, or any master to the surface on explaining what it does it to be a lot of fun. totally twist your sound upside down. and what you can do with it. Paul Lau B.Sc. Musician/Producer/Film Composer, MIDI/Digital Audio Specialist (http://paullau.canadianmusician.com) Managing Director of PowerMusic5Records (www.powermusic5.com), Member of the Cool Christian Pop Band Scatter17 (www.scatter17.com) Professional Sound 23.