Acoustica

A FULL, Exhaustive review, complete with screen shots and much greater detail, can be read by clicking the link at the the bottom of this article.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, audio-software fans of all ages, welcome to Reviewer's Revival; one of North America's most beloved audio-related web dugouts. Now batting for the Norwegian Acon Digitals, Acoustica 5 Prem-EEEE-umm."

Settle in with your favorite libation. We're in for an edge-of-the-bleacher, nine inning, exhaustive review of one of Europe's most underrated competitors. If you're an antsy, 5000 words-or-less review fan, then you may not have the endurance for this one. If you're in it for the joy of the audio game, you're gonna LOVE IT! Ready? Ok, let's go.

Sound Forge Pro, Sound Forge Audio Studio, Audition, Wavelab, Wavelab Elements, Audacity, Waveosaur, Gold Wave; what to do, what to do? The upper crust of these products requires a deeply indrawn breath, a flush bank account, and a commitment to pro-calibre audio editing. The lower range of available audio editors provides decent audio-editing features that will appease novices or those who only want/need to make simple changes. If the user is not concerned about achieving professional results, or hasn't a need for pro features, then a freeware or inexpensive audio editor will suffice.

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Consider this question. .. .

What if you 'need' professional features, but can't quite bite off the 'professional' costs associated with the upper range audio-editing software packages? You take a look in the direction of team Norway. Since 1987, Acon Digital has been diligently refining their powerful, affordable product-line. Heading up the roster is team captain, Acoustica 5 Premium.

With a MSRP of only $119 (USD), it is entirely plausible that Acon Digital's Acoustica 5 Premium is poised to win gold as THE BEST audio editing software package within its price range. Competing products (in this price range) DO NOT offer the extensive, powerful features that Acoustica 5 Premium provides.

Acon's stats are well-earned and should never be relegated to the 3rd sting, warmer's bench. For example, competing speciality audio restoration packages will typically cost $325 or more. Acoustica 5 Premium *includes* the capable "StudioClean" restoration bundle. What's more, you can put these powerful VST plug-ins into play within another DAW or host on your system. Not to be mistaken for junior-league pinch hitters, these seasoned warriors of the digital field are strong, fast, and capable. These have helped bring home the cup more than once.

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Acoustica 5 Premium is FAST and POWERFUL. This muscular audio champion is laden with an abundant, BEST-IN-CLASS feature-set.

Installation & Setup:

Everything about Acon Digital's software is FAST and efficient; including the simple, intuitive installer. On the six year old dual-core laptop that I used to bench-test this sweetheart of audio app, it installed in about a minute. No exaggeration – it only took about one minute... .

Visuals:

If you're looking for bloated, pretty graphics, you ain't gonna find them in this bull pen. Acoustica Prem 5 is about power and speed; not fluff n' cutesy-wutesy pictures. Don't get me wrong, boys, it has a cool, stream-lined interface that's easy to navigate and attractive in a minimalist kind of way. The blue-toned GUI is soothing on the eye-balls and won't require you to spring for a new pair of Ray-Ban shades.

Subtle, mouse-over highlighting effects give you a clear indication of where your mouse cursor is. A popup description of what each icon does is also seen while hovering the mouse cursor over the various toolbar elements. The default toolbar icons are quite small on large, high res monitors. Fortunately, the icon size can be made larger and still looks great... .

Editing & Basic Usage:

"Ok, huddle up and fall in, guys. We've got some fierce competition in the league this year, but this club is well on its way to seeing this season through; past the semi-finals. With its speed, power and agility, it is not an unreasonable expectation that Prem 5 can take home the cup for MVP!"

To get the ball rolling, let's first take a look at the obvious: basic audio editing. (As a quick sidebar note, these features are common to all three editions of Acon's Acoustica 5).

Thanks to the fast, smooth "zoom" control over a waveform, very precise insertion points and waveform selections can be made. The default vertical zoom of 100% can be increased up to a whopping 5000 percent!

Something about the editing of wavefom selection(s) that I'm particularly impressed with is the fact that volume adjustments do not result in annoying 'clicks' at the insertion points. With other audio editors that I have used, this has often NOT been the case.

For example, let's say that an engineer would rather subdue sibilance on a vocal track 'by hand' rather than relying on a DeEsser plug-in. I have found that by carefully selecting the "SSSS" segments and lowering the volume of those segments, the integrity of a vocal track was retained without it suffering from annoying editing 'clicks'. My experiences of performing these same editing tasks with other audio editors (including those costing $300+) were not as successful. The unwanted editing 'clicks' anomaly became pronounced once processing (such as compression) was applied to the track. 5 STARS to Prem 5!

Premium Features:

Broad Range of File Types: Prem 5 can work natively with a diverse selection of file types (without requiring external codex): FLAC, Ogg, MP3, Wav, Wav64, AIFF (read-only), AAC (MPEG-4), WMA, and AU.

CD Track Import & Basic CD Cover Design: That's right, you don't even have to use an add-on or 3rd party application for importing CD tracks. This feature can come in handy, especially if you want to easily rip a track from a pro recording to use for comparison reference within your own project.

AN EXHAUSTIVE BREAKDOWN OF ALL FEATURES CAN BE READ IN THE FULL REVIEW, hosted on Reviewer's Revival.

Sound Quality:

The clean, digital processing quality of Acoustica Premium 5 is comparable to any high-end audio editor. Across the board, this championship-grade software produces amazing, crystalline audio results. The array of effects and features need not take a back seat to any. As a matter of fact, I'm going on record stating that I believe that it BESTS anything in its price range, by a wide margin.

Effects & Features:

Acoustica Premium 5 plays hardball with agility and grace. As the formidable, yet ingratiating host that it is, 'Prem 5' pitches seven, strong VST plug-ins squarely over the plate. It's hard to miss with this able-bodied back-line string available to you on whatever digital field you're playing. These digitally fit, all-rounders are: StudioCompressor (Multi-Band), StudioDelay, StudioDynamics, StudioEQ (6 Band ParaQ), StudioLimiter, StudioModulator and StudioVerb. These are in addition to the components that make up the Acon "Studio Clean" and "Studio Time" features that we've already been introduced to.

CPU Consumption:

* What a breath of fresh air. I have a couple of very well-known, fairly pricey, audio editing applications installed on my system. One of them in particular, is as slow as cold molasses running uphill, in the middle of January, in Alaska. Sheesh! The thing takes up to two minutes to launch on my 2nd gen Intel i3. Not so with Acoustica Prem 5, buddy. No sir! This little fleet-footed digital shortstop is practically locked, loaded and ready to go before I get my finger off the mouse button.

Concluding Remarks:

Throughout this exhaustive, inspective almanac, I've brought to your attention the stupendous value that Acon Digital offers with Acoustica 5 Premium. I now mean to reinforce that finding. Dollar for dollar, I am confident that this deluxe audio editing champion will ably out-perform ANY similar product at its conservative price point.

Enjoyed this Mini-Review? You can read the FULL Review, complete with screenshots and much greater detail here:

Acon Digital Acoustica 5 Premium Review - Major League Quality, Minor League Price