Sony Creative Software has announced that its Acid Pro 7 (Mac/Win; $399.95) digital audio workstation software will be available in November, 2008. Acid Pro 7 is now Microsoft Vista compatible and features multitrack recording, 5.1 surround sound mixing, MIDI sequencing, and loop-based music production. It also offers better control over the music creation process through a new mixing environment, MIDI track freeze, tempo curves, improved beatmapping, and additional import/export options.

New features for Acid Pro 7 include the audio and MIDI mixing console, which provides additional routing options; MIDI Track Freeze, a tool that "freezes" MIDI tracks that use multiple soft synths and renders them as a WAV file that can then be streamed and played back as audio files; real-time rendering, which allows you to incorporate live input from external sources; input busses, for better control over routing input signals; improved timestretch and pitch shifting with Zplane élastique Pro; better beatmapping for tracks with multiple tempos; new tempo curves; support for FLAC, AAC, AC-3 Studio, and MPEG-2 formats; and more.

In addition, Acid Pro 7 includes a software bundle with Garritan Aria for Acid Pro player, a custom sample library, the Acid Pro Effects Rack powered by iZotope, Submersible Music KitCore, and Native Instruments Guitar Combos. For more information, visit sonycreativesoftware.com.