Acid Pro
Publisher: Sony Media
Written by: Sonic Foundry
Acid Pro is one of the most remarkable pieces of sound creation software that you will find. It is loop-based music creation at it's best. However it is not a childs toy, nor should it be taken lightly. Acid is probably the most advanced, non-professional sound editing/creation software you can buy. And it's producer- Sonic Foundry- is definitely the leading company on this type of software.
Acid Pro is the "complete" version of its sound editing library. It includes with it Sonic Foundry's sound-editing software, Soundforge, a plethora of loops, and a decent-sized cache of effects, or FX. Is fairly straightforward to use...unless you want anything extremely fancy. Read the manual, and probably by their much more in depth manual before trying anything advanced. It is possible to damage your songs if you don't know what you're doing, but it is designed to be fairly safe against that sort of thing.
Acid Pro also comes with newer versions of Windows Media Player, and I believe that Acid Pro 4.0 comes with DirectX 8. I am getting my copy of Acid Pro 4.0 soon, but until then I will use Acid Pro 2.0 and 3.0 as my examples. Acid Pro itself is not that complete insofar as sound files go, but on the SonicFoundry website, you can purchas verily myriads of libraries to go with Acid. I currently own the "Producers Pack" library, which you can see listed below. The Sonic Foundry website offers specific libraries of samples, which are just individual CD's created by one or two people. They also include demo songs using only what is included on the cd. Altogether they are pretty cool, however this is what I would suggest:
While individual libraries are cool, I would advise buying one of the packages available. A good set of items to buy would be:
Acid Pro 4.0<
The next update
The Producers Pack Libraries
This includes a good variety of effects, samples, loops, and sounds. Also the demo songs are a big plus! They will give you ideas. See below to get an idea of what type of package you think would fit you. I've listed some of them- There are some only available through their older magazines. Also, all of the libraries are filled with royalty-free loops, allowing you to combine your riffs and then sell your CD's as I am doing. Sonic Foundry has a nice reimbursement system. Contact them for more info.
Overall Acid Pro is killer music software, and can produce startling effects and emotions when combined with it's companion video software, Vegas Video. Whether you are just messing around, or you are writing the soundtrack to a move
(Yes, I do have a friend who used Acid to do that) Acid Pro is the ultimate software. The only setback is the price (around $400 dollars for Acid Pro 4.0 out of the box). You can get a cheap ugrade if you own a previous version, and applying for a student discount will knock one to two-hundred dollars of the price. If you have the money, though, I advise you to purchase it.
http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/loop_libraries/default.asp