A simple explanation ... and then some.
Hi.
There's a very simple explanation for the quality loss ... ACID is doing what it's supposed to do.
ACID does dynamic time-stretching and pitch-shifting to match the project tempo and pitch, and this is not a flawless process (yet anyway). You'll notice a "lo-fi" creep into your loops, especially if the tempos are being shifted by the program. You can fix this by changing the Acid project tempo to the tempo of the original loop(s). This will stop ACID from processing the audio. Either that or you can change the loops to "Disk-Based" and un-select the "Stretch from tempo" check-box in the "Properties | Track" tab.
Apparently the processing fidelity has been improved quite a bit for
Acid 3.0 (beta available until May 15th at
http://www.sonicfoundry.com/), but I can't say for sure because I haven't installed it. It needs Dirext-X Runtime 8.0a, and because DX8 is the devil (it doesn't work well with a lot of audio software - yet) I'm hesitant to install it.
As a segue to time-stretching and pitch-shifting, a new bit of software is supposed to do the unthinkable for audio. It's called Melodyne from Celemony It sounds a lot like
the Roland VP-9000 VariPhrase sampler, but it's a software and is supposedly going to cost far less. It can (supposedly) alter the pitch, timing, formant and tempo of monophonic audio - in real-time.
A pretty mean feat if it actually works (and makes it to market before everyone else). The audio examples are very promising - and quite astounding too! Check it out:
http://www.celemony.com/
Regards,
-=(stu.macQ)=-