Sound Forge comes to Mac

Pretty overblown teaser trailer on the equally overblown teaser website finallyonthemac.com:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kDKjTMNZFJs

I use Logic and wav editing is pretty cumbersome overall. It would also be nice to dither as a separate step from bouncing. That said I'm not convinced I would get anywhere near enough use out of a standalone audio editor to justify getting something like this.

Do any of you use a standalone audio editor, and if so, what for?

audio editing being not-cumbersome is great

I'm still on Soundforge 5 but I use it all the time. I mostly use it for editing samples and mastering finished tracks. The editing tools are pretty nice for glitch stuff as well.

Great news!

ive been using sound forge since my very first attempts at writing music on a computer, sound forge and acid used to partner so well together. Don't use acid anymore, but still use sound forge daily.

it's a very powerful editor, very very easy to learn the basics but also feature laden enough to keep you discovering new things. It's excellent for general processes such as chopping sounds out of field recordings etc, and things like the plugin chainer and automaion lanes make it a great tool for sound design as well.

I'm slowly moving from using windows for production to OSX, really glad to see that I'll still be able to use sound forge. I guess they saw an opening in the market, hasn't peak been discontinued now?

I guess if youve never bothered with stand alone editors, it won't be of too much interest. Probably have your own working method within Logic or whatever. But if you're looking for a decent editor for Mac, well worth checking out.

Isn't this the software that Burial claims to be using for his tracks?

I thought that was audacity..?

great news- then I can get rid of my audacity tool.

  On 8/23/2012 at 11:55 AM, Bewarethefriendlyfoil said:

Isn't this the software that Burial claims to be using for his tracks?

  On 8/23/2012 at 12:13 PM, th555 said:

I thought that was audacity..?

i had a fun time making tracks with just sound forge (wouldn't want to with audacity tho)

I thought Sony had bought SoundForge ages ago and screwed it all up?

  On 8/23/2012 at 11:46 AM, TechDiff said:

I guess if youve never bothered with stand alone editors, it won't be of too much interest. Probably have your own working method within Logic or whatever. But if you're looking for a decent editor for Mac, well worth checking out.

The main problem with Logic's audio editor is that plain selection and navigation is poor. Automatic transient detection in Logic 9 mostly eliminates selection/navigation for drums at least so it's less of an issue. But any heavy audio editing always gets done by converting the bits to regions and using the arrange window - having a good interface for editing in-place would be lovely.

So I am definitely interested in trying Soundforge - looks like there is a demo on Windows so hopefully there will be one on Mac.

  On 8/23/2012 at 5:23 PM, Joyrex said:

I thought Sony had bought SoundForge ages ago and screwed it all up?

I remember hearing this too. Used to use Sound Forge all the time when I first started recording music, it was a really fun and powerful program.

Been using soundforge since the 90's and still do all the time. I love it. Great for editing samples, and mastering. I had a job doing voip message editing for a phone card company. There we started out using cool edit for the message editing, and moved to soundforge. It was a big upgrade in effects and manipulation, and became one of the main reasons I started messing with electronic music.

Be nice if this was priced super aggressively and sold through the App Store. One of the reasons I still stick with the otherwise completely-insane Digital Performer is that is has an almost-complete (albeit very basic) wave editor built into it.

awesome

  On 8/23/2012 at 8:52 PM, Ascdi said:

Be nice if this was priced super aggressively and sold through the App Store. One of the reasons I still stick with the otherwise completely-insane Digital Performer is that is has an almost-complete (albeit very basic) wave editor built into it.

Would be a bit of a slap in the face to Windows users that paid $375 for it if they did price it differently.

That $375 pricing doesn't really make sense to me in a world where full DAWs like Logic are $200. I imagine there will be a lot of piracy.

  On 8/23/2012 at 9:41 PM, Face Culler said:

  On 8/23/2012 at 8:52 PM, Ascdi said:

Be nice if this was priced super aggressively and sold through the App Store. One of the reasons I still stick with the otherwise completely-insane Digital Performer is that is has an almost-complete (albeit very basic) wave editor built into it.

 

Would be a bit of a slap in the face to Windows users that paid $375 for it if they did price it differently.

 

That $375 pricing doesn't really make sense to me in a world where full DAWs like Logic are $200. I imagine there will be a lot of piracy.

Ah, true. Although $200 is kind of a BS price for Logic, in the sense that Apple can afford to drive the price for DAWs way way lower than most other companies that are not the biggest company in the world can.

I actually spent a very long time looking at the audio editor market for mac, and eventually settled for Twisted Wave. It was surprising how none of them really did what I was looking for, it seemed most were either too basic or too feature filled. For me, I want something light weight that compliments a DAW rather than trying to be one. Audio editors seem to serve a different purpose than a DAW when done right. A few of the main things I was looking for that are missing from Ableton Live for me were:

• An Open/Save workflow similar to a traditional document as opposed to Import/Export as is the case in most DAWS
  
• Batch Processing, for performing functions such as mass normalization on untreated samples of which many are recorded fairly low level, applying small fades to sounds that begin/end with clicks, or permanently applying a VST/AU plugin effect to many audio files at once
  
• Some form of silence/transient detection mainly for auto-extracting one shots from a long sound design session
  
• Some form of marker system for manually inserting splice points for the same purpose
  
• Being able to automatically export each silence/transient detection or marker region as an individual audio file
  
• Higher quality batch conversion of audio files that beats out something like iTunes' encoder
  

Surprisingly at the time it didn't seem like many options covered all of those bases, but Twisted Wave nailed it. I highly recommend it, it is essential to my workflow, although I'm interested in seeing how Sound Forge fleshes out on the mac. I also was heard about Adobe Audition coming to the mac a while ago but never really followed that. Seemed like another fancy tool quite a few people like, but I think I tried a beta or something and it seemed to cumbersome. I suspect Sound Forge may be the same for me personally.

So the batch processing in TW is good? Neat, I'll have to check it out. I have a license of Audiofile Engineering's "Sample Manager" app for batch processing but that app has gradually become the buggiest, biggest pile of shit ever. It's awful. I basically only use it for dithering and LAME mp3 export at this point. It'd be fun to have a killer 2-track editor again.

It is excellent, nice list of processing functions there too. I just whipped it out again last night, I love setting up sound design sessions in Live that use max4live to randomize the shit outta everything whenever it hears a midi note. I just loop a short bar long clip or something with only 1 midi note triggering (with a little room for silence in between hits). I record 5 minutes of this or so and then use Twisted Wave to auto slice it up into individual one shots. I can make really quick work of it, so nice. The flexibility of using dedicated samples for each sound event beats out Live's slice to midi or even manual slicing by hand, especially when you start working with third party instruments that expect you to import .wav files into a sample map. Plus it just feels cleaner to have proper sample management going on.

  On 8/23/2012 at 5:23 PM, Joyrex said:

I thought Sony had bought SoundForge ages ago

Yeah, they did.

  On 8/23/2012 at 5:23 PM, Joyrex said:

...and screwed it all up?

No, they didnt.

  On 8/24/2012 at 6:04 AM, ryanmcallister said:

A few of the main things I was looking for that are missing from Ableton Live for me were:

• An Open/Save workflow similar to a traditional document as opposed to Import/Export as is the case in most DAWS
  
• Batch Processing, for performing functions such as mass normalization on untreated samples of which many are recorded fairly low level, applying small fades to sounds that begin/end with clicks, or permanently applying a VST/AU plugin effect to many audio files at once
  
• Some form of silence/transient detection mainly for auto-extracting one shots from a long sound design session
  
• Some form of marker system for manually inserting splice points for the same purpose
  
• Being able to automatically export each silence/transient detection or marker region as an individual audio file
  
• Higher quality batch conversion of audio files that beats out something like iTunes' encoder
  

Pretty sure that Sound forge can do all of these processes. Not 100% certain about the transient detection, but everything else like batch processing, marker/region extraction etc it's definitely capable of.

Either way, it's what works for you, and what you're used to. Still, might be worth you giving it a look at some point.

it does do it

transient thingies

I would buy the shit out of this if it were priced reasonably with a commercial/non-commercial license hierarchy like Reaper.

I'd like to get into competent bedroom production but the barriers to entry are still so fucking high without resorting to piracy. And I honestly don't want to resort to piracy. Maybe I just feel overwhelmed because I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing.

  On 8/24/2012 at 7:18 PM, TechDiff said:

  On 8/23/2012 at 5:23 PM, Joyrex said:

I thought Sony had bought SoundForge ages ago

 

Yeah, they did.

 

 

  On 8/23/2012 at 5:23 PM, Joyrex said:

...and screwed it all up?

 

No, they didnt.

 

  On 8/24/2012 at 6:04 AM, ryanmcallister said:

A few of the main things I was looking for that are missing from Ableton Live for me were:

• An Open/Save workflow similar to a traditional document as opposed to Import/Export as is the case in most DAWS
  
• Batch Processing, for performing functions such as mass normalization on untreated samples of which many are recorded fairly low level, applying small fades to sounds that begin/end with clicks, or permanently applying a VST/AU plugin effect to many audio files at once
  
• Some form of silence/transient detection mainly for auto-extracting one shots from a long sound design session
  
• Some form of marker system for manually inserting splice points for the same purpose
  
• Being able to automatically export each silence/transient detection or marker region as an individual audio file
  
• Higher quality batch conversion of audio files that beats out something like iTunes' encoder
  

 

Pretty sure that Sound forge can do all of these processes. Not 100% certain about the transient detection, but everything else like batch processing, marker/region extraction etc it's definitely capable of.

 

Either way, it's what works for you, and what you're used to. Still, might be worth you giving it a look at some point.

Ya no doubt it does all that and likely much much more. That's kinda what irks me though, I feel like there's just too much ya know? I'd be willing to look at it if it could compete with the other sub-$100 options, but anything more seems like overkill, and at that price point I think you are paying more for the bundled plugins. I used to use Wavelab 6 when I was in school which goes for like 6 or 7 hundred bucks, and honestly at the end of the day the extra features didn't seem too practical. But i'm not a mastering engineer or anything like that so i dunno. Still willing to check this out though, this is all based purely on the other big boys in the mac audio editing game (Peak, Audition, DSP Quattro, Wavelab, etc.)

Well, this is all very interesting. I will be following this thread, if anyone gets any news on SF OS X or any other interesting 2-track editors in Mac-land, I’d be interested in learning.

  On 8/25/2012 at 4:14 AM, Ascdi said:

Well, this is all very interesting. I will be following this thread, if anyone gets any news on SF OS X or any other interesting 2-track editors in Mac-land, I’d be interested in learning.

Second me too.