ORIGINAL: Billy Buck

ORIGINAL: kb420
Do any of you use Scott Garrigus's book Sound Forge 8 Power? I just bought it to look through before I actually buy the program. Is it a good reference/instructional tool for SF?

I bought his Sound Forge 5 Power book, back in 2001, when I first purchased SF 5.0. It was very helpful for me when I first starting using Sound Forge. I am not familiar with his latest SF8 though. When I later upgraded to SF7, I bought a (2) DVD disk set, with (4) hours of video tutorial's, by Jeffery Fisher. I actually got more out of it than the SF Power book. For me, I like being able to see and hear how something is done than just reading about it. I seem to retain it better. Anyway, they are blowing them out, at a reduced price, since SF8 came out. But all of the material, even though it is geared toward SF7 is relevant to SF8.

Sound Forge: Professional Power Tools for Editing Audio

Does it cover the integration of SF as an editor for Sonar? Details on how it exports and imports back to Sonar?

I bought SF way back and I did not spend the time to figure it out. It did not come with a printed manual and frankly I was offended. But I think the time has come for me to catch up with everyone and learn it.

Thanks for any help

Greg:

I've posted to a bunch of threads on this subject - SF is the tool I know - I get a lot done with it very quickly and it is the stereo tool I use to teach in my Sound Design class. Of all of the software I use professionally - it is the most flakey - today I was preparing examples of dither and noise shaping SF hung seven times on a very very stable Dell Optiplex 270. I run Premire, Sonar, Photshop and tons of other software packages on this Dell - the only two programs that have regular problems are CD Architect and Sound Forge - I guess I've just grown to accept the problems - here's one of my favorites that seems linked to VRAM and 24 bit files longer than 10 minutes in SF - If I open a 24bit file that is longer that 600 seconds and scroll out the max (not IN to max but OUT to max) the wave form dissapears in the data display - it looks like a blank file - the data plays fine - but the data window is blank - the data window eventually shows up if I open and close some apps and just jostle VRAM around a bit - weird work around but I've had tons of trouble with these Sony products - I just wish I ddin't know them so well.

-D

You can download a .pdf file of the user’s manual for Sound Forge at the Sony Media updates site.
You can get there by opening SF Click on Help > Sony on the Web> Latest updates.
Once there click on the version of Sound Forge you are using and the manual will be listed as a download.

To edit a track in Sonar with Sound Forge, click on the track to select it. Hit the “Tools” button on Sonar’s tool bar, than select Sound Forge.
Sonar will open Sound Forge and export the track as a .wav into it for editing.
As soon as you hit “save” in Sound Forge it will apply your edit changes directly to the original tracks file in Sonar audio data folder.
Saving in Sound Forge as opposed to Sonar clears system memory as well as the mirrored “Recovery” back up file Sound Forge creates in the event of a computer freeze or crash.

By default Sound Forge clears the Undo history as soon as you hit ‘save’.
To avoid permanent or destructive editing to the sound file, it’s very important to configure Sound Forge to allow “Undos” past saving.
You cannot undo any edit changes made in Sound Forge from Sonar, but you can by sending the track back to Sound Forge.
To do this, open Sound Forge click on “Options” on the tool bar and choose Preferences. The General tab should be selected. Check the box for “Allow Undo past Save”.
This will force Sound Forge to keep the undo history in meta data so if for some reason you don’t like your editing later on down the road you can always bring the sound file back to it’s original state.

ORIGINAL: DonM

Greg:

I've posted to a bunch of threads on this subject - SF is the tool I know - I get a lot done with it very quickly and it is the stereo tool I use to teach in my Sound Design class. Of all of the software I use professionally - it is the most flakey - today I was preparing examples of dither and noise shaping SF hung seven times on a very very stable Dell Optiplex 270. I run Premire, Sonar, Photshop and tons of other software packages on this Dell - the only two programs that have regular problems are CD Architect and Sound Forge - I guess I've just grown to accept the problems - here's one of my favorites that seems linked to VRAM and 24 bit files longer than 10 minutes in SF - If I open a 24bit file that is longer that 600 seconds and scroll out the max (not IN to max but OUT to max) the wave form dissapears in the data display - it looks like a blank file - the data plays fine - but the data window is blank - the data window eventually shows up if I open and close some apps and just jostle VRAM around a bit - weird work around but I've had tons of trouble with these Sony products - I just wish I ddin't know them so well.

-D

WOW, that's a little discenrning. How is their tech support?

WOW, that's a little discenrning. How is their tech support?

Recently I had a big problem with CDA on my main workstation - it would not perform resampling on 48kHz files (my minimum standard) - After ruining a dozen good media - I emailed them - their response took two weeks - I've been using 16/44.1 into CDA ever since - this hurts my workflow efficiency and requires me to create extra copies of tracks which can be very annoying but the condition exists on both of my workstations so I convinced I don't have time to try to solve their problems.

I have been a registered upgrading user since SF 4.5 (now at 8.0b) I don't find their forums helpful at all and the tech support has never suggested anything other than a reinstall.

CDA like sound forge has some really nice features - I've just found them to be very buggy.
-D

Don,
The only times I have seen or heard of that happening with Sony apps was when they were installed in a directory behind another partition other than “C” drive, or when someone tried to hide .SKF by Windows configuration.
By doing so any number of problems can occur, from very strange to mild, stability suffers in some way.
I know how they can clutter up a folder, but the .SKF files contain peak data for the sound files and must be in the same folder as the sound file for smooth operation.
It’s actually safer to delete .SKF than to hide or move them out of the same folder. That will only cause SF to rebuild them upon loading and of course slowing loading time down, but they will be back again.

Whether or not if this is your case or situation, something had corrupted your Sony apps, and I would strongly recommend completely uninstalling them, run defrag, than reinstalling.
Don’t bother choosing the repair tool the uninstaller will offer you, it won’t work for problems like this.

I had a strange corruption problem with Sound Forge’s plug in preset manager a while back after installing an early Adobe version of Cool Edit Pro (Audition I think?) to try out, I ended up having to reinstall both Sound Forge and ACID Pro, than all worked fine until I uninstalled the Cool Edit Pro! Grrrr, I ended up having to reinstall both Sound Forge and ACID Pro AGAIN!!
Could be Adobe and Sony don’t play well together on the same system?

I don't find their forums helpful at all and the tech support has never suggested anything other than a reinstall.

Yeah, it always wasn't this way until the past year or so. I use to help out Sound Forge users with a lot of tech support questions, but they decided to ban me when I expressed my disappointment for the latest Vegas release on the audio side features. Well I shouldn't say "They", really one person in particular at Sony. I think you should write him and tell him your viewpoint of their forums now. Contact: Dave.Hill_AT_sonyconnect.com. A lot of the more fluent users of the apps got upset by this move, and now most of us hang out at my newly created forum. Even some of the more knowledgable Sony developers post there too. The new Sound Forge forums are over here: www.crossface-forums.net. I coined the Sony forums, "Goose_egg-forums.com", since most ot the technical questions in using the apps from users, have ZERO replies to them now. Thankfully, Cakewalk has a great guy like Ron Kuper who seems pretty focused on customer relations and seems to be pretty damn intelligent in my book. They have an "anti-Ron" over there at Sony by the name of Dave Hill busy destroying customer relations for them.

ORIGINAL: Steev

You can download a .pdf file of the user’s manual for Sound Forge at the Sony Media updates site.
You can get there by opening SF Click on Help > Sony on the Web> Latest updates.
Once there click on the version of Sound Forge you are using and the manual will be listed as a download.

To edit a track in Sonar with Sound Forge, click on the track to select it. Hit the “Tools” button on Sonar’s tool bar, than select Sound Forge.
Sonar will open Sound Forge and export the track as a .wav into it for editing.
As soon as you hit “save” in Sound Forge it will apply your edit changes directly to the original tracks file in Sonar audio data folder.
Saving in Sound Forge as opposed to Sonar clears system memory as well as the mirrored “Recovery” back up file Sound Forge creates in the event of a computer freeze or crash.

By default Sound Forge clears the Undo history as soon as you hit ‘save’.
To avoid permanent or destructive editing to the sound file, it’s very important to configure Sound Forge to allow “Undos” past saving.
You cannot undo any edit changes made in Sound Forge from Sonar, but you can by sending the track back to Sound Forge.
To do this, open Sound Forge click on “Options” on the tool bar and choose Preferences. The General tab should be selected. Check the box for “Allow Undo past Save”.
This will force Sound Forge to keep the undo history in meta data so if for some reason you don’t like your editing later on down the road you can always bring the sound file back to it’s original state.

thanks about the manual. but my point was that for the money, it seems like they should print the manual instead of PDF. I guess I am a dinasaur.

Anyway, thanks also for the rundown on how it works with Sonar. This helps a lot.

I've posted to a bunch of threads on this subject - SF is the tool I know - I get a lot done with it very quickly and it is the stereo tool I use

thanks for the response, i will search through your posts.

Yes you should absolutely have a user's manual included shipped to you even with a download purchase of Sound Forge as it is such a very deep and powerful sound editor, a new user couldn't possibly understand what and all it can do.
The tech support at Sony is on the bad side of horrible, a down hill slide since Sony took over, that is why I mentioned reinstalling, as that is all you will get out of them anyway. There is a general aura of apathy. Believe me, it’s useless to complain about Dave Hill. Fact of the matter is, sad to say, more times than not they ignore legitimate requests for tech support, and could take weeks to reply with an answer to basic and simple questions.
All the good guys gave up and left, and now you got into to with Dave consider yourself very low on the food chain.
Never really had any dealings with Sony support myself for help, I have read some horror stories in the forums.
I too had been banned from the ACID Planet Music and Video Tech forums several times. I still do help many users of Sound Forge, ACID, and Vegas, though now a days through personal email contact. It’s nearly impossible to communicate any real solutions in the forums without flame wars and political debates, and it gets rather tedious.
I've been a member of ACID Planet for years and have many fans, friends and collaborators there, and there is tons of fun to be had as long as I stay out of the forums where I continuously get in trouble with my sense of humor and ragging on ACID Pro’s laughably horrendous MIDI support, and I use the word ‘support’ very loosely.
I’ve always made my opinion ultimately clear that ACID Pro had topped out with version 4, and if anyone wants to seriously consider a trip into the world of MIDI, stop wasting time with ACID Pro and go directly to Cakewalk, because even the cheapest skinniest Cakewalk MIDI sequencer will beat ACID Pro 5 to death in short order, and that is the God's honest truth.
I don’t believe anything can compete with ACID Pro as a loop based audio sequencer/editor for ease of use and powerful editing, and Sony no longer provides a hard copy user’s manual for that or Vegas either.
I was pretty angry about having to go through a couple ink cartridges printing out the manual for Vegas, which contrary to popular hype is not as easy for beginners as Sony would lead you to believe. I feel it has a steep learning which really requires a hard copy of the manual.
Well, now that the new ACID Pro 6 is about to (maybe) be released shortly, Sony pushed it back another month, which they boast as actually BEING a DAW, I plan on keeping my forum ban permenant, as I could imagine it will ever be as good as Sonar or Cubase, it would be mean of me, not to mention self destructive to even try to compare and argue the point.
My experience and money says the new and vastly improved and totally rebuilt from the ground up ACID Pro 6 audio/MIDI DAW is going to be a barking beta dawg for at least 6 months after it's release. And an expensive one too.
I think it will be cheaper for me to upgrade to Sonar 5 PE, I'm kinda intrigued by that Roland V-Vocal plug in... I'm a hugh fan of Roland.