Audacity vs SOny Sound Forge

[Bassmunkee]

Right, disregarding the cost differential and just looking at the products themselves.

I have been using, with great success, Audacity to both "post-produce" if you will, and edit, and indeed on occasion record tracks using a variety of mediums, and have found it to be very successful.
I have recently downloaded a trial version of Sony Sound Forge 9.0 and have started checking it out as a potential upscaled replacement.
Thing is - I can't actually see that it's any better at what it does than Audacity is.
Sure it has CD burning capabilities but that's not a big deal, also I can convert files with Audacity - (or DMC audio), just as as I can in Sound Forge.
Sound recording, playback and editting seem just as good in Audacity as they do in Sound Forge.

Am I missing something?

Does anyone use Sound Forge, or has anyone used both and have an opinion...?
Cheers!

[seamonkey]

I have and use both.

Soundforge has extras like "batching" and "scripting" that will let you take every file in a directory and normalize, eq, or add reverb. It comes with some very good plugins such as Pristine Spaces, and a "Mastering" bundle. And CD architect. It also lets you do things like read or write midi sample dump if you have a use for them (I do). They do regular maintenance updates. All VST plugins I have work fine with Soundforge. The menus are a mess.

But nothing beats Audacity for "Quick and easy" edit. It's also easier to multitrack when you want. Also when you're at someone else's place it easy to load up audacity to edit something.

I probably won't buy the next version of Soundforge.

[projectMalamute]

Originally Posted by seamonkey

I have and use both.

Soundforge has extras like "batching" and "scripting" that will let you take every file in a directory and normalize, eq, or add reverb. It comes with some very good plugins such as Pristine Spaces, and a "Mastering" bundle. And CD architect. It also lets you do things like read or write midi sample dump if you have a use for them (I do). They do regular maintenance updates. All VST plugins I have work fine with Soundforge. The menus are a mess.

But nothing beats Audacity for "Quick and easy" edit. It's also easier to multitrack when you want. Also when you're at someone else's place it easy to load up audacity to edit something.

I probably won't buy the next version of Soundforge.

If you want heavy duty scripting in a sound editor you should have a look at Snd. Stupidly powerful, fully extensible with a built in Lisp interpreter, freely available and being maintained by the folks at ccrma at Stanford University. Pretty much emacs for audio, very cool if you take some time to learn how to use it. Seems like it would be buildable on a mac, I'm not sure about windows.

[Passinwind]

Originally Posted by Bassmunkee

Sound recording, playback and editting seem just as good in Audacity as they do in Sound Forge.

Am I missing something?

I've only briefly used Audacity. The lack of real time effects made it very unattractive to me. I've been happily using Wavelab for a number of years now. I found older versions of Sound Forge to be generally comparable, FWIW. The montage feature in Wavelab is pretty useful for my needs though, and Sound Forge didn't match that feature back when I was buying.

[Infernal Affair]

Why not just use REAPER? It gets updated and improved constantly. I haven't used Audacity in awhile, but that's because I switched to REAPER. Granted it isn't just a simple wav editor.

[Slax]

I've been using Audacity for a while now... I haven't had a problem. For what I use it for, I haven't had a need to upgrade to something else. (Play back of practicing and rough versions of songs I may be working on).

[seamonkey]

Originally Posted by Infernal Affair

Why not just use REAPER? It gets updated and improved constantly. I haven't used Audacity in awhile, but that's because I switched to REAPER. Granted it isn't just a simple wav editor.

Reaper is also great, but it's not free. I elected to not use it currently because of the cost for commercial use. I may buy it in the future.

[dbcandle]

Depending on your budget, you may consider:

• Cakewalk Sonar 6 Home Edition: $10
• Cakewalk Sonar 6 Home Edition XL (adds drum machine and another soft-synth): $150
• Cakewalk Sonar 7 Studio Edition: $300

If you're recording and doing sequencing, Sonar seems to be one of the more popular products. I've looked at a number of free and commercial products, but Sonar seems really good.

You may care to check the forums over at cakewalk.com. Great community, much like the one here on TalkBass.

[Bassmunkee]

Well as it happens I now have Cakewalk Sonar 6 Power Studio 660 - which is the Absolute Dog's B*ll*x.
Oh Yes.

[Fli]

I've used both Soundforge and Audacity for simple recording and editing. I actually prefer audacity because it's easier and faster IMO, soundforge does have more features though.