Subject:Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Posted by: flake

Date:5/12/2005 10:24:47 AM

Howdy, I'm new to these forums... wish I'd known they were here!! I have been using Sonic Foundry (oops... SONY) products (Acid & Sound Forge) for a while.

Something I have never really been able to figure out is what the two different products are really for. I have been using the heck out of Acid to record my own music & loops... LOVE IT!! But I have never really figured out what to do with my Sound Forge... I'm guessing I should be importing my music recorded in Acid and then "mastering" it in here but am not sure! About all I have ever used Sound Forge for is to do some of the audio manipulations that I couldn't do in Acid (like "reverse"ing a loop or some such thing...)

I have tried reading through the material at the Sony site to get a feeling from the product descriptions but I don't really get how it all works in "reality"... recording my tunes.

Anyway, I would appreciate hearing how YOU use the different capabilities of Acid and SoundForge in your music creation.

Thanks!

Subject:RE: Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:5/12/2005 11:46:59 AM

Sound Forge is, bar none, the digital audio editor, whereas ACID is the media looper and arranger. They're meant to compliment each other as Vegas compliments them both with its multitracking features.

I usually record in ACID and bounce down from there. If I need any tweaking, Sound Forge is definitely where I go. Sometimes I may use Sound Forge to record as well.

If I'm going to ACIDize my recordings, I can (and do) use either ACID or Sound Forge to ACIDize, but ACID Pro is where I make any final adjustments, since ACID Pro has the ability to use stretch markers.

I also render my final stereo mix from ACID and then use Sound Forge to sweeten the mix.

Iacobus
-------
RodelWorks - Original Music for the Unafraid
Buy Instant ACID by JohnnyRoy and mD!
mD at ACIDplanet

Subject:RE: Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:5/12/2005 3:51:35 PM

If you just use commercially produced loop libraries, you may never need SF. SF is an audio editor - you use it to trim, convert, effect and otherwise work with a sample. Even though I have Cubase SL3, I still prefer to work with Audio in SF.

SF has many features related to sampling. For example, you can easily rip samples from an audio CD, trim them, create sustaining loops, and send them out to a compatible hardware sampler (not so important these days).

The batch converter bundled with SF is also useful if (for example) you want to convert 100 wav files from stereo to mono, or trim the silence from the ends etc.

Subject:RE: Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Reply by: flake

Date:5/12/2005 4:54:56 PM

Thanks for the input!

I do record my own audio (guitars/vocals/etc...) in Acid. I don't use the "midi" features much anymore since I started using the loop based drum library CDs.

It just seemed to me that SF (and, in all honesty, I haven't used it much) had pretty much the same features as Acid and I was starting to wonder why I had purchased both. Thus, my question.

So, when you tweak using SF... are you taking the whole Acid as a .wav into SF and then mastering the recording as a whole... or are you bringing individual tracks in... or does it all go over as a project file that you can tweak the individual tracks within the project in SF?? So many questions... :)

Thanks again... very informative.

Subject:RE: Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Reply by: rraud

Date:5/12/2005 5:40:46 PM

SF is a mono or stereo editing/mastering application.
After mixing a song in Acid, Vegas, PTs.... or whatever, you would... "master the recording as a whole.." as you put it.

Subject:RE: Acid -vs- Sound Forge

Reply by: Geoff_Wood

Date:5/12/2005 11:13:54 PM

Or prior to that, correct any glitches in the recorded loop, etc.

geoff