First Look: Sony's Sound Forge 8

Product Review: Page (1) of 2 - 03/29/05

First Look: Sony's Sound Forge 8 Three important reasons to get on board: CD Architect, VST support and ASIO compatibility By Frank Moldstad

Anyone who does audio editing on the PC should have a copy of Sony's Sound Forge -- its powerful toolset is capable of handling nearly any editing task and the program is a perfect complement to DAW applications such as SONAR and Cubase. It does everything from individual track editing to finishing final stereo masters with smooth professionalism.

But there's always room for improvement, and the newly released Sound Forge 8 (MSRP $319.96 boxed/$299.96 download) adds some welcome new functions. Particularly useful are support for VST plugins, ASIO driver compatibility and the bundling of CD Architect with Sound Forge 8. But there are a number of other additions that augment the workflow in significant ways. Among these are a data scrubber, customizable keyboard mappings, an integrated Script Editor window, HDV templates and Macromedia Flash (.swf) format importing. Batch processing and file-format conversion with the Batch Converter script have also been added.

Installation was trouble-free on a dual-processor Athlon with a Tyan motherboard. The full manual is contained in a PDF file accessible from the Help menu, but a printed 75-page "Quick Start" is also included that covers most of the basic functions.The full manual also can be saved to the desktop from the installation CD.

For me, two of the new features proved immediately useful. VST plugin compatibility not only opens up third-party VST plugins, but enables the use of a UAD-1 effects card in VST mode. And ASIO driver compatibility is a must in my case, since a new Hammerfall audio interface I recently installed only has ASIO and MME drivers, although WDM drivers are in development.

Applying a cda crossfade in CD Architect
But the most significant inclusion to the program overall is CD Architect, a superb Red Book burning application that includes a wide range of final editing, processing and mastering functions. CD Architect was recently reintroduced to the market as a standalone application after being on hiatus for a while. About six years ago, when I was still using the NT operating system, CD Architect was a staple in my audio production process. It was a great disappointment when I switched to Win2K and couldn't bring the old version of CD Architect along, and I haven't had the opportunity to use it since.

But the new CD Architect 5.2 is in another league, and it transforms Sound Forge into a truly complete soup-to-nuts mastering application. Among its features are CD Text reading and writing. And even though CD Architect is a standalone app, it is tightly integrated with Sound Forge. Files can be exported directly from Sound Forge to CD Architect, and Sound Forge 8 regions are automatically imported as CD tracks.

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