SoundForge - GOOD :: Bad :: EVIL

Hey all, I was wondering how i could use SoundForge with my MPC to make my production environment better. Is it worth buying?, and if so or not, for what reasons? It seems like it has a lot to offer, from what everyone says, but what are the qualities about it? I tried it once, and basically thought it looked like a WAV editor. Thats about all i saw. Someone holla and gimme the rundown on this beast. Peace.

What's what, Ark.

SF is a vital tool for me and others. You can really use any software you want, but I dig the SF interface and have grown accustomed to its interface. I say it's worth buying, but do yourself a favor and check out a demo copy first.

It IS a wave editor of course. That's what it's for. That's why it's useful. You take an original sound, say a drum break. Maybe you didn't record this break at a very good level. SF can normalize with all kinds of parameters and leave you with a good level loop that doesn't sound nearly as noisy as it would had you just jacked the volume on it. SF can add effects, makes cutting loops infinitely easier than scrolling around on a tiny LCD screen, and can export to any (PC) format you want, Acidize samples, and tons of other things. Zoom to a crazy closeup of the wav for killing unwanted noise in your recording using SF's mute function, it's endless.

I mostly use SF for normalizing, loop tuning and chopping down sounds out of long samples. I've also used it for adding guitar effects when I wasn't able to do them with hardware.

I sample on my MPC, import wavs to SF, fix em up and shuttle them back to MPC either using MPC-Editor and a zip or dropping the wavs on a floppy, whichever's more convenient for the situation.

Hope that's helpful.

-tank

I'm not an expert on Soundforge, but i suggest you try some other software as well, and compare them first before you buy.
A lot of people use Wavelab, and don't forget to try ReCycle.

http://www.steinberg.net/

http://www.propellerheads.se/

I use soundforge to edit all types of wav files. You can edit them in endless ways. One nice thing about soundforge is that it is easy to MIDI your sounds back to the MPC (if you don't want to use your Zip disks). However, SF is not a neccessity.

Thanx Guys. Appreciate the knowledge. Somone told me that its possible to do mastering in SF. Im a just a beginner, and i dont even know what mastering is, but i do know, its kind of a vital necessity for completing a final project in production. What is Mastering, (any links, tutorials?) and how can SF do mastering?

is that possible? and does anyone know how i can save my user defualts in edit? thanks.

What's up DJ D?

Samples can indeed transfer over MIDI cables, never tried it before but from everything I've heard it's not worth the "convenience" as MIDI cables have very low bandwidth and cannot transfer at nearly a high enough data rate to realize this convenience.

Just try backing up a synth's sysex and you'll get a taste of how slow MIDI transfer really is.

-thynctank

if you have sound forge running, you transfer your samples via usb, not midi. midi is a **** i have tried out various waveeditors, but as thinky said, i have also grown with the interface of sound forge. when you have finished your track and recorded it to one stereo wav, you can then do the mastering in soundforge (adding abit of eq, multiband compressing, whatever. as for normalizing, you have to be careful, because though it does automatically level your audio to max technically, this process also does sometimes alter the sound of the wav without clipping being involved. also, if you want to splice up a sample or a beat at each amplitude the way recycle does and extract this to seperate new files, that´s two buttons with soundforge. funny thing, because i think this was already implemented way before recycle even came out. but nobody made a fuzz about it. anyway, i never got the hang of recycle. i just can`t understand what makes this program so very special, but maybe somebody here can once help me out on this...
i would probably not even have bought the mpc if connecting it to soundforge was not possible. but together, it´s the best of both worlds.

What's up Poly. Just now read this post, must've been one of those "I got booted from the net and lost my MPC Tutor New Posts list" things.

What MPC are you running? Must be the 4000 or something, because USB transfers don't work to any MPC I know of.

Normalization is a vital process, to me, for samples taken from old vinyl, just as compression can be a vital process. There is simply too much noise, often times unwanted noise, to allow it to pervade the track you're constructing. So record at a level and EQ where the noise is at a minimum and sound is still clear, and normalize and filter and noise gate your way to a happy sample, I say. My technique revolves around this when samples are too noisy.

Not sure what you're talking about automatic normalization. Any wave editor centers and zooms in on your waveform, if that's what you mean, but normalization is a dynamically-rendered gain process wherein each segment of "incoming" audio is gained based on parameters set in the program performing normalization. It's automated but fully tweakable. And not automatic.

Recycle's hit detection is far superior to the Auto Region function of SF, which, tell truth I hadn't messed with until I read your post. Recycle detects individual short attacks that I've not been able to get SF to find.

Recycle is also able to add faded tails and prevent each sliced portion of a sample to sound prematurely cut, create MIDI files, and, using MPC Editor as a companion utility, create pre-made pgm files, which is frickin sweet.

I'm sure there's several good tutorials on Recycling, but I don't know of any. For me, the program's so intuitive a tutorial is unnecessary.

I agree that using both a hardware and software combined approach is the best of both worlds. All of my production is based on this principal at this point, where if I'm not happy with something that's been done in one world or the other, I flip it over the fence and I'm reworking a concept on the other side, bring elements back and forth over this fence the whole track through.

It's the future of beat production, period. Whether you're a highly-paid beatmonger for some rap magnate or dnb label, or a kid on the street with a few bucks to spend on a piece of software, it's definitely worth the buck.

-thynctank

hi thinky, thx for the info on recycle. i can see now what the interesting points about this program are, that thing concerning preedited prgs sounds especially nice, i will have to try this out asap. i would probably not need the exact hit detection of recycle as i have alway got satisfying results with auto region from sf. but then i have to add that i very rarely sample beatloops and cut them up. it`s more of the tweaking stuff with plug ins etc. i do. anyway, i agree with everything you said, also the normalization issue, but i had sometimes problems with my perception of the normalized sound. couple of weeks ago a friend and me sat together in front od the monitors for an hour just a/b-ing different sounds. sometimes we were not shure. i just wanted to add that. normally everything works just fine, and it`s an ansolutely vital tool for me, too. to be honest, i´m so used to it that i did`nt even mess alot with the sample editing part of the 4k so far... i do use the mpc 4000, right. after having it for a couple of weeks now it starts do be good fun. i love the sequencer, it´s the tightest composing tool i have ever used (that is, after the piano of course) and two days ago i have just hooked it up with my brand new machinedrum it`s the set up of my dreams. i haven´t had that much fun in years. and it DOES NOT CRASH. i can´t emphasize that enough. keep it up.

polysikhs

I WISH I could afford something like the machinedrum. Damn, how much did you snag it for, 800? Last I knew, MSRP was still a thousand. I just don't feel comfortable laying out that much cash for something just for drum sounds. Not till I'm making music and making money from it. I did, however, recently shoot 1200 bucks off to someone for a Korg Karma, which is gonna be awesome. I've never had a complex workstation of any kind, and it's a real thrill to have one entering my mix.

Got any demos of what you've done with the machinedrum yet, sikh?

-thynctank

Just realized you're in Vienna, and I'll assume that's Vienna, Germany and not Vienna, Maryland.

So how many marks or whatever was it? Heh.

-tank

hi thinky, that´s vienna in austria. no vienna in germany. as we are part of the european union, we have to pay now with euros, since one year. the national currencies don´t exist anymore. in germany it was marks, in austria schillings. it´s a real pain. until the raising of the iraq-problem the us-dollar and the euro were almost equal, now the euro has risen a bit. i paid 1100 euros for it, which is currently about 1130 dollars or something. that`s alot, i know.
but i always wanted to have a drummachine, i was never really able to program a good beat with the mouse (i know it can be done, but not by me) and since i´m into the electro-synthie stuff, i thought it would be a good way to get everything more organic. i only have it a couple of days now, so there`s no demos or anything yet. as soon as i have some nice track put together i will post it here to learn what you think. although i know that most of you are into hiphop.
the only thing i regret is that i have waited so many years before opting for a dedicated unit like this.
just by accident i have sold an old loop of mine last december for a commercial over here. so that was the akai. it just happened. i´m neither a pro nor rich. i´m an 33 year old fart that has just quit his job and spent every single penny he has saved for music equipment that is probably way over his league... peace

btw, did`nt know there`s another vienna in maryland...